Tom Brady is not the greatest athlete of all time. It's bigger than that.

• Tom Brady is not the greatest athlete to ever live.
• Still, he's unlike any athlete we've ever seen before him.
• So what is he? How can you best describe the most decorated football player in NFL history?

Tom Brady has been proving me wrong his entire career.

This season, after two decades of winning with the New England Patriots, Brady defied time, space, and the naturally embedded chaos within an NFL schedule to reach the 10th Super Bowl of his career, this time with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Brady has already far surpassed the accomplishments of any other player in the history of the NFL. He's won six Super Bowls, with the possibility of a seventh ring on Sunday. In the years he didn't win the Super Bowl, he was usually close, reaching the postseason in all but two of his NFL seasons and leading the Patriots to 13 AFC title games in 20 seasons.

Regardless of what happens on Sunday, Brady's status as the NFL GOAT is firmly cemented, with Patrick Mahomes the only man alive with a shot at possibly making a dent in that statue.

After Brady left the Patriots to join the Buccaneers and wound up pushing them to the Super Bowl in his first season in Tampa Bay, Brady's legacy once again was brought into focus. Some are now asking if Brady is not just the NFL GOAT but also the greatest athlete ever.

Brady is a lot of things, but he is far from the greatest athlete of all time.

The argument is similar to our annual attempt to agree on the amorphous meaning of "valuable" with the NBA MVP race. My definition of "athlete" conveys a bit more of an all-around ability than what Brady is capable.

For my money, LeBron James is probably the greatest living athlete, and at least half of my top 100 would be current members of the NBA. Simone Biles is in the top 10.

Basketball players can run faster, jump higher, lift more, and turn faster than Brady ever could. Biles is at a point in her career where she is less playing an established sport, and instead, she's inventing a new one.

The greatest athlete currently in the NFL is probably either Lamar Jackson or Aaron Donald, depending on if you value speed or strength. Jackson is largely impossible to tackle, and Donald is impossible to stop. Brady is a brilliant player, but compared to the athletic prowess of those younger, faster, and stronger than him, it's not all that close.

To put it plainly, at 43, Brady is barely a great athlete, and that is one of the things that makes him so amazing. Because if Brady, with all of his accomplishments, isn't a great athlete, what is he?

He's not the greatest champion in the history of sports - that title likely belongs to Serena Williams, or possibly Michael Phelps. If you wanted to limit the scope of the question to team sports, many would argue for Michael Jordan over Brady.

He's not the most intimidating person in the history of sports - that's Jordan again, or likely Tiger Woods in his heyday.

He might be the greatest hero or villain in sports history, depending on your age and your relationship with the city of Boston. Both of those distinctions exist far more in the eye of the beholder than the man himself.

So what is Tom Brady?

It's a question that's been on my mind for the past two weeks. Given that I was raised an Eagles fan, Brady quickly was identified as an enemy in my life after he and the Patriots defeated the Eagles in Super Bowl XXXIX. At age 13, I was already tired of Brady winning so much. Sixteen years later, little has changed.

Brady is a rock. As seasons changed and generations of players get drafted and bounced from the league, Brady was there, leading the Patriots to another AFC East title and deep run through the postseason.

His play is at times undeniably brilliant, but even more than that, Brady is consistent. If there is a way that his team can win the game, he will find it.

This trait was most on display than in Super Bowl LI, when the Patriots charged back from down 28-3 to beat the Falcons in overtime. For any other player, it would have been a career-defining win. But Brady had already put together a Hall of Fame-worthy career before that game kicked off. Since then, he's had another one.

Over 20 years of watching him, the thing that sticks with me most about Brady is that he is a competitor. He shows up every week and competes. He grinds to find ways to win where others might not see hope. While he might lack the flourishes of grit shown by other quarterbacks - Brady's days of diving into a defender for a first down are mostly behind him at 43 - Brady's competitiveness shows itself in other ways. He has won more games through sheer force of will than many will ever win in their entire careers.

For this semantics exercise, that's what Brady is to me: the greatest competitor in sports history.

To you, he may be something entirely different: the greatest champion, the greatest performer, the greatest villain. Through the past two decades, Brady has been such a constant in the lives of football fans that attempting to define him is ultimately a fruitless endeavor. He isn't any one thing. He's an idea that exists outside of sports.

If you have cared about sports over the past 20 years, there is a version of Tom Brady that exists in your head, and on Sunday, that version of him will show up on the field and prove you right.

He always does.