Out of all the plaudits that have been showered on Tom Brady and the New England Patriots in their pursuit of perfection, one has meant more to the Patriots’ quarterback than all of the others combined. Joe Montana, whom Brady idolised while growing up in San Mateo, a city about 20 miles south of San Francisco, where Montana led the 49ers to four Super Bowl wins, praised his anointed successor’s calmness in the pocket, the very quality which the man they called “Joe Cool” demonstrated throughout his Hall of Fame career. “I’m very flattered but I don’t think I’m on that level,” Brady responded with a sheepish smile. “Joe won three Super Bowl MVPs (Most Valuable Player awards) and four Super Bowl rings. I have a long way to go.”

The reality, of course, is that 30-year-old Brady is closing fast on his fourth Super Bowl triumph and a unique kind of immortality in the National Football League (NFL). In the early hours of this morning the Patriots played the New York Giants at Giants Stadium, striving to become the first NFL team to finish a regular season with a perfect record of 16-0 and only the second to complete a regular season with no losses or ties in the modern era. Only four teams have ever won 15 games in a season: Montana’s 49ers in 1984, the ’85 Chicago Bears, the ’98 Minnesota Vikings, and the 2004 Pittsburgh Steelers. In 1972 the Miami Dolphins won all 14 of their regular season games en route to a landmark 17-0 record and a Super Bowl success.

“We’ve got a lot of records at stake, the most important one being the 16-0,” Brady said during the week. “I hope we achieve that. It would be a great feat for the team. We’d go down as the only team to be 16-0, so that’s the goal I’ve got in mind.”

There were other records set to tumble, such as the Vikings’ mark of 556 points for the season set in 1998. The Patriots needed only an uncoverted touchdown. Randy Moss needed one scoring reception to tie Jerry Rice’s season record of 22 and Brady was one touchdown pass shy of Peyton Manning’s season mark of 49, set by the Indianapolis Colt in 2004. Whatever happened, Brady was certain to command centre stage.

The subject of a multitude of magazine covers in the United States over the past several years, including Sports Illustrated when they awarded him their Sportsman of the Year title in 2005, Brady’s private life has become as newsworthy as his exploits on the field. “Men want to be him and women want to be with him,” his former teammate, Christian Fauria, declared famously, a reputation which survived even the break-up of his relationship with long-time girlfriend Bridget Moynahan, the actress, who was pregnant with their son at the time.

His partner now is supermodel Gisele Bundchen, the former girlfriend of actor Leonardo DiCaprio, a love triangle which has recently preoccupied gossip columnists after the magazine In Touch Weekly reported that DiCaprio had split from Israeli model Bar Refaeli. “Leo now realises what a mistake he made by not marrying Gisele,” a friend of DiCaprio’s revealed to the magazine. “He knows she’s with Tom, so if he can’t have her as a girlfriend, he wants her as a friend.” But Brady was allegedly upset that DiCaprio was back in Gisele’s life, despite her reassurances that the relationship is just platonic. DiCaprio and Gisele split in 2005, and he reportedly told fellow actor and close friend Tobey Maguire that he regretted losing her because he was afraid of marriage. “Tom is not happy at all that Gisele and Leo are friends again,” the friend added cryptically.

Whatever the reality of his love life, Brady has not allowed him or the team to be distracted from an historic season. It began with the ignominious entrapment of their coach, Bill Belichick, when the Patriots were discovered to be illegally filming defensive signals from the New York Jets’ bench. The team’s response has been perfect. “We’re slumping in our numbers recently, a negative trend, and that’s never good,” Brady said tongue-in-cheek. “You just try to be as efficient as you can and we’ve been winning games, so you always look at those. I’m not a big statistics guy. I evaluate each play. ‘What could I have done? What could I have done better?’ I always feel I try to play very consistently and the team really can depend on me to be a consistent player. I hope that continues. I’d really love for us to be playing our best football come January. Hopefully, we can put our best out there when it matters most.”

There has never been much doubt about Brady putting his best out there when it matters. When Drew Bledsoe, then the starting quarterback for the Patriots, was seriously injured during the second game of the 2001 season, Brady stepped in and never lost his place. He led his team to Super Bowl XXXVI at the Superdome in New Orleans, where they defeated the strongly-fancied St Louis Rams 20-17, Adam Vinatieri converting the game-winning 48-yard field goal as time expired.

David Halberstam’s best-selling profile of Belichick, The Education of a Coach, recalled Brady’s development through that first season.

“You could win with Brady and he was getting better by the week,” Halberstam wrote. “It was all happening very fast. Others saw it, too, his cognitive abilities, the way he would go to his third and sometimes fourth receiver, the way he knew how to take what the defence left them and not to try to reach and take too much. The name Montana was now being said in the same sentence with Brady’s on occasion.

The knowledge he had got from the film and the playbook, all that hard work, had become so much a part of him that the comparison seemed valid; he might not have Montana’s sheer natural ability . . . but he had driven himself so hard that superior preparation and superior instincts now were blending together; he saw a lot and he saw it quickly. Brady, [former 49ers’ head coach] Bill Walsh decided, was more like Montana than any other quarterback he had seen since Montana retired.”

All the way to Super Bowl XLII in Arizona, Brady will be walking in the footsteps of his idol.

In a league of their own: unbeaten runs in sport

The New England Patriots are on the brink of a perfect record in the NFL regular season. Others have also made their mark with unbeaten runs

ARSENAL 2003-4 Arsenal went through the league season without losing a game and when they travelled to Old Trafford on Sunday, October 24, 2004, they were seeking to extend their unbeaten run to 50 games. But Manchester United won 2-0.

LA LAKERS 1971-72 The Lakers strung together a record 33-game winning streak under coach of the year Bill Sharman to secure their first championship in Los Angeles after moving from Minneapolis in 1960. The run came to an end in January 1972 when they were beaten 120-104 by Milwaukee Bucks.

AUSTRALIA TEST TEAM 1999-2001 Under skipper Steve Waugh, Australia won a record 16 successive cricket Tests from October 1999 to February 2001 before they lost to India by 171 runs in Calcutta. Ricky Ponting’s team are in the midst of another unbeaten run with 15 consecutive victories after their win against India yesterday.

SPRINGBOKS 1997-98 Between 1997 and 1998, South Africa went on a record-winning streak of 17 consecutive rugby union Tests. The run was brought to an end by England at Twickenham.

NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS 2003-4 Patriots cornerback Ty Law took an interception 65 yards for a touchdown with three minutes left to seal a 38-30 win over the Tennessee Titans that sparked an NFL-record run of 21 games and stretched into the next season. They finally lost 34-20 to the Pittsburgh Steelers.

MIAMI DOLPHINS 1972-73 The Dolphins became the first team to go through an entire regular season in the Super Bowl era with a perfect 14-0 win-loss record. They then won two playoff games before beating the Washington Redskins 14-7 in Super Bowl VII in the Los Angeles Coliseum. The run came to an end at 18 games when the Dolphins lost 12-7 against the Oakland Raiders in the second game of the following season. Not that it hindered them much; they thrashed the Minnesota Vikings 24-7 in the 1974 Super Bowl, having lost only one more game for the rest of the season.

ED MOSES 1977-87 The master over 400m hurdles, Moses went undefeated in 122 races between August 1977 and June 1987, winning the Olympic title in Los Angeles on the way. He was finally beaten by fellow American Danny Harris in Madrid. He lost only six times in a 12-year career

ROGER FEDERER 2006-7 The world’s top tennis player enjoys unbeaten runs. In April 2005, Richard Gasquet ended a 25-match unbeaten sequence, then the longest in men’s tennis since 1984. After losing to Andy Murray in August 2006, Federer embarked on a 41-match run that included victory in the Australian Open. However, in March 2007, the run came to an end when he was beaten by Guillermo Canas in the second round of the Indian Wells Masters.

JAHANGIR KHAN 1981-86 There are unbeaten runs, and there are unbeaten runs. Jahangir Khan was untouchable in the world of squash from 1981 until he lost to Ross Norman in the final of the World Open more than five years and 555 matches later. In 1982, he won the International Squash Players Association Championship without losing a single point. He won six world titles and 10 British Opens.