Comparisons are always dangerous, but sometimes they can be lethal. Being a quarterback compared to Joe Montana would seem to be in the latter category.

Tom Brady has played only four years in the National Football League and been the starting quarterback of the New England Patriots for the past three. During that brief time he has accomplished many things, as witnessed by the fact he has his team back in the Super Bowl for the second time in three years this week. But of all his accomplishments, perhaps none is more remarkable than hearing what Montana's old coach had to say about him this week.

"He's as close to Joe as anyone I've ever seen,'' former San Francisco 49ers coach Bill Walsh said between exercises to loosen up a bad back. "Plays that are tough for some quarterbacks are not tough for him. The word that comes to mind when I watch him play is ‘serene.’ There is a serenity to the way he plays.

"He is a very accurate passer. He throws a very catchable ball, a ball receivers can make plays with. But the most important thing is he makes great decisions. If he continues to have the success he's having, you'd have to rate him up there with Joe.''

Up there with Joe? Up there with a guy who won four Super Bowls, three Super Bowl MVPs and nearly as many league MVPs? Up there with a Hall of Fame quarterback who you could arguably say is the greatest ever to play his position? If such a statement is not the very definition of the tyranny of expectations, then what might be?

Perhaps so, but if Brady can lead the Patriots to a second Super Bowl victory in three years Sunday, he would have surpassed Montana's performance level at the same juncture of his career. Brady would have won more games and more Super Bowls in his first three years as a starting quarterback than Montana did in his first three seasons. Although Brady is aware of that on some level, the words still seemed to shock him when they were relayed to him.

"That's such a stretch because you're talking about arguably the greatest quarterback of all time,'' Brady said of the comparison after arriving in Houston on Sunday afternoon. "He's an unbelievable player with (three) Super Bowl MVPs, four Super Bowl rings. When Bill Walsh says that you kind of go, ‘Wow, really?’ Nah, I have a long way to go.''

Brady may have a ways to go to end up with the kind of winning numbers Montana posted, but he doesn't have much farther to go to bypass the early performances of Montana. All he must do, really, is go to Reliant Stadium on Sunday evening and help beat the Carolina Panthers to bring the Patriots their second Super Bowl title in three seasons.

If Brady does, it probably won't be because he posts record-breaking playoff game numbers, either. That is not what he is about. This season, for example, he failed to make the Pro Bowl team, losing to Peyton Manning, Steve McNair and Trent Green. All of them had superior numbers of passing yards, touchdowns and completions. Yet Sunday night they'll be doing what most of the rest of America is doing, including Montana.

They'll be watching Brady playing football with a championship on the line, which is perhaps the real sign of who he is fast becoming.

"Tom Brady is the greatest winner in football right now,'' said his teammate, Pro Bowl cornerback Ty Law. "Maybe his numbers aren't eye-popping, all those yards, all those touchdowns, but he knows how to win ballgames. What are the stats when you're sitting at home? I want to go out (and play) with Tom Brady because winning is the trump card.''

At 26, the former sixth-round draft pick has played that card about as well as one can. He is 39-12 as a starter, 5-0 in the playoffs, 7-0 in overtime games ... well, you get the idea. When it comes to winning Super Bowls, Montana may have few rivals (Terry Bradshaw being the one who comes to mind first), but he may have one growing on the horizon at the moment.

"Women want to be with him, and men want to be him,'' Patriots' tight end Christian Fauria said of Brady. "We're not jealous of him. We just want his life. Just for one day. Everybody wants to be Tom Brady.''

Roughly 20 years ago, everybody wanted to be Montana. He was the cover boy on TIME magazine, the MVP of the Super Bowl, the toast of the town in San Francisco. He went on to become the winningest big-game quarterback in history, a prolific passer and a man destined for the Hall of Fame from the minute he retired. He was a player who won with guile and a sharp mind more than with pure arm strength.

Some might argue he was the product of a system, Walsh's system, and perhaps he was. The same is being said of Brady and the hybrid West Coast offense favored by Patriots' offensive coordinator Charlie Weis.

Maybe they are kindred spirits even in that.

Now Brady has come out of the Bay Area as a seeming clone of Montana's cerebral game. Brady has not been blessed with the greatest arm in the world and neither was Montana, but the one they were given was and is deadly accurate and always under control. Brady is like Montana in his ability to process information and reach the right conclusion rapidly, leaving defenses gasping at what just happened to them and wondering why they can't stop it.

So if this guy is so close to becoming the reincarnation of Joe Montana, how did he end up being the 199th player drafted when he came out of Michigan four years back? Funny you should ask, because it beats Bill Walsh.

"Scouts aren't always right,'' Walsh said. "We had him in here (for a workout) and our people didn't like him. I wish they had. Someone in New England saw something a lot of people didn't.''

When Brady first arrived in New England what they saw was a skinny kid with a below average arm and an above average mind. Within a year he had physically improved himself in the weight room and mentally improved himself in the film room. He was ready to challenge then-starting quarterback Drew Bledsoe after becoming the team's second-string signal caller in just his second year on the roster.

When disaster struck three games into the 2001 season and Bledsoe was seriously injured and lost for eight weeks, Brady took over to a cacophony of gloom and doom. By the time Bledsoe was healthy, he understood how Wally Pipp felt after Lou Gehrig had been handed his position because he had a headache.

"I don't think it was any one moment or any one play that did it for him,'' coach Bill Belichick said of Brady's ascension. "It was a progression. I think it was a lot of hard work in the weight room and the film room and execution on the practice field.''

And then it was execution on the playing field in such a way that executed his opponents. In his first year as a starter, Brady completed 63.9 percent of his passes to 63.7 for Montana in his first Super Bowl season. Both had 12 interceptions while Montana threw for 19 touchdowns to Brady's 18. Both won the Super Bowl MVP in their first appearance and now Brady has a chance to do it a second time, a year sooner than Montana.

So what to make of all this? Is Tom Brady really the next Joe Montana? Is he even superior if he grabs another Super Bowl trophy on Sunday from the clutches of the Carolina Panthers?

Who can say? Walsh can (and has), but who else is qualified to make such a statement? Even Walsh, in fact, couched his praise by saying Brady had much more to accomplish before a long-term comparison with Montana would be valid and perhaps he's right but for three seasons now, Tom Brady has played quarterback as well and as effectively as the best quarterback who ever played. No one can argue otherwise. At least not until Monday morning.