"Tom Brady will be a bum in short order" - Max Kellerman's take on Buccaneers QB continues to get worse with each passing season 

Tom Brady continues to defy Max Kellerman's 2016 cold take that the No. 12 would "fall off a cliff" and be "a bum in short order."

Six years ago, Kellerman said on First Take:

"Tom Brady’s just about done... It could be his next game he plays. It could be a year from now. But, he is going to fall off a cliff. Tom Brady is going to be a bum in short water.”

Kellerman's declaration immediately froze over considering the New England Patriots' 2016 Super Bowl season, but it has continued to age poorly in the years that would follow.

In 2017, Brady led the Patriots back to the Super Bowl with another AFC Championship-winning campaign. Still, New England would fall to Nick Foles and the Philadelphia Eagles in an upset on par with Eli Manning's Giants.

2018 saw a third straight trip to the Super Bowl, with Bill Belichick's defense having its finest performance to date during the championship game against the Los Angeles Rams (the Patriots gave up a single field goal). They shut down Jared Goff and Todd Gurley en route to the sixth title of the Belichick-Brady era.

The 2019 season was closest to what Kellerman predicted six years ago. Brady finished the season with a combined completion percentage of just 60.5 percent while throwing for 4,266 yards, 28 touchdowns, and nine interceptions, and his 52.1 passer rating while under pressure was by far his worst since 2014's 53.4 rating.

Brady's Patriots were knocked out in the Wild Card round by the Tennessee Titans, and his relationship with Belichick was eroding to the point where the partnership had to end.

With the COVID-19 pandemic unleashed on the world, and Brady choosing the lowly Tampa Bay Buccaneers in free agency, it appeared that the No. 12 was finally falling off the cliff Kellerman had mentioned.

Tom Brady's time in Tampa clinches Max Kellerman's take as freezing

What Tom Brady has accomplished with the Buccaneers has been nothing short of miraculous. In his debut season, during the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Brady threw for the second-highest touchdown total of his career while going for over 4,600 passing yards for just the fifth time in his two-decade-long career.

But it got even better last season.

Brady eclipsed 5,300 passing yards for the first time and added three more touchdowns than he did in his Super Bowl season the previous year. With Julio Jones and Russell Gage now in tow, who knows if we've even seen Brady's best yet.

TB12 made sure to tag Max Kellerman on Twitter and "ratio" him for saying what he did six years ago. Kellerman's response ("You've only won 3 Super Bowls since then, calm down") couldn't undo his admission in 2020 ("I was wrong, Tom Brady never fell off a cliff"), but it's doubtful the ESPN host wants his words ever to leave the limelight.

At the very least, Brady seems hellbent on making sure it never does.