Think Tom Brady is an ironman? George Blanda was still playing at 48

Tom Brady, the 45-year-old Tampa Bay quarterback who is often said to be ageless, has smashed nearly every NFL record that he can – one notable exception is held by an ageless predecessor, a grizzled quarterback and kicker who finally stopped playing because his team cut him.

George Frederick Blanda was of Slovak heritage, and his dad was a Pittsburgh coal miner. He played his final NFL game on 4 January 1976, at the age of 48 years, 109 days, a record that still stands. Blanda intended to keep playing, but he was not in the Oakland Raiders’ plans.

“After 26 years in this business, I guess I can come to grips with the facts of life. I just wish they’d said something,” Blanda grumbled to reporters after the Raiders let him go.

Brady has been compared with Blanda lately because the seven-time Super Bowl champion has all but run out of things to accomplish. The exception is the NFL’s longevity record – something in which Blanda, who died at 83 in 2010, apparently took a lot of pride.

“He wasn’t a bad guy. He just didn’t suffer fools,” says Frank Cooney, a veteran sports writer who covered Blanda and the Raiders for the San Francisco Examiner.

Cooney was one of the reporters to whom Blanda gave an interview after he was cut. There were conditions: the reporters had to help him load his car first. There would be no news conference, no farewell tour. Most of Blanda’s answers were only two or three words, anyway.

“He had his more endearing moments – but not often,” Cooney says.

Ron Borges, then a 23-year-old in his first season on the Raiders beat for the Sacramento Union, now says, “We were 25 years and a worldview apart, but I had a lot of respect for his toughness and the fact that there was no situation in a football game