I understand exactly what the tweet is saying. It's saying that Manning and Mahomes' numbers were propped up in part because they played with better playmakers than Brady, and regardless of how we classify Troy Brown in 2001, the sentiment is 100% true. I don't like that we have to hang our hats on it, because it's an odd attempt to explain away the fact that Mahomes/Manning had solidly better stats, even if we try to account for differences in environment (both indoor vs outdoor and early 2000s vs the current era). Any argument based on statistical performance for the first few years of their careers will go poorly for Brady compared with the other two guys, regardless of who he played with. His argument for being in the discussion based on the first part of his career is largely based on the success of the Patriots as a whole, and how Brady played in the biggest games (and Brown had huge catches on the super bowl winning drives in both 36 and 38, without which Brady's legacy might not be the same).
Rather than making insulting comparisons of Brown with the likes of true specialists like Hester or Lewis (or Jones, at least for now), we can simply recognize that Troy Brown deserves a decent amount of credit for Brady's early success. His performance in 2001 is as key to Brady's legacy as any individual season of Harrison or Wayne are to Manning's legacy, or any individual season of Kelce or Hill are to Mahomes' legacy. If we acknowledge that Brady played with a single all-pro in his first 6 seasons (compared with the multiple all-pro seasons from Mahomes' and Manning's receivers) it would be equally impressive, without shitting on the best offensive player of the first super bowl team.
