Has this been Brady's most valuable season?

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. - Of all the names Tom Brady was called this week, the one he probably liked the most was "dork."

And it came not from the Jets' locker room but from his own teammate: wide receiver Deion Branch, who has caught more passes thrown by Brady than anyone else on the Patriots' roster. When it comes to studying tape, preparing for games and taking notes in meetings, Branch said, "Tom is a dork."

"I could see that," Brady nodded when told of Branch's assessment. "I'm flattered."

That would make Brady, hands down, the league's MVD. As it is, he'll likely win his second MVP award this season. The last time he won that was in 2007, when the Patriots went 16-0 and he threw an NFL-record 50 touchdown passes. This year? Well, the number of scoring passes and wins may have dropped a bit - he had a league-high 36 of them for a 14-2 team - but to some it has been his best season.

Maybe even the best season ever . . . by anyone?

"The ability to adjust to a completely different offense in the course of a season is something I've never seen a quarterback have to do," former quarterback and now ESPN analyst Trent Dilfer said. "Obviously, if I've never seen anybody have to do it, I can't compare it to whether anybody has done it this well before. It blows my mind what he's been able to accomplish this year as this offense has morphed into something completely different than it was in the first five, six games of the season."

The big change came in early October when the Patriots traded Randy Moss, a move that many took to be Bill Belichick tossing in the towel and stockpiling draft picks for a rebuild. Instead, the Pats' offense got better. More efficient. More difficult to defend. And it was Brady who was able to control it all.

"The biggest thing I've seen with Tom this year is his brilliance in knowing where everybody is in a very complex system formationally," said Dilfer, who noted that the Pats used 26 different personnel groupings in 33 plays in their 45-3 win over the Jets. "To know where everybody is, everybody's responsibilities and all the different protections and adjustments that go with it, all the run-game responsibilities, is probably as great a burden on a quarterback as I've ever seen, and he's done it all . . . It's very hard to articulate how brilliant this year has been."

Rather than grasp for inadequate superlatives, perhaps it's easier to just consider this: To really see how great Brady has been, you have to go back to Oct. 17, 2010, on the last play of regulation in a game that ended with the Patriots beating the Ravens, 23-20, in overtime.

With four seconds left, Brady chucked the ball halfway down the field and into the end zone, where it was intercepted by Ken Hamlin.

He's the last opponent to catch a Brady pass. Three months. Eleven games. A total of 355 pass attempts. Zero interceptions.

Which makes for a better season, 50 TD passes or going that long without a pick? "Probably the one without interceptions," the Jets' Darrelle Revis said. "That's kind of hard to do in this league, and he's doing it like a piece of cake."

Another reason why this likely is Brady's best season is the cast around him. Not only did he have Moss catching 23 touchdown passes in 2007, but Brady at that point still was a comparative youngster. It wasn't his team. Tedy Bruschi, Rodney Harrison and Mike Vrabel were the leaders. Now, with all of those veterans gone, Brady has taken on a bigger role in the locker room.

"He's always been the same guy that he was in '02, except he had to establish his leadership role," said Branch, looking back to when he first teamed with Brady and comparing him to when they were reunited this season. "It has to be a little more dominant now versus when I came in in '02. We had so many veteran guys on the team that it's a little different now."

Said Brady: "Naturally, as you get older, you have more of a vocal role on the team. As I've been elected as a captain, I have more of a voice for the team, which I really take seriously."

And then there's the preparation. The dorky preparation that Rex Ryan called into question before the Jets were even sure they'd be playing the Patriots. "I do what my coach asks me to do and however he feels I need to prepare, he will let me know," Brady said. "Look, we try to win games, you know? Look at what we've accomplished over 10 years and that speaks for the whole preparation of our team. That's why we play. We play to win games, more so than anything else."

Well, there is one other thing. Four little words that may have summed up Brady's season better than any four ever spoken about the future Hall of Famer.

"Tom strives for perfection," Bill Belichick said.

His first MVP season nearly was perfect, on several levels. His second is even closer.