Trying to narrow down Tom Brady’s best year is like trying to settle on your favorite season of “The Wire.” There’s really no wrong answer, and you can come up with a great argument for just about any one of them.

It seems unlikely that Brady’s effort this year will be enough to take home a third MVP -- Aaron Rodgers’ performance has made sure of that -- but he should get some votes, as the Patriots again have one of the best offenses in the league, thanks in large part to the efforts of Brady. The quarterback has them in the Top 5 in every major passing category, and if New England can win its last two regular-season games, the Patriots will clinch the No. 1 seed and home-field advantage throughout the AFC playoffs.

Using a criteria based on overall statistical performance, late-game heroics, who he had in his supporting cast and overall intangibles, in this week’s edition of The Hot List, we look at how this season stacks up against some of his others:

5. 2001: His first year as a starter wins a place on this list not because of what he was able to do statistically (his 264 completions, 2,843 passing yards and 18 touchdown passes that season are all career lows for the quarterback), but for his penchant for late-game heroics. He produced five game-winning drives, including two in the postseason, on the way to his first Super Bowl title. Along the way, the legend of Brady was born. His finest game of the season, at least from a statistical standpoint, came in his first home start against the Chargers on Oct. 14. In an overtime win against San Diego (the contest where he conducted his first game-winning drive) he went 33-for-54 for 364 yards and two touchdowns. It ended with his first Super Bowl title.

4. 2011: It’s still in progress (he’s got two regular-season games remaining), but for what he’s done to this point, but still deserves a spot in his Top 5. After starting the year on fire -- he averaged 442 passing yards over the first three games -- he’s cooled off a bit, but with the help of wide receiver Wes Welker and tight end Rob Gronkowski (both of whom are on the way to career-best seasons), the quarterback is on the verge of breaking Dan Marino’s record for passing yards in a season, 5,084 yards. (Through 14 games, he has 4,593 yards -- 491 yards shy of the mark.) Statistically, his finest game to this point in the season came in the opener when he carved up the Dolphins, going 32-for-48 for a career-best 517 yards and four touchdowns, including a 99-yard scoring strike to Welker that got the 2011 campaign started with a bang. He won’t end up winning his third MVP this season, but this year’s numbers aren’t too far off his two other MVP seasons.

3. 2006: Not so much for what he was able to do statistically, but for what he was given to work with, this season deserves a spot in the Top 5. Brady and the Patriots made it all the way to the AFC Championship Game with a collection of receivers that included Reche Caldwell, Ben Watson, Doug Gabriel and Chad Jackson. (If Brady hadn’t thrown a pick on the final drive of the AFC Championship Game against the Colts, there’s the likelihood that they would have made it all the way to the Super Bowl.) It was a strange year statistically for Brady, who had his highs (in an Oct. 30 win over the Vikings in the Metrodome, the quarterback went 29-for-43 for 372 yards and four touchdowns) and his lows (he was an awful 12-for-25 for 78 yards and zero TDs in a December loss to the Dolphins in Miami), but overall, it was a season where he did more with less better than any time in his career. In the end, Brady had a 63 percent completion rating (319-for-516) to go along with 3,529 passing yards, 24 touchdown passes and 12 interceptions.

2. 2007: If you’re just looking at numbers, this was one of the best seasons of any quarterback in NFL history: Paired with Randy Moss, Brady led the league in completion percentage (69 percent), passing yards (4,806) and touchdown passes (50). He led a brutally efficient passing game that absolutely destroyed opposing defenses all season long on the way to a 16-0 regular-season record. The quarterback enjoyed several transcendent moments that year, but for sheer dramatics, nothing topped his performance in the regular-season finale against the Giants, when he was 32-for-42 for 356 yards and two touchdowns. His touchdown pass to Moss that set the record for most TD passes in a season (and allowed Moss to break the record for most TD catches in a season) is still imprinted in the minds of Patriots’ fans everywhere: a 65-yard rainbow down the sideline. (Although we’re also fond of Brady’s surgical work in the divisional playoffs against the Jags where he went 23-for-26 for 267 yards and four touchdowns.)

1. 2010: While the numbers associated with this season weren’t as gaudy as they were back in 2007, we gave his 2010 performance the top spot because of his amazing accuracy, as well as the fact that they changed many of the aspects of the passing game following the in-season trade of Moss and the re-acquisition of his old pal Deion Branch. In 492 pass attempts, Brady threw just four picks, and ended up with a 66 percent completion percentage and 36 touchdown passes to become the first unanimous MVP in the history of the league (his second MVP award). His five-game stretch from mid-November until mid-December should be placed under glass and studied by future generations: from the Nov. 14 game against the Steelers through a Dec. 12 win over the Bears, Brady went against some of the best defenses in the league and came away 118-for-164 with 1,572 passing yards, 15 touchdowns and no interceptions as New England won five straight. That works out to an average performance of 24-for-33 for 314 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions. His best effort in that stretch like came in the win at Pittsburgh, where he was 30-for-43 for 350 yards, three passing touchdowns and one rushing touchdown.