Would you rather have a 41-year-old Tom Brady or a 30-year-old Matthew Stafford as your team’s quarterback?

The NFL is filled with “would you rather” situations. Every spring, teams pit players against each other when filling out their free agency wish lists. That continues at the draft, where prospects are pitted against each other over the course of three days and seven rounds. Then, as the preseason draws to a close, general managers and coaches team up for one more big round when they cut their rosters down from 90 candidates to 53 players for the upcoming year.

But what about the hypotheticals — the situations that couldn’t or wouldn’t come to fruition in real life? Like, say, would you rather have Deshaun Watson for five years where the fates have doomed him to miss at least 40 games due to injury or Mitchell Trubisky, but he’s stuck with the rest of the Bears’ 2017 offense over that span?

Or would you accept a deal that gave your team a top-ranked defense next fall, but also made Brock Osweiler your starting quarterback for all 16 games of the regular season?

It’s a simpler concept than the ones posited above. Would you rather have a 41-year-old Brady as your franchise quarterback — for the 2018 season and into the future — or 30-year-old Stafford? For simplicity, let’s say they’re locked in to their 2018 paychecks indefinitely until they retire. That’s a $22 million cap hit for Brady and a $26.5 million hit for Stafford. With that in mind, which passer would you pick to helm your team, assuming you’ve got a league-average supporting cast and league-average coach?

The case for: nine years of Matthew Stafford

Stafford and Brady are clearly on different planes. Brady’s ability to win AFC East and occasional Super Bowl titles with lackluster receiving corps far outweighs Stafford’s 0-3 postseason record despite spending seven years with human cheat code Calvin Johnson at wideout. But the debate here isn’t Brady vs. Stafford in terms of their resume or even just for next year; it’s for the rest of their careers. Even if Brady hits his stated goal of playing to age 45, that’s only five more seasons of waiting-to-regress play.

Stafford, on the other hand, is 30 years old this season and has avoided catastrophic injury the past seven years. It’s reasonable to expect he’ll play another eight years or possibly more. That’s important, even if his higher salary leaves a little less building room around him.

Stafford is a capable signal caller who has made the most of his time with Detroit, at least in the regular season. He emerged as a bonafide MVP candidate in 2016 before a torn ligament in his throwing hand sapped his accuracy and led to an 0-4 finish for the team. He was better last fall even as his usage rate dropped slightly, leading to a 29:10 touchdown-to-interception ratio, an efficient 7.9 yards per pass, and a career-best 99.3 passer rating (sixth in the NFL).

And like Brady, he’s reliable when his team needs him the most. Stafford is responsible for 20 game-winning drives in his last four seasons, including eight in 2016. That means his late-game heroics were the catalyst behind 89 percent of his team’s win total that season. Brady, over the same span, produced 13 fourth quarter, game-winning drives — though four of those game in the postseason.

Stafford isn’t Brady, but he’s the best quarterback the Lions have seen since Bobby Layne. Even his modest team success in the playoff black hole of Detroit has to be viewed as an accomplishment. Give me a decade of that stability with a little room to grow vs. three guaranteed playoff appearances from Brady. In this case, “very good” finds a way to outweigh “great.” — Christian D’Andrea

The case for: (maybe?) three years of Tom Brady

Let me just preface this by saying that I think Matthew Stafford is a perfectly fine quarterback, even underrated. Any NFL team would be lucky to have him for the next decade. And at this point, Tom Brady is like our 90-year-old grandparent. Sure, he’s doing amazingly well for his age, but all it takes is one sudden turn and we’re reminded that as unlikely as it once seemed he, like all of us, is mortal.

But Brady is still the best quarterback the NFL has ever seen. Of course I would take three years of the GOAT — heck, I’d take one year of him, for bragging rights alone. There’s something undeniably cool about having a legend play for your team, even if he’s not at his peak anymore.

Make no mistake about it, though: Brady isn’t washed.

As soon as he turned 40, most of us thought we’d finally see a little bit of a decline in his play. No quarterback besides Warren Moon and Brett Favre has even looked competent past that age. Instead, Brady became the oldest MVP in major sports history and set a Super Bowl record with 505 passing yards (his approximately tramillionth Super Bowl record). The Patriots may have lost, but that was still their eight trip to the Super Bowl in Brady’s 17 seasons as starting quarterback. The only time they’ve missed out on the playoffs when Brady was healthy was all the way back in 2002 — and the only time he hasn’t been healthy was in 2008.

Brady continues to defy all reason. I’ve learned to stop expecting him to be anything but great. He’s determined to do what no one else has done before. If he truly wants to play until he’s 45, I believe he’s going to do it because he doesn’t half-ass anything except his Met Gala outfit.

So with Brady at quarterback for three years, that’s pretty much three years of cakewalking to the playoffs and Super Bowl contention. Maybe you’d have to put up with his sketchy trainer trying to Amway the rest of the team about his methods, but whatever. It’s a small price to pay for success. — Sarah Hardy