What's with the backlash against Tom Brady for selling his TB12 immunity supplement "Protect"? This is America, right? If you hate him for this, you hate our country.
It's the perfect timing to sell it, and the product is not even immoral. Boosting your immune system is a perfectly reasonable idea right now. The CDC website flat states that Covid-19 preys on those with immune deficiencies.
Brady believes his potion of Vitamin C, larch tree extract and elderberry can help boost your body's general protection, and he's passing on what he believes are his keys to good health to his believers. Sounds totally reasonable to me.
But Brady Derangement Syndrome is out of control. The Boston Globe's Ben Volin called Brady's marketing of this product "gross" and "disgusting" on my Saturday radio show on WEEI, going so far as to compare Brady to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Volin's Globe partner Dan Shaugnessy called the product hawking "wartime profiteering, odious, and repugnant."
And yet I'm the one who gets called Comrade Ken on The Greg Hill Show, communism-shamed by my colleagues. I love America, and this is pure Americana.
- Now, the Brady nine-part documentary 'The Man in the Arena' announcement about five minutes after 'The Last Dance' wrapped up? Gross, disgusting, odious and repugnant.
- Speaking of Brady, his star power helped push the charity golf match with Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Peyton Manning to record cable golf ratings, attracting 5.8 million viewers. They tapped into what will be the key to post-Pandemic sports in America: star-driven, engaged athletes with an eye on pure entertainment.
Every sport should be considering pushing their currently benched athletes to engage in similar crossover events right now, complete with mic'd up access. If Steph Curry and Mike Trout can't golf, let's see them compete in tennis, or poker, or Ultimate Gladiators, or any-freaking-thing. The stage is wide open, fellas.
- And the stage is open thanks to baseball blowing it. They should be playing right now. Instead, it's another day, another story about baseball players unhappy with the MLB financial plan. Hey baseball players, shut up about finances. Shut up about finances. Shut Up about finances. Shut up About finances. Shut up about Finances. SHUT UP ABOUT FINANCES.
- Jeff Howe of The Athletic wrote again Tuesday that Jarrett Stidham "had a really good training camp [in 2019] and was incomparably better than Jimmy Garoppolo as a rookie." The pro-Stidham spin from some in the local media is escalating to incredible levels. By the time football returns Howe will be describing Brady as an over-the-hill system QB who was standing in the way of the next Goat.
- And speaking of team honks, how about our own Nick 'Fitzy' Stevens who said Monday on WEEI that the Pats are currently better than the team that took the field against Tennessee in the AFC Divisional playoffs.
Fitzy's latest assessment: "How great was Brady in the second half of the 2019 season? He wasn't that good. Who was the starting center last season? David Andrews is back. The line is good [now]. They got faster on defense. Special teams…"
First off, the offensive line is mostly the same group back from last year and it wasn't a good unit; rather, it was a major reason Brady's numbers declined in said second half. God's Gift to offensive line coaches Donte Scarnecchia is now gone and we have no idea if Andrews' health condition will allow him to play. This year's O-line could very well be terrible.
Also, it's amazing how insignificant Jamie Collins and Kyle Van Noy are now that they are gone from New England.
To say the Pats are a better team right now is so ridiculous I actually have to respect it in all its' hot takeness.
- Fitzy also tried to diminish Brady's status as an American icon on our Saturday show, suggesting Tiger, David Ortiz and Bo Jackson are ahead of him in the pecking order behind Michael Jordan at the top of the Icon heap. Keep in mind one of Fitzy's children is named 'Thomas' after Brady, and now Fitzy is spinning the Brady-is-no-longer-an-all-time-icon take. Again, so ridiculous it deserves respect.
- I'm on the record as saying Brady mentally quit on the team last year, and his pre-planned package deal to go with Gronk to Tampa was indeed sleazy. That said, things never had to escalate to that point. Years from now there will be comparisons made of Robert Kraft & Bill Belichick to Jerry Reinsdorf and Jerry Krause, and they won't be wrong. Jordan described it as "maddening" that he didn't get to go for a seventh title with the Bulls, and that'll be a fair word to describe life without Brady in New England in 2020 and 2021.
- Kudos to the NHL for getting an actual Return to Play plan done, but having the top-four seeds playing a three-game round robin for seeding is dumb. The Bruins played 70 games and garnered an 8-point edge over second-place Tampa Bay to rightfully earn the top seed. Why are we overcomplicating this? Seeding the top four and letting them await the play-in winners would have been the obvious right call.
-With the NHL regular season officially declared over, Bruins' forward David Pastrnak will be a co-winner of the Rocket Richard trophy for most goals in the league. Pasta's 48-goals tied Alex Ovechkin for the award, and in hindsight giving up an empty-net goal for Patrice Bergeron's 1000th game in February cost him the sole spotlight. But it's that unselfishness that helped make this year's Bruins great to watch, and will keep them great to watch when a Stanley Cup run begins in late summer.
