While the Patriots are not in the Super Bowl this year, they have still been in the news a great deal this week, especially Tom Brady.
It will continue over the weekend with the "The Great Brady Heist," which debuts Saturday night on FOX at 7 p.m. before the NFL Honors show. It is a 52-minute documentary that details the theft of Brady's Super Bowl LI jersey and how it was recovered. It is produced by NFL Films in association with Gotham Chopra's Religion of Sports.
The film is a much-watch for Patriots fans, as it details the timeline from the end of the game to when the jersey was ultimately recovered in Mexico and all the twists and turns along the way. Of course, everyone knows by now it was stolen by Mauricio Ortega, the editor of La Prensa, a medium-size daily in Mexico City, who had a media credential for the game.
Brady himself is interviewed extensively throughout the piece where he said generally he doesn't like to keep jerseys, rather game balls, but this was different because the game meant so much to him with everything that was going on at the time with his mother.
It was the first game she was able to attend all year following battling breast cancer for most of that 2016 season.
"I knew I wanted to keep that (Super Bowl) LI jersey because of everything that it meant for my family. I thought this would just be a really good one to keep," he said. "I really wanted that jersey."
The quarterback almost immediately knew it was stolen because he placed it in his bag upon getting into the locker room and then when he got to his locker after showering the jersey was gone. Brady and the Patriots almost immediately filed a report with the Houston Police Department and the investigation was on.
FOX Sports (because of all the footage they had from airing the game), NFL security, Patriots security, Houston police, and even the FBI worked the case.
"I got a call from the FBI and I was like, 'This is really serious,'" Brady said.
The investigation revealed that Brady's Super Bowl XLIX jersey was also stolen and how it played a key role in recovering the Super Bowl LI jersey through a memorabilia collector, who was actually a Patriots fan.
It truly is fascinating to see how it all played out, including Ortega actually taking a selfie with Brady inside the Patriots locker room before the jersey is taken.
At the end of the film, Ortega is interviewed in his home, which shows all the memorabilia he's collected over the years, which includes numerous photos taken with athletes. He describes his actions as an "addiction" that grew over the years.
"I regret it very much," Ortega said.
Ultimately, no charges were filed by the Patriots and Brady, and the quarterback accepted Ortega's apology.
So, while the Patriots will not be playing in The Big Game this year, the documentary relives the Super Bowl LI victory and then displays a captivating account of Brady's jersey being stolen and recovered.
