On Friday night, Tom Brady was in Foxborough ahead of the Patriots’ preseason opener for the unveiling of his 12-foot statue in Enel Plaza at the base of the Gillette Stadium lighthouse.
Thousands of fans were on hand to catch a glimpse of both the G.O.A.T. in-person as well as the G.O.A.T. in bronze, as Brady spoke for just over six minutes after the cloak came down on his monument for the first time.
And while most of us agree the jokes Brady was firing off were subpar at best, Patriots fans and media’s opinions on a letter grade for the statue have run the gamut since Friday evening.
Our own Meghan Ottolini gave the statue a B- in her column on Friday night, saying it could have been “more dynamic, or more iconic” while freely admitting she’s no art critic.
Mego’s letter grade gave me the idea of canvassing the good people of Patriots Nation for their grades, prompting me to post the question to the WEEI Facebook and Instagram feeds on Saturday morning in the caption of a photo of Brady with his family in front of the statue at the ceremony.
And as of publishing, it appears Mego is the voice of the people on this one.
After going through all 772 comments on Facebook and 150 comments on Instagram, Brady’s statue received an average score of 80.099, good for a B- overall.
Here’s how the voting shook out:
- A+ votes: 41
- A votes: 70
- A- votes: 14
- B+ votes: 32
- B votes: 59
- B- votes: 27
- C+ votes: 14
- C votes: 66
- C- votes: 48
- D+ votes: 3
- D votes: 39
- D- votes: 10
- F votes: 31
- Total votes as of publishing: 454
Both the Facebook and Instagram posts are still live, so feel free to head to our pages and weigh in!
For those wondering how the math worked on this, I assigned generally accepted number values to each letter grade that appeared in the comments: A+ was a 98, A was a 95, A- was a 90, B+ was an 88, B was an 85, B- was an 80, C+ was a 78, C was a 75, C- was a 70, D+ was a 68, D was a 65, D- was a 60, and F was a 55. And if people submitted more than one grade in the same comment, I went with their higher mark.
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