Tom Brady won six Super Bowls, four Super Bowl MVPs, three league MVP awards, and was named to not one, but TWO NFL all-decade teams in his time as quarterback of the New England Patriots. Yet people in the media act as if he’s one of us: capable of sin and prone to fallacy.
The man gets no respect. Not from WEEI, not from NESN, not from The Boston Globe, certainly not from NBC Sports Boston, ESPN, NFL Network, or The Ringer.
Just last week, my WEEI.com cohort Andy Hart got the cyber tar-and-feathering he deserved when he called Brady a diva. Completely inaccurate and borderline unacceptable.
Let’s start with Brady’s internet Facebook show, Tom vs Time. Brady successfully released the series WHILE the Patriots were making a playoff run and even preparing for a Super Bowl. No one in the media ever talks about how difficult that must’ve been. Most people can’t even balance work, family, a social life, separating their lights and darks, and managing ingrown toenails.
Yet another reason why Brady is the GOAT.
Need another?
How about when Brady decided to join the Tampa Bay Buccaneers?
The Bucs were the most losing franchise in NFL history prior to Brady’s arrival. They’d missed on every draft pick for years. They were coming off a year in which their quarterback threw 30 interceptions and the team went 3-5 in one-score games en route to a 7-9 record. They finished last in rushing defense DVOA two years in a row. Defensive coordinator Todd Bowles failed miserably at developing young talent in the defensive backfield. The Bucs were reeling.
No one talks about how difficult that decision must’ve been for Brady. To uproot one’s family, move into the home of a former New York Yankee, and throw the ball to inexperienced receivers who have never won anything like Mike Evans and Chris Godwin behind only the worst offensive line in the NFL must’ve weighed on Brady. Yet he made the decision with the kind of decisiveness you and I can only dream of.
Now Brady knows how Kevin Durant felt when Durant joined the Warriors instead of the Celtics.
Not convinced?
How about when Brady perfectly positioned a “Make America Great Again” hat in his locker in 2015? It was the perfect entry for Brady into the political endorsement world. The hat was positioned so perfectly that the cameras couldn’t miss it. Peyton Manning would have literally put it backwards. Aaron Rodgers wouldn’t have put it there at all. Only Brady nails that frame.
But even more impressive was Brady’s exit from the political endorsement game, a magician-esque escape that had Houdini turning in his grave. Like a hitch route against a zone defense on 3rd and 10, Brady’s exit from the political realm was synchronized with when the candidate he endorsed started oppressing minority groups’ civil rights. This way Brady did not have to speak about the subject any further, like finishing a long drive with a game-winning touchdown as time expired.
Those are just three examples of countless times Brady went above and beyond the human condition. As someone who once did the written word version of a sponge bath-back massage to Brady in The Boston Globe, I am a bit of an academic on the subject. That’s why my knee jerk reaction to Hart calling Brady a diva prompted me to copy-and-paste the exact same reply all my internet friends did so they’d see I was saying the same thing they all said:
A diva who won you six Super Bowls?!?
But let’s pretend for a second Tom Brady IS a diva, which he is not. Would it be a bad thing? Would it matter? Probably not. I’d still love and appreciate all the memories he gave me. I’d still always associate Brady with storming the quad at UMass-Amherst twice in celebration of Super Bowl wins, witnessing six, knowing nothing but winning my whole life, falling in love with the game of football, freezing my extremities off at parades, and writing triggering columns to push the buttons of one of the most fragile fanbases in American sports.
I’d understand that Brady’s best product is himself and in a capitalistic world he’d be dumb to not market himself.
I’d understand that Brady is at the absolute pinnacle of sports and that someone on his production team clicking “send” on an episode of a documentary doesn’t get in the way of his game preparation.
I’d understand that an aging Brady determined he had to leave the Patriots to have a chance at winning because the team was in shambles from a talent standpoint, and signing with a team with a stacked roster that was truly a decent quarterback away from Super Bowl contention was the best move for him.
I’d understand that Brady is not perfect and that he’s made miscalculations. That he was raised a certain way and in a different place than me and therefore may have different political leanings than I. That even though I can sit here from a couch in a crappy but well-kept apartment typing my words and say what I’d do if I had Brady’s platform, I do not have that platform or level of fame and have no idea what that would do to me.
I’d understand that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had a top-five offensive line, finished FIRST in rushing defense DVOA two years in row, had hit on nearly every first, second, and third round draft pick since 2017, and that Todd Bowles coached the young defensive backs from joes to pros in 2019.
(Were the exact opposites of all of the above points stated earlier in this column? My bad.)
I’d understand that media members, teammates, and assistant coaches who advanced their own careers through their own talent and hard work probably acknowledge that their proximity to the success of the Brady-Belichick Patriots also contributed. They’d probably still appreciate Brady as well, despite some diva qualities.
But of course none of that applies, since Brady is an infallible god incapable of error.
I just wish more in the media would understand that.
I have a word for you self-proclaimed connoisseurs of the written word: Respect. R-E-S-P-SVEE-T.
