The GOAT’s a Hog. Still, I Want Tom Brady to Win.
In the Super Bowl,
Americans need a show of superheroic strength.
By Frank Bruni
Opinion
Columnist
- Feb.
3, 2021
If you’re a fan of any team in the
National Football League other than the New England Patriots, you spent much of
the past two decades hating the quarterback Tom Brady, by which I really mean
fearing and resenting Tom Brady, because he and the Pats won so damned much
that they were bound to throttle your team at some point, probably on their way
to yet another Super Bowl appearance
and victory. It just wasn’t fair.
My team, the Denver Broncos, actually
beat him and
the Pats en route to a Super Bowl win five years ago. But since then, the
Broncos haven’t even made the playoffs, while Brady and the Pats competed in
three Super Bowls and won two of them.
By the time Brady left
the Pats at
the end of the 2019 season, he had led the team to nine Super Bowl appearances
and six wins in all. No other quarterback in the history of football comes
anywhere close to those numbers. He’s a superstar in a galaxy all his own.
Now he’s back in the
Super Bowl — appearance
No. 10 — in his first season
with a different team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. At 43, he’ll be the oldest
starting quarterback to perform on his sport’s biggest stage, but then that was
true two years ago, when he made it to the Super Bowl (and won) at 41. Many
fans call him “the GOAT” (greatest of all time), but I’m thinking “the Hog”
makes as much sense, given his gluttony for glory. And I should be cheering to
the point of hoarseness this coming Sunday for the Kansas City Chiefs and their
young quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, 25, who has only
one Super Bowl victory so far.
But I’m not. To my own astonishment,
I’m rooting for Brady. Here’s why:
He has actually been disrespected, and victory
on Sunday would shame the naysayers forevermore.
Brady played his entire professional
career before this season under one coach, the brooding, brilliant, arrogant
Bill Belichick, whose reputation as a tactical genius raised questions about how much credit Brady,
versus Belichick, deserved for the Pats’ success over the two decades that the
two men were partnered.
Belichick was congratulated simply for
homing in on Brady, whom he picked in the sixth round of the 2000 draft,
after six
other quarterbacks had
already been claimed. It’s a gas to revisit their names, most of which you’ve
never heard of or won’t remember: Chad Pennington, Giovanni Carmazzi, Chris
Redman, Tee Martin, Marc Bulger and Spergon Wynn.
Because Brady didn’t swagger into the
N.F.L. swathed in promise, his emergence as a marquee quarterback was seen at
least in part as a feat of coaching and a function of the Pats’ system.
And his split with the Pats reflected
Belichick’s doubts about
Brady’s continued viability. When Brady then signed
with the Buccaneers for
the 2020 season, many observers expected the Pats, not the Bucs, to have a
winning record and a decent playoff run.
Oops. Without Brady,
Belichick and the Pats went 7-9 and didn’t make the playoffs, for the first time since 2008, when an injury took Brady off
the field.
Without Belichick, Brady made the playoffs for the 12th consecutive season —
but with the Bucs, which hadn’t done so since
2007.
He’s a testament not merely to personal
excellence but also to a culture of excellence.
The Bucs finished the season before
this one with a 7-9 record. To get to the Super Bowl this year, they went 11-5
and then 3-0 in the playoffs.
What changed? Not all that much, apart
from Brady’s arrival. But while he played almost as well as he ever had, his
individual performance didn’t adequately explain the Bucs’ reversal of fortune,
not when you consider that he
threw three interceptions in the National Football Conference championship
against the Green Bay Packers a week and a half ago and the Bucs still won.
The example that Brady set — and the
inspiration that he provided — made the difference. With him, the Bucs
discovered new purpose. They demanded more of themselves than in the past. The
lessons of that apply far beyond football.
The game itself has always mattered most to
him.
Don’t get me wrong. Brady obviously
enjoys his fame, takes ample advantage of it and tends fastidiously to his
personal brand. He’s rich beyond almost anyone’s dreams. And he’s no angel. I
direct you to
Deflategate,
among other
bad behavior by
the Pats, and to the nearly $1 million that TB12, his health and
wellness company, took in Paycheck Protection Program loans less crucial for it
than for businesses with less affluent owners.
But he refrained
from holding
the Pats up for as much money as he could have because he wanted there to be
enough left over to field a team with strong players at every position. And
both on and off the field, he has exhibited grace. Two years ago, after Brady and the
Pats beat Mahomes and the Chiefs in the playoffs, Brady asked if he could stop by the Chiefs’ locker room to talk
with Mahomes and communicate his admiration.
And what you see in Brady’s smile, as
bright as when he threw his first N.F.L. pass, isn’t pride in his legacy but
sheer joy in the actual moment. He’s a powerful endorsement for following your
passion and doing what you love.
He doesn’t just cheat Father Time. He cackles
at him.
That’s how I
described his surreal stamina in
a column that
I wrote more than three years ago. He’s as potent now as then. So maybe I am
too? Brady’s continued dominance gives hope to current and future geezers the
world over.
He’s the work ethic made flesh.
Other quarterbacks have stronger arms.
Others have nimbler feet. But a greater devotion to reviewing and figuring out
how to improve every facet of their play? No one tops Brady at that.
He’s fanatical in his cultivation of
his best self, an ascetic on a
legendarily exacting diet and fitness regimen.
You want a meritocratic world in which the people with the fiercest commitment
come out on top? That’s what Brady models.
He proves that superheroes walk among us and
nothing is impossible.
In Brady’s seventh Super Bowl, the Pats
trailed the Atlanta Falcons 28-3 with just one and a half quarters to go. And
then, under Brady’s command, they staged the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history and won. Days
later, I was still scraping my jaw off the floor.
To get to this 10th Super Bowl, Brady
had to guide the Bucs to three consecutive playoff victories on the road, a
titanic challenge. He met it.
If he proceeds to lead the team to
victory on Sunday, it will be a kind of miracle.
I want to believe in miracles.
And at the end of my days, I want to
know and crow that I watched, in real time, an athlete of unrivaled majesty who
settled that fact at a juncture when America, brought low by its weaknesses,
needed a show of unimaginable strength.
I invite you to sign up for my free weekly email newsletter. You can follow me on Twitter
(@FrankBruni).
Frank Bruni has been with The Times since 1995
and held a variety of jobs — including White House reporter, Rome bureau chief
and chief restaurant critic — before becoming a columnist in 2011. He is the
author of three best-selling books. @FrankBruni • Facebook
