There was a little flurry of non-blizzard excitement over the weekend when word seeped out that Tom Brady was hanging up his cleats and retiring after 22 seasons in the NFL, 20 of them with the local franchise, the New England Patriots.
I grew up watching a lot of football.
Baseball was the sport I always loved best - thanks, Dad! - but I also enjoyed football, and can follow it intelligently. (Thanks, Dad!) I regularly went to Holy Cross games, and every fall Sunday, would watch "our" team: the New York (Football) Giants. They were the local team for New England back in the days before the AFL and the advent of the Patriots. Giants games were televised weekly, and that's who we rooted for. Even after the Patriots were founded, in 1960, they - and the American Football League - were consisdered something of a joke. The players were all NFL rejects, and, in the Boston area, Patriots games were televised on weak-signal, non-network channel 6 out of New Bedford. They didn't even have a home field. They played at Fenway Park. At Harvard Stadium. At BC.
When the Giants' game was over, we'd put on the Patriots, but the reception was terrible: all snowy fuzz. And the caliber of the football was pretty fuzzy, too.
By the time I was in college, I pretty much lost all interest in football. Going to a women's college didn't help on that front, but I also found football to be overall militaristic, violent, and right wing. (Some things haven't changed. I still say that watching football is like eating veal. If I thought about it for a moment, I'd never do it.)
So I stopped watching. For decades.
I stuck with baseball, occasionally watched hockey, and, once I met my husband, saw a lot of basketball.
And then the Patriots got good. So Jim and I started paying more attention to them.
Bandwagoners, sure. But watching all those Super Bowl seasons was certainly something. That first Super Bowl win after Tom Brady stepped in for an ailing Drew Beldsoe. Another couple of wins during the oughts.
If the Patriots weren't in the Super Bowl, we didn't pay all that much attention. During one Super Bowl, we switched over during halftime to a special about the 2004 Red Sox comeback against the Yankees. We kept that on, and never got back to the Super Bowl.
There were a couple of thrillers in the years after Jim died. The last second win against the Seahawks. The insane comeback against the Falcons in 2017. (Down 28-3 at one point!) Even the meh win against the Rams in 2019. (A Super Bowl win's a Super Bowl win.)
I even walked over to watch a couple of duckboat parades. (Parade route isn't even a 2 miniute walk away.)
I never bought any Patriots gear, so I wasn't exactly all in. But the Patriots were fun to watch and easy to root for.
And what those teams had in common was the brilliance of Tom Brady.
In terms of his public persona, I find him banal, boring, what we used to call a drip. IRL, with the people he knows, he may be terrific. But for those on the outside, he's pretty much a cypher, his personality rigid and closely guarded. Can't blame him. The price of celebrity is that everyone wants a piece of you, and who can you trust?
It didn't help that he seemed to be a Trump supporter of sorts.
So, I never wanted to be Tom's BFF.
But on the field, Tom Brady was undoubtedly brilliant.
No one gets to be a professional athlete without some measure of mental toughness, but Brady was off the charts. Talk about ice water in his veins.
I loved watching him play. For the Patriots.
When he took his talents to Tampa Bay, I would have been just as happy if every pass he threw was a pick-six, and if he fell completely on his ass.
But he didn't. In his first season with the Bucs, he won his seventh Super Bowl.
The Patriots? I had pretty much stopped watching. They just weren't all that worth it any more.
I turned on the ending of the playoff game that turned out to be Tom Brady's last.
The Bucs were trailing the Rams, but, as I texted my friend Joyce down in Dallas, who was watching with her husband, I wouldn't count Brady out.
And damned if he didn't mount a comeback that was almost as exciting as that come from way behind win against the Falcons in the SB in 2017.
They lost, but it was almost something.
Immediately after this loss, the speculation began about whether Brady would retire or hang on for another chance to go out with a Super Bowl win. In his post game comments, Brady pretty much hinted that retirement was on the table, but nothing was decided yet.
Last weekend, a couple of reporters scooped the story that Brady was retiring.
Not so fast, official Brady-dom said. Any announcement would come from TB12 himself.
Which it did yesterday, when, in anticipation of Groundhog Day, Tom Brady came out, saw his shadow, and Insta'd to a waiting world that he would no longer be playing football.
The announcement was not without controversy.
Brady heaped thanks and praise on pretty much everyone he's ever come in contact with in his life. Except for anyone and anything to do with the New England Patriots and Brady-worshipping Patriots' fandom.
The slight didn't go unnoticed.
Half of New England was pissed that they were snubbed, and thought it was deliberate. After all, Brady is a control freak whose every public (Insta, Twitter) utterance is completely measured.
The other half of New England went all crybaby with hurt feelings. How could Our Tom do this to us????
After Brady's announcement went out, Patriots' owner Bob Kraft issued a gushing Valentine to Tom Brady. Brady responded with what samed to be a half-hearted "Thank you Patriots Nation."
Thanks, but no thanks.
When Tom left the Pats in 2020, he did give the Patriots organization and their fans an effusive good-bye. But not to mention the Pats in his farewell does seem odd. Also a bit weird from a marketing perspective. A big part of the market for his clothing and fitness products has got to be the hero-worshippers who are still wearing their number 12 jerseys around. Why do anything to piss them off or hurt their tender little feelings.
Some fans are speculating that Brady will sign a one day deal with the Patriots and come back to Gillette in the fall for a big, weepy sendoff.
I don't know about that.
Maybe Tom will put his marketing cap back on and decide that such a move would be good for business. I'm sure he'll come back at some point when his number is retired and when's he's named to the Patriots' Hall of Fame. But I'm guessing he's moving on.
But anyone who says that this guy wasn't the greatest
quarterback to strap on a jock and head out to the field of battle has rocks in their head. IMHO, anyway.
So, long G.O.A.T.
I won't exactly miss you. But, even though I'm not much of a fan, those Super Bowls sure were fun. Thanks for those memories, Tommy.
No comments:
Post a Comment