Blaming former New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady for the team’s 2019 downfall is ludicrous.
It’s still awkward and inconceivable that I have to write “former” New England Patriots quarterback, Tom Brady. It’s going to take a while to absorb this travesty and get used to writing that abomination.
I’ve made my feelings clear that allowing your franchise’s all-time best player and one of the, if not THE greatest NFL football player of all time, to leave to play for another team is in a football sense, unforgivable.
The team’s owner and head of football operations made a huge blunder. No matter what Tom Brady does in Tampa Bay or anywhere else, there is no way he should have ever been allowed through indifference to leave New England. But enough of that.
This article is about what has defined the greatness of Tom Brady. It is heart. He has the heart of a lion. Even at the age of 43, he’s playing better than most of his competitors while nearly all of his contemporaries are well into sports retirement.
Commentators who don’t realize that the Patriots deficiencies in 2019 were not on No. 12 are lost. He had one wide receiver. One. And he had to play hurt much if not all year. He had no tight ends.
He had no running game to speak of. And no back who could extend a drive or punch it in for a touchdown in close. And his offensive line due to illness and injury was a shambles for a good part of the season. In short, he nothing on offense but Julian Edelman and James White. That’s it.
Even the dullest defensive coordinator could figure out that if you took those two players out of a play, no one else mattered for New England. Brady or no Brady. But the detractors put the onus on No. 12.
All those deficiencies, plus a defense that folded against the better teams didn’t keep detractors from laying the blame on Brady. It even looks like the team’s hierarchy disrespected him to the point of his saying good-bye after 20 years.
These are the very people who above anyone else should have known better. They obviously didn’t and maybe had their own agendas other than the best interests of the team in mind.
Why the New England Patriots nor any other team will ever see another Tom Brady.
What separates Tom Brady is his heart. He has the heart of a lion, or more correctly, a Lion King.
That is what made and makes TB12 special among athletes. Even some great athletes.
There’s a quote out there that pretty much sums up what Tom Brady is all about. You may or may not have heard it. It says you can’t measure heart. Mike Reiss of ESPN alludes to Brady’s using just that expression in 2017 to encourage that year’s rookie class:
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"Remember: they can’t measure heart. Whether you’re picked first, last or not at all, YOU decide what happens next, every day. Good luck!!!"
Brady is a steely-eyed assassin on a football field. He will do anything and everything to beat you. As did in New England for nearly 20 years.
I’d say he has always had, “The Eye of the Tiger”. That’s after a song by a group named, Survivor in 1982. It was the theme of a Rocky movie. It fits Brady, to a T.
The fans, the coaches, the personnel people, all of us were the beneficiaries of Brady’s competitiveness and heart, as well as the team itself. (Though the team seems to have conveniently forgotten that fact this offseason.).
And it wasn’t just in New England. Looking back at Brady’s days at Michigan, there’s this falsehood you hear occasionally that he wasn’t good enough to even start at Michigan, blah, blah, blah and that’s why he was drafted so low. That’s poppycock.
Brady played 12 games in 1998 and 11 in 1999, his last two seasons at Michigan. His first season he was maybe 6th on the depth chart. Then in 1997, they had a pretty good quarterback named Brian Griese. Griese went on to play 11 years in the NFL.
Then came 1998. Brady beat out one of the most heralded high school quarterbacks, maybe ever, Drew Henson. Here’s what diehardsport.com writes about Henson coming out of high school,
"Although recruiting services like Scout, Rivals and 247Sports weren’t around back then, there were still people who rated high school players, including CBS Sports’ Tom Lemming. Lemmings not only tabbed Henson a 5* recruit but one of the top 10 football players he’s seen."
Brady and Henson went head-to-head in 1999. Brady and Henson alternated, for a time, before Brady’s steely-eyed will won out and Lloyd Carr, then Michigan’s head coach finally came to his senses.
And he just won. Hayden Bird of Boston.com recounted,
"Now the starter, Brady closed out the season with five straight wins. The run included comebacks against Indiana, Penn State and – in what would be his last game for Michigan – Alabama in the Orange Bowl. In his final college game, Brady threw for a then-Michigan record 369 yards, with four touchdowns. He guided the Wolverines back from two 14-point deficits to win in overtime, 35-34."
Carr recalled Brady’s senior year in an article by Gary Meyers in the New York Daily News,
"“To me, where he really displayed his ability beyond any doubt was if you looked at the last four or five games of his fifth year,” Carr said. “His last game at Michigan, I don’t know of anybody who has played better than that against an SEC Championship Alabama team.”"
Yes, that’s our Tom Brady. If I recall correctly, they called him the “Comeback Kid” even then. He beat out the supposed best, won the day, and then games. Then he was drafted on the 199th pick in 2000 by the New England Patriots in what has become the luckiest draft pick in the team’s and in NFL history.
Tom Brady for the New England Patriots, the Lion Rules.
I’m certainly not going to recount here Tom Brady’s exploits on behalf of the New England Patriots. There’s not enough space on the computer hard drive to fit all that in this article. But I want to provide a couple of anecdotes and maybe opinions and recollections of Brady’s early Patriots history.
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First, when Brady was drafted in 2000, nobody batted an eyelash about it. nobody that I recall. He was a 6th-round pick brought in to possibly compete for a back-up job to Drew Bledsoe. These days, they call it camp fodder.
As an avid draft enthusiast, I purchased Mel Kiper’s Draft Guide. Almost every year. Here’s an excerpt from espn.com on what Mel had to say about Brady in his 2000 draft guide,
"Smart, experienced big-game signal-caller, getting very high grades in the efficiency department this past season."
The “big-game signal-caller” stands out to me. Mel hit that nail smack on the head. Big-game player.
So in coming to New England, Brady has no such idea that he was a camp player. When he bumped into Robert Kraft carrying a take-out pizza and introduced himself, it said all you need to know. He had the confidence. The brashness. The out-and-out Audacity to tell Mr. Kraft that he was the best decision the team had ever made.
Oh, brother do I love that attitude in Boston sports players. All-day long. Now keep in mind, the Patriots had drafted Drew Bledsoe No.1 overall (by Bill Parcells) in 1993.
In addition, Bledsoe had been a good quarterback for New England. He had even taken them to a Super Bowl, and lost. No problem for Tom Brady. In his first season, Brady had to contend with a lot of competition.
He had: Drew Bledsoe; John Friez; and Michael Bishop (a fan favorite) to contend with. No problem. Brady inexplicably, unbelievably and almost unfathomably made the team as a 4th quarterback. It’s not a usual occurrence, folks. Not at all.
I can remember at the time saying to myself, since I watched the roster formation carefully, “who the heck is this Brady?” I almost certainly went back to the Kiper write-up and saw that big-game player business. That’s what has stuck in my mind all these years. BIG-GAME-PLAYER.
The next year, Friez and Bishop were gone and Brady was the second quarterback. Then Mo Lewis came along, and the rest, as they say, is history.
So that’s my take on Tom Brady’s story. The story of a young man who wouldn’t accept being forth or even second-best. Would fight to the end to be the best. Would overcome all any obstacles in his way. The right way, through hard work and steely-eyed determination. I call it, “The Eye of the Tiger”.
It’s just a shame that he couldn’t have completed his football story here in New England. A doggone shame.