Yet as his workforce limped to an 8-9 report, barely making the wild-card spherical of the playoffs, there have been video games by which he missed goal after goal, appeared misplaced, and by which a hungrier opponent from the leap poleaxed his workforce, and him. There he lay at 45, struggling beneath a pile of defensive linemen.
Watching, it was onerous to not marvel: Why preserve taking part in?
Why, Tom, after seven Super Bowls and three league M.V.P. awards and a story for the ages: the skinny, sluggish, middle-round draft decide climbs his technique to a spot on soccer’s Mount Rushmore, sits atop it, stays and stays. Why preserve going?
Brady and the Buccaneers’ season ended badly: a 31-14 loss to the Dallas Cowboys.
And but … it was solely two years in the past when he received a Super Bowl, beating Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs. The protected guess was that Brady would preserve going, perhaps even attempt to play till he was 50, maybe for the San Francisco 49ers, his beloved boyhood workforce.
The undeniable fact that being on an N.F.L. workforce at a half-century years outdated appeared attainable — that’s absolutely one other signal of his greatness.
What reminiscences he offered. There are far too many to recount right here totally, however a number of stand out. Brady, in 2002, his second season and first as a starter, main the Patriots over the St. Louis Rams in the Super Bowl on the wing of a last-minute drive.
Brady — or ought to we now have referred to as him Tom Houdini? — in the Super Bowl of 2017, forging an escape for the ages, overcoming a third-quarter rating of 28-3 on the technique to beating the Atlanta Falcons, 34-28.
Discussion about this post