It's been almost a week and I'm still not sure how to start this.
"We'll always have Paris" or "Everything ends badly or else it wouldn't end?"
Maybe it's a little of both.
As a Patriots fan - as a football fan - could I ask anything more of Tom Brady than what he's given over the last 20 years?
No. Easy one. Hard no.
Let me add Bill Belichick and Robert Kraft to my enumeration of thanks. Nobody accomplishes anything in this world alone. I could list players like Gronk, Big Vince, Rodney, Ty, Troy, Clock Killin' Corey Dillon, Stephon Gilmore and so many others. At the end of the day, though, Kraft, Belichick, and Brady were the constants and well deserving of my pigskin plaudits.
It may be fashionable to blame Belichick for how this all went down but a week later, the inevitability of it all is hard to deny. These teardowns happen every 3-5 years for most NFL franchises. Even the best run franchises have that missed the playoffs season on the regular. Maybe after 20 years the good citizens of Patriots Nation believed it would never happen but in the end, time, injury, and the cruel math of the salary cap comes calling for every team.
We'll always have Paris…
So, let me start with the good times. We all have our memories, and an exhaustive list would take the rest of my life and only leave me wondering what I'd forgotten to mention so I'll just list three…
The First One
After their 5-11 season in 2000, I couldn't have predicted that I would fall in love again with the New England Patriots. Belichick's first year in Foxborough felt like just the latest insult to my NFL fandom by the team I was geographically bound to root for. Sure, they were winning in 2001 and that makes everything easier, but more than the wins it was the way they played. Belichick assembled a roster full of men who loved football. They played hard and they played together. Somehow, they were more than the sum of their parts. The season culminated in the upset win over The Greatest Show on Turf in Super Bowl 36. The exhilaration of Brady's game-winning drive with the soundtrack of John Madden's ominous, plaintive "play for overtime" voiceover culminating in Vinatieri's walk-off kick. At the time, I thought it would be the apotheosis of my sports fan life.
Better than sex? No. (Let's not get crazy.) As good as sex? (Thinking.) Yes.
28-3
Not just the greatest football game ever played but the greatest sports movie ever made.
The Last One
The bookend to 2001 as the Patriots once again face the Rams for the Lombardi Trophy.
Like 2001, Super Bowl 53 was about defense, the running game, and one clutch 4th quarter drive from Brady and the offense to win it. In retrospect, we all might've been better served if Tom's Butch Cassidy had joined Gronk's Sundance Kid on a ride into the sunset after this one. And in my mind's eye, perhaps that is how I'll remember Brady as a Patriot. Not that desperation pass bouncing off Mohamed Sanu's hands into the waiting arms of former teammate Logan Ryan and the pick-6 that ended Brady's career in New England; instead I'll recall that sublime pass arcing through the burden of history and into the white-gloved hands of Rob Gronkowski that set up the game-winning TD in SB53.
Everything ends badly…
Back to the reality of the here and now.
This is really just business as usual for Belichick and the Patriots. Should we be angry that Bill Belichick is being Bill Belichick? That he's making a decision in the best interests of the team, just like he has for the last two decades; a process that has delivered 9 Super Bowl appearances and 6 Super Bowl wins?
It's been said that we're all rooting for laundry but clearly that is not the case; at least not in this case. I've spent 20 years rooting for Tom Brady. It's hard not to have feelings about this. Even as it became clear it was ending, I kept hoping that somehow things would work out and Brady would re-sign with the Patriots.
Even so, I looked at a roster likely to lose three or four starters on defense to free agency, and offense that had too many problems, salary cap space that wasn't going to provide the weapons Brady needed, and the reportedly toughest strength of schedule for 2020 and wondered if that was how I wanted to see Tom Brady go out. 8-8-0? Third place in the AFC East?
That would be a hell of a lot easier to take without Tom Brady under center.
The consensus amongst pigskin pundits and bobbleheads seems to be that (a) we all should've seen this coming and (b) it's the best thing for both Brady and the Patriots. In this case, after a week of contemplation, I think the crowd is wise.
The Belichickian Model of Pro Football Franchise Management has certainly proven itself. It would be foolish to expect Belichick to change now, even if we're talking about the greatest QB of all time. Indeed, the Patriots are in the midst of their annual Free Agency Fire Sale, watching championship stalwarts like Kyle Van Noy making bank with another team while Belichick is busy signing guys you never heard of to play special teams. It's an event all the more bittersweet given Brady's departure. We've seen this before but this time it feels…
Existential.
Maybe that's the point. A change was a-coming. And now it's here.
The Patriots couldn't move on with Brady and Brady couldn't move on with the Patriots.
Belichick can hit the reset button and prove - by doing it all over again without Tom Brady - that he's the greatest head coach in NFL history.
Brady can take a run at a 7th ring and do it in another system, for another coach.
Nothing is ever certain, of course, but TB12 has a much better chance in Tampa Bay to hoist the Lombardi Trophy one more time than he would have had in Foxborough. Buccaneers fans should be happy to hear pigskin pundits and bobbleheads saying that Brady is no longer elite, repeating the statistical lie that he can't throw downfield, that he's - at best - a game manager once again, because those are just logs thrown on Brady's competitive fire.
Doubt Tom Brady at your own considerable risk and take note: The Pewter Pirates now have their Captain Blood.
A couple of odd thoughts.
First, what if John Lynch had said yes to Brady instead of Garoppolo?
Would Brady already have 7 rings? Would the 49ers have beaten the Chiefs in SB54? Can someone run this through Madden or some Monte Carlo simulation?
Does this timeline exist in the multiverse and if so, how do I get there?
Second, how much did Brady's friendship with Peyton Manning impact his decision?
The comp isn't perfect - injury hastened Manning's exit from Indianapolis - but Brady could be poised for a similar second act. Manning went to Denver where he authored a record-breaking season with 5,477 yards and 55 TD passes. With an offensive thought leader in head coach Bruce Arians and the weapons in Tampa Bay - Mike Williams, Chris Godwin, O.J. Howard, Cameron Brate and whoever else they add with the spare cap change in the couch cushions left after signing Brady - could TB12 be poised for 5K+ passing yards and 50+ passing TD in 2020?
Maybe that sounds crazy if you've bought into the notion that Brady is in decline/no longer elite/just a game manager at this point but take it from somebody who has watched Tom Terrific for the last 20 years…
It could happen.
A team playing the Super Bowl in its home stadium could happen.
I'm fascinated by what Tom Brady will do in Tampa Bay just as I'm fascinated by what Bill Belichick and the Patriots will do next. I'm still a Patriots fan and always will be but I'm also still a Tom Brady fan. As Brady himself once famously said…
We'll see. It'll be fun.
Let's go!
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