Pigskin Singularity

That skinny kid from Cali is finally (and again) hanging up his cleats.

After hearing that Tom Brady had announced his retirement, I checked out his post on social media. My reaction was, yeah, this time it's real. The emotions seemed genuine, palpable, sincere. 

It was clearly a goodbye.

Following the content posted throughout the day by pigskin pundits and bobbleheads read like a litany of the pigskin impossible. There are the records, of course, and then there's the anecdotal; like the number of times the Patriots earned the bye week in the playoffs with Brady at QB, or the fact that Brady has more Super Bowl wins (7) than any franchise in the NFL (6 - the Patriots, obvi, and the Steelers). 

He played three full seasons of playoff games (48) with a .729 win rate (35). 

That, in and of itself, is simply insane.

Technically, he didn't go out on top, but he never did fall off that cliff. He certainly played well enough in 2022 to make a return in 2023 seem entirely plausible, despite the turmoil in his personal life. It was, of course, inevitable that Brady would retire but this was still something of a surprise for me. Or perhaps what I was feeling was simply the realization that next year I will do something I haven't done for more than 20 years: Watch NFL football without Tom Brady.

Over the years, I've created a Patriots playlist on YouTube, and after rummaging through those posts from pigskin statheads, I started rummaging through that playlist. There was SB51 and SB49 near the top of the list but I decided to go with the 24-0 regular season comeback against Peyton Manning and the Broncos. You can quibble, and say that game was won on special teams but for me, it's quintessential Brady-era Patriots. They never quit. They always believed they could win. And the foundation of that belief wore #12.

Later in the day, I watched the SB36 replay on NFL Network. 

I remember how I felt when the Patriots improbably upset the Greatest Show on Turf as 14-point underdogs. Seriously, I thought my pigskin life would never, ever be better than the moment Adam Vinatieri split the uprights. (I was happily wrong on that front. Sorry Seattle. Sorry Atlanta. Sorry Kansas City. Okay. Not sorry.) Yes, much of that game was really about Bill Belichick stealing Mike Martz's lunch money, but then that skinny kid from Cali took over, with eminence grise John Freakin' Madden telling everyone in the pigskin universe the Pats needed to play for overtime.

Instead, Tom Brady played to win.

And then he never stopped.

Until February 1, 2023. 

Tom Brady Day.