Microphones Are Surprisingly Affordable These Days
WEEI on-air person Alex Reimer, showing a creative bent for self-destruction, insulted Tom Brady's daughter in a telephone conversation with none other than Brady himself. Brady immediately hung up and good for him. If in further response the Patriots quarterback and coach Bill Belichick were to end their paid appearances on the station for good, they could only be applauded.
Showing more magnanimity than many, including myself, would have, Brady said yesterday he hoped Reimer didn't get fired for his contemptible act. Of course, Brady also has a veteran's savvy, enough savvy to chalk off the incident as the inevitable result of the sports talk radio station ethos -- "We're big assholes and proud of it."
Not all sports talk hosts in this town are full-on exponents of the asshole ethos. But enough of 'em are to make it the prevailing tone. It comes in three subsets, hateful (see Reimer), sneering and smarmy. The underlying assumption about the sports and athletes it discusses is "there's something wrong with them." You, the listener driving to, being at, or driving home from the job you hate, are a better person with a better life. Your team is not living up to you.
This is a hard act to sell when as is currently the Boston situation, the local pro teams are all winners to various degrees and one is a dynastic champion. But somehow, the boys (they're all boys in drive time) find a way. It is amazing how commentators on the Sports Hub (your New England Patriots station) have adapted the theme that all other teams in the NFL suck. That this idea devalues the Pats' status as champions doesn't seem to penetrate either on-air personnel or callers.
All four Boston pro teams broadcast their games over one of the two talk radio stations. They are paid well for those rights, because without live game broadcasts, the sports talk radio business model is insupportable. This summer, tune in to poor Alex Jones doing five hours a night opposite the Red Sox on WEEI to see why.
My questions today are not for the talk radio genre, it's for the Red Sox, Pats, Bruins and Celtics. Do local radio broadcasts really make you that much money? Why do you put up with a business partner that spends hours giving voice to people who put you and your product down? There's an easy solution, one that's been in front of your eyes for over 30 years.
The Sox and Bruins are joint owners of NESN, the cable network that broadcasts their games on TV. Why couldn't the four teams own and operate two radio stations as well? They'd need two because of all the scheduling conflicts, but if much more expensive television is economically feasible for two franchises, why wouldn't radio be for four?
Games take up only so much time, and radio's on 24 hours a day. There would have to be lengthy pregame and postgame shows, but they already exist. There would have to be talk shows, but with the teams in control, the "we're big assholes" aesthetic could be dropped to everyone's benefit.
I hear the counterargument now. Those would be homer stations. It'd be propaganda for every bonehead move made by every front office. Fans want commentators who tell it like it is.
I have two responses. First, telling it as meanly as possible isn't always or even often telling it like it is. Second, in my experience, the last thing fans want is to hear it straight from the shoulder with attitude. They can do that for themselves when the home teams lose and have done so since the beginning of sports.
It is my belief that what fans want are broadcasters who're honest homers. They comment on the story from the home team's perspective, make no bones about doing so, but are also honest enough to admire skilled opponents and can criticize mistakes or even blunders by the home teams without making them sound like the result of character flaws. Most of all, they sound like they really love sports for their own sake.
Jack Edwards is a model honest homer. Who loves the Bruins more than he does? And yet, Jack is quick to praise opponents when warranted and express disappointment (not scorn) when he regards the Bruins' work as substandard.
There are plenty of Boston sports journalists with talk radio experience who could be and are candid without the sneer, who're knowledgeable, thoughtful, and who could work for a station owned by a team, do a good job, and never come close to compromising their integrity. Sean McAdam comes to mind, and so does my former Herald colleague Paul Perillo.
I submit that people become sports fans to enjoy themselves. A steady diet of scorn, smarm and suspicion is not enjoyable. Spend six months casting John Farrell as history's greatest monster, and what do you do when genuine evil such as Larry Nassar enters the world of games?
I don't expect any of Boston's pro teams to take up my suggestion. Selling broadcast rights is very easy money. But all four teams are owned by very successful businessmen, and they didn't get that way without an aggressive attitude towards growth. John Henry owns a newspaper and a cable station. Robert Kraft has a house multi-operation. Moving into radio wouldn't be that difficult.
Were I my former colleagues Gerry Callahan and Michael Felger, I might do a little research on that subject.
Do Dynasties Die of Boredom?
The Patriots arrive in Minneapolis for the Super Bowl later today. I'm so glad I'm not there to greet them. If I were, I'd still be a sportswriter, and what the hell would I write about this team for an entire week of pregame stories?
Set aside the horror movie/clever social satire of the NFL's decision to place both teams and all media within the Mall of America for a week. Nobody goes outside in midwinter Minnesota unless they have to anyway. No, the problem the Patriots pose for the diligent journalist is an acute professional dilemma. The root word of "news" is "new" and there is absolutely positively nothing new to say about the New England Patriots at their eighth Super Bowl in 16 seasons.
The obvious angle is to assess New England's place among the other dynastic powers of professional football history. Good story, at least I thought so the last time I wrote it, which was the last time the Pats faced the Eagles in the Super Bowl -- in 2005. That's 13 years ago.
(Here's my short answer on ranking the Pats. It depends on how you do it. I don't think any individual Patriot team in the Belichick-Brady era were as good as, oh, the 1978 Steelers or 1966 Packers. But if longevity matters, and what matters more to any kind of dynasty, New England stands alone at the top, a considerable distance above anyone else).
In that time, the Celtics, Bruins and Red Sox have all won championships and also plunged into seasons of complete failure before rising again. Those three franchises have generated new information to process and discuss. The Pats? Hey, they beat Buffalo -- again. They won the AFC East -- again. There comes a point in sports where accomplishment remains utterly admirable and yet loses the capacity to thrill. Hank Aaron's 715th home run was lead item national news in the US. He hit 40 more in his career. They were not news. They were numbers.
Or take a modern example, yesterday to be specific. Roger Federer, age 36, won the Australian Open, his 20th Grand Slam tournament victory. He added further proof he is the greatest tennis player to ever live.
And after about an hour's worth of "hey look at that" by tennis fans on Twitter, Federer's feat was pretty much ignored. Christopher Clarey, the Times' tennis writer, commented on how matter of fact Federer's two-week march to the title seemed to be. Roger Federer didn't NEED any further proof about his place in tennis history. Through no fault of his own, Federer didn't get to play either of his historic rivals, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. He was Ali mowing down a succession of George Chuvalo's. It's never easy to win, but it's even harder to make people care about wins they expect to see.
So it is with the Pats. Not their fault, but they don't bring anything new to the Super Bowl table. Nobody's going to find some unknown secret of Tom Brady or Bill Belichick's success. Neither Matt Patricia nor Josh McDaniels will offer any insight on their possible new coaching gigs. Charlie Weis and Romeo Crennel didn't back in that last Pats-Eagles Super Bowl. There's a week until Super Sunday, and Globe columnist Tara Sullivan was reduced to writing about Stephen Gostkowski for today's paper. Gostkowski's a great kicker, but a placekicker story is close to a last resort. If she moves on to Ryan Allen, we'll know Sullivan's as stumped as I am as to how to make the Pats newsworthy.
I can think of one New England story I'd pursue were I at Super Bowl LII. There's a bunch of Patriot players who were in elementary school when the Patriots won their first Super Bowl back in 2002. What's it like joining a team that's been part of their football consciousness all their lives? What's it like playing with a quarterback from a different generation? It's an angle, but I also know none of the young players would be daft enough to give candid answers. Bill wouldn't like it.
The worst of it for the Pats is that if they lose next Sunday, the only people who'll be angry or grief-stricken are themselves. It won't affect the franchise's historical status, or Brady's or Belichick's, one iota. Patriot fans can be a whiny bunch to be sure, but the rest of football America would greet sackcloth and ashes from Pats' fans with ridicule rather than disdain. And in truth, any fan who'd react that way should be ashamed of themselves.
I don't expect the Pats to lose. I never do, seeing as they almost never do. But I don't expect their sixth Super Bowl title to thrill anyone but themselves. Fans will be pleased, but not moved. So I guess the above paragraph was wrong. Unshared joy is way worse than unshared sorrow.
Curse of the Quarterback's Paw
Tom Brady hurt his right hand this week. The Patriots SAY it was the result of a collision with a teammate at practice, but I think we all know the real story. Somewhere, somehow, Tom's right hand came into inadvertent contact with a tomato.
Really, is that theory any wackier than some of the more conspiratorially minded denizens of NFL-related Twitter and talk shows? Is it any sillier than the frenzy of local television live shots from Foxboro? Our Tommy has an owie! What are we to do? Stay tuned for our updates!!!
The known facts would daunt Oliver Stone's ability to come up with a conspiracy/doomsday theory. Brady missed one day of practice this week, That's been his habit for most of the second half of the season. So what? He already knows how to play football.
Brady was listed as "limited" for a practice he did attend yesterday and is listed as "questionable" on the team injury report. In league office theory, "questionable" means "50 percent chance of playing" but even in the regular season it translates to "90 percent chance." For a conference championship game, the reality of the injury report is that it has three stages, "playing," "hospitalized" and "deceased."
Most of all, Brady has worn gloves in practice, appeared before the media in those gloves, and refused to answer questions about his hand. Coach Bill Belichick was no more forthcoming.
If, as has been reported, Brady has a cut on the hand, than wearing gloves over a bandage is simply prudent protection for the wound. Just wearing them is all the healthy young maniacs of the Jacksonville Jaguars need to know. It is hard to make an injured hand a target the same way a shoulder or rib can be, but the Jags will surely their hardest to find a way.
As for Brady and Belichick clamming up, how on earth is this anything but New England Patriot standing operating procedure? Nobody in any sport is gonna tell the truth about an injury to a star player that might or might not impact a playoff game. Belichick doesn't stonewall the media out of pure cussedness, although there's a dab of that in his nonanswers. The coach dislikes outright lying, so when he deems the truth counterproductive, he goes into the mumbly Bill persona known to all football fans. You have to admire his dedication to this tactic. Belichick is well aware it makes him a national laughingstock, but he'll take that heat in the pursuit of victory.
Brady doesn't answer inconvenient questions for another reason. He can't lie, or even fib. He has no poker face, hell, no Old Maid face, whatsoever. When he attempts to dissemble on the most innocent of topics, his nonverbal language from the top of his head to the tips of his toes gives him away. This does credit to his upbringing, and also makes answering questions on sensitive topics very dangerous. So Brady doesn't. Since I understand why, I can't blame him.
In this case, Brady and Belichick don't need to be candid for me to take what I'm pretty sure is a correct forecast on how his injury will play out in the AFC title game tomorrow. Brady will play. Nobody reaches 40 in the NFL without being a very tough guy, punters included. Brady's damaged hand may or may not affect his performance, but if it does, it might not be detectable to the naked eye. Say it has a 25 percent impact, which I believe is way, way too high a guess. Seventy-five percent of Tom Brady is still better than 100 percent of about all but 20 other NFL quarterbacks in the league's history.
Risk, however, remains. Brady's right hand will have a bullseye on it drawn by a defense that has shown little care for the niceties of the sport's rulebook (no really good defense ever has). But barring the improbable event of the hand getting hurt more badly, Jacksonville will have to find some other means of pulling their upset. Brady's not going to be the reason the Pats lose.
Come to think of it, he never has been.
Quarterback History Lesson
Here's a list of quarterbacks whose teams have beaten the Patriots in the postseason since Tom Brady became quarterback.
Peyton Manning: Three times
Eli Manning: two times
Joe Flacco: two times
Mark Sanchez: once
Jake Plummer (bet you forgot that one): once.
Not a long list is it? The list of quarterbacks whose teams LOST to Brady and the Pats in the postseason is much longer, and includes both Peyton and Flacco, as well as Hall of Famer Kurt Warner. This is because of two things. 1. Brady is a very great player. 2 (and most important) The rest of the Patriots have been pretty damn good players, too.
Here's the thing about quarterbacks, even the most historic greats of any era. They are the most important players on their team, but they do not and cannot win games by themselves alone. It is much more difficult to win any game, let alone a championship, with merely adequate quarterback play. But it can be done, and as the list shows, it has been done more often than you might guess from reading or listening to local commentary on the upcoming AFC Championship Game.
Peyton Manning is as surefire a Hall of Famer as is Brady. His brother is a marginal prospect for Canton whose main case is the two Super Bowls where his Giants beat the Pats. Flacco has been an average quarterback who sold his soul to Mr. Applegate for the 2012 postseason. Plummer was a forgettable journeyman. Sanchez became a national joke. But on four any given Sundays, the teams of those last three field generals were able to defeat Brady's team, quite handily, too, with no margin of victory less than 14 points.
Why? Well, in those four games, the winning quarterback didn't screw it up. They all made just enough plays to hold up the requirements of the position. They avoided turnovers. They allowed themselves to benefit from how well their teammates performed. The story of those four Pats' losses (and the basic story of Eli's two Super Bowls and Peyton's last win over the Pats as a Bronco) is that the winning TEAMS had defenses who made the big plays and were able to knock the snot out of Brady.
Which is to say, defenders were able to win their individual battles with Patriot blockers and pass catchers. Offense is timing and defense is destroying it, as New England demonstrated to perfection on both sides of the ball last Saturday night against the Titans. If Jacksonville's brash, strong and very fast defenders are able to dominate the 10 other guys on the Patriots' offense, if the Jags offensive line can allow it to run the ball, the talent disparity between Brady and Blake Bortles will still exist, it just won't be the be-all and end-all pregame commentary suggests.
Since he is a professional troll, it is pointless to criticize Michael Felger for football ignorance, but this one is too good (bad) to pass on. Before last weekend, Felger cited Brady, Matt Ryan of the Falcons, Drew Brees of the Saints and Ben Roethlisberger as the reason those men's four teams were lead pipe cinches to win their divisional round games. Felger's picks went 1-3. Good thing he's not a gambler.
Roethlisberger threw for 479 yards and five touchdowns. That'll win most games. Not the one the Jags and Steelers played though. Other stuff, oodles of other stuff, happened.
'Tis a far, far better thing to have Tom Brady than not to. The Patriots are 9 1/2 point favorites against Jacksonville and that doesn't seem too far off to me. But Brady's only about 3 1/2 points worth of that edge (that's an enormous figure for one player, Pats fans). The 44 other guys who'll be on the active roster Sunday afternoon account for the other six. They, not Brady, will determine whether the game will be the blowout expected by most of the civilized world, or if it's competitive. Or if it winds up adding Blake Bortles' name to the short list at the top of this piece.
The War of the Patriots' Succession
In the first season of the '90s cop show "Homicide," David Simon's first hit, a rookie to the homicide squad, played by Kyle Secor, complains to his veteran partner Andre Braugher about the lack of camaraderie in the squad. "In my old (name of squad here), we'd do things together. It was more like a family."
"Oh, we're like a family," replies Braugher's character, "a REAL family." He then goes on to explain how Homicide's various rivalries, jealousies, bad personal relationships, grudges, etc. were a spur that drove each cop to excel at their individual jobs.
That scene popped back into my mind after many years while reading Seth Wickersham's ESPN article on the Patriots in 2017, because it was my main takeaway from the engrossing story. The Patriots are a REAL family as written by Simon. It's part of the reason they win so much. If they win the Super Bowl again, a reasonable bet right now, it will be (slightly) the result of discord at the top, not in spite of it.
There is absolutely nothing, nothing at all, described by Wickersham that hasn't happened to some other highly successful team in NFL history, no all of pro sports history, at some point. Alex Guerrero's weirdness adds spice to mix, for example, but rest assured other star players have had confidantes, business partners, dealers, etc. whom management found most problematic. It's actually sweetly wholesome that the franchise and the business partner of its star player Tom Brady were at odds over methods of proper nutrition and exercise. He could've been selling Bitcoins after all.
Hall of Fame quarterback jealous and resentful of who he perceives as his designed replacement? Joe Montana and Steve Young could each speak at length on that topic. A pair of ferociously competitive and talented people who know damn well there's only one job for them are seldom going to be best of friends.
An owner making a vital personnel decision with his heart overruling a coach using his head? Why, we don't even have to look outside Boston for that one. As a rookie columnist in 1990, I wrote that if the Celtics didn't trade Larry Bird while he still had value, they were doomed to a long spell in the sub-.500 wilderness. Boy, were people mad at me, both inside the Celtics and out (Larry wasn't though. He respects cold-bloodedness). Management went with its heart, and the wilderness was duly entered.
As an older columnist, I came to partially regret my rash if correct proposal. Sports without sentiment isn't much fun. If the Celtics wanted Bird to stay with them until retirement, that was an understandable and laudable sentiment. If Bob Kraft feels the same way about Tom Brady, I understand and sympathize. Kraft was a Pats fan before he became the Pats' owner. He made a fan's call on an owner's decision. No owner can pay two starting QB salaries. He must pick one, or let the coach do it.
Did Belichick want to keep Jimmy Garoppolo and let Brady go after this season? Bill will never tell, although he might leak. For the purpose of more clicks, let's assume he did. That would certainly explain his dealing Garoppolo to the 49ers, a team where the quarterback could both start right away and a franchise with lots of cap space to make Garoppolo rich if he did well. In the past, when Belichick has traded a player because of contract issues, the coach has seemingly gone out of his way to ship the recalcitrant to the worst possible situation.
In the final analysis, Wickersham's story boils down to an owner siding with his superstar player over his coach. Even with Hall of Fame coaches, that's not exactly a new story. Art Modell fired Paul Brown, the only coach whose record is match for Belichick's because the coach and Jim Brown were at odds.
What will Belichick do next? Well, for the next month, he'll spend 19 hours a day thinking about how to win three more football games. Brady will do the same. They'll spend much time together, and believe me any past frictions will never come up. As both Belichick and Bill Parcells have said of each other, "we did a lot of winning together." That is football's ultimate bond. In the heat of battle, it outweighs any other relationship issue by tons.
When the battle's over? Until yesterday, I thought speculation Belichick would leave the Pats was hooey. Why should he? Why not ride the Good Ship Brady until it sinks, then transfer to his yacht and sail for Nantucket.
Then Jon Gruden signed that 10-year, $100 million contract with the Raiders, and my assessment changed. If Gruden, out of coaching for as long as I've been out of journalism, is worth $100 mill on the free market, what's Belichick worth? Belichick'd have to be as inhuman as his public image not to be curious as to that question's answer.
And Belichick is not inhuman. Nor are Kraft and Brady. They are full of personal goals, strong emotions and messy interactions just like the rest of us. The only surprise in Wickersham's story comes from its readers. Are they surprised to learn that Hall of Famers are people? If so, how sad.
Does Wickersham's story damage its three principals? Not as far as I'm concerned. I have no idea why any Patriots fan would resent a word of it, that is, I wouldn't if I didn't know why some do to the point of hysteria. They are victims of the myth of the Patriot Way.
The Patriot Way in reality is, "we do what it takes to win games." The myth has embellished that homely truth to present New England's offices and locker room as a sanctuary for self-abnegation, where the TEAM comes first, last and in-between and never is whispered a personal agenda. It's a myth fit for eight-year olds and it doesn't speak well of any adult who believes it. If the myth is now biting Kraft, Belichick and Brady in the ass, they are learning myths have a way of turning on their creators.
The unmatched historic success of the New England Patriots rests on how its guiding lights, Kraft, Belichick and Brady, have been able to convince themselves and everyone else in the franchise that their personal agendas, which no person is without, and the team's goals ran in the same direction. Often they did, sometimes they didn't, but they did so often enough to help win five NFL titles and counting.
This morning, Brady and Belichick's personal goals are exactly the same. The next title. Their working relationship will be excellent. After the season, they will return to being actual people and we'll see what happens. For now, they are Quarterback and Coach, two characters that are part human and a damn bigger part Football.
