Maybe He's Just Bored
Tom Brady posed a (bad) arty photograph on Twitter and the pro football world, especially its media subsection, went nuts. What did it all mean? Is Brady retiring? Is he moving to another stadium, that is, another football team? Nobody said, "maybe Tom just thinks it's a nice photograph."
Likewise, luxury housing markets in every NFL city appear to be getting a boost from Brady's pending free agency. He's looking at houses in a swank part of Nashville. He bought property in a swank Las Vegas development. Forget clicking on ESPN.com to find out what Brady's thinking about his future, instead check out Banker & Tradesman.
As it turns out, Brady has been in Miami this week, doing the usual NFL elite hanging out that takes place every Super Bowl week. And why not? He hasn't had a chance to do that for four years. Bill Belichick puts his Patriots teams under chain hotel house arrest when they're IN the Super Bowl.
The likelihood is that the Brady fever rumors are the creation of the desperate horde of NFL execs, media and fans who want to jump to a conclusion. Given that this nonsense could last until late March, one sees their point of view. Anyone here in Boston would find any Brady announcement a relief more than anything else.
Of course, telling any and all possible suitor franchises that their home burg is just the place for you and yours to live happily ever after is on the first page of the free agent's playbook in every sport. If Brady's doing that, well, it's part of that "testing the market" process we hear so much about. Just business, that's all.
Ah, but what if Brady is letting the rumor mill grind madly on for less pecuniary reasons. Being the biggest NFL star of the century is mostly swell, but there are parts of it, parts Brady encounters quite often, that are a real drag. You are surrounded with people whose job is to look over your shoulder and pry into at least your professional mind. Many of those folks deal strictly in what they can show are facts. Many do not. Idle speculation is now the sports media industry's leading product. I'm producing some right now.
Could be Brady is turning the tables. He might be generating rumors not for profit, but for fun. It's his turn, his first chance, to jerk the NFL world around and he's using it.
If so, my high professional respect for Brady will be supplemented by my high personal admiration.
Why Las Vegas Is a Big City, Chapter the Millionth
In the dead week before the two teams arrive at the host city for the Super Bowl, gambling news fills the void of all those missing riveting interviews with long snappers. The easiest fish in the barrel to shoot, which is why I'm doing it right now, is to run down the long long list of Super Bowl prop bets, such as who's gonna be the MVP, how long the National Anthem will take, and so on.
The simplest and purest prop bet on the board is also the most revealing. It tells us why gambling requires a profound belief that mathematics is not a thing. Which team will win the coin toss.
In math and in language, a coin flip is used as an example of a pure 50-50 proposition. It's random chance whether the Chiefs captains will win the toss or the 49ers captains will (I'm not sure if there's a bet for the officials screwing up the toss, but there should be).
Not when the money's on the table it isn't. Chiefs winning the coin toss is minus 110, that is, the plunger must bet $11 to win back $10. Lo and behold, that's the same exact odds for the 49ers winning the toss. If bettors split on this proposition 50-50, the house gets back $11 for every $10 it must pay out. Of course, the winning bettors get their investment back, too, so instead of a ridiculous 10 percent return, the coin toss bet brings in a mere five percent of the total money pool.
Anyone who makes five percent return on a two week investment on Wall Street gets on the cover of "Forbes" or earns subpoenas from the SEC and the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York or both. At sports books legal or illegal, that five percent is baked into the cake of every wager, from even money to the longest odds on the board in any sport.
Anyone unwilling to take a little flutter on the Super Bowl, even if it's just buying a square or two in the office pool, lacks sporting blood. On those rare occasions I'm in Nevada, I love the sports book. That's because it takes three hours to lose money a ballgame, as opposed to three seconds at the table game. I am under no illusion my bets on sports will be right 55 or more percent of the time. My sportswriting career offers a long paper trail showing that ain't happening.
Damon Runyon wrote "All life is 6 to 5 against." Times change. Now it's only 11 to 10.
Fortunately, I Don't Have a Vote in This One, Either
The sports take industry owes Eli Manning a massive debt of gratitude. Just as stupid arguments about the baseball Hall of Fame faded away, the Giants quarterback announces his retirement, allowing a seamless pivot to stupid arguments about the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Is Eli a Hall of Famer is a perfect plaything for the industry, far better than a nationwide dragnet for the brain-damaged baseball writer who didn't vote for Derek Jeter (BTW, this is a big improvement for the Cooperstown electorate. Dozens of scribes didn't vote for Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, etc.). For one thing, fans adore Hall of Fame arguments to the point of mania. For another, Eli's case doesn't just offer arguments to both sides, it offers precedent as well, making for approximately 194 percent more relevant facts than the typical Hall debate in any sport.
Indeed, if one was to envision the perfect athlete for an endless Hall argument, one would probably come up with Eli. Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and the PED-era baseball players don't count. People who argue their cases are battling about drugs, not baseball. Eli is a pure football issue, one that's irresolvable and therefore the ideal springboard for disputes ending in barroom stabbings. Are moments of historic greatness in a long career enough to make a pretty good but hardly great athlete a Hall of Famer? Ask that question to the next person you meet. It's an 80-20 bet he or she will have a different opinion than your own.
The cold statistics at pro-football-reference.com tell the dueling Eli stories quite neatly. Regular season Eli played for 16 seasons for the Giants and was a starter for 14 of those 16. He was amazingly durable, missing only two games until New York benched him for Daniel Jones this season. Due to this combination of longevity and good health, he is among the top 10 quarterbacks in many of the compiler stats, career passing yards, TD passes and so on.
However, Regular Season Eli wasn't exactly dominant. He made four Pro Bowls. He was never a first team All-Pro, let alone an MVP. His record as a starter was a flat .500, 117 wins, 117 losses. He wasn't ever thought of as a top five quarterback. Manning was not a fantasy football darling. Regular season Eli is basically a Vinny Testaverde who only played for one team.
Big brother Peyton could probably get Regular Season Eli a comped pass for spectator admission to the Hall in Canton, but that's as close as he could ever get.
But click to Manning's page on the postseason, and we see a new person, the one whose devotees insist should have his bust enshrined in his first year of eligibility. That of course is Super Bowl Eli, the quarterback who was MVP of Super Bowls 42 and 46, two historic upsets of pro football's most amazing dynasty, the 21st century New England Patriots and that team's quarterback Tom Brady, who has about the best Hall of Fame case ever created.
(In fact, Brady has two such cases in one career, the best argument for proclaiming him history's top quarterback. Cut Brady's career in two, 2001-2010 and 2011-2019. If each half was produced by a different person, both of them would waltz into Canton on the first ballot).
For extra credit, each Eli Super Bowl featured a game-winning drive led by him and those drives each featured impossible miracle throws and catches by David Tyree and Mario Manningham respectively. Those plays and those games will be famous as long as people care about the NFL. The root word of famous is "fame."
That's what fans and media who believe Eli is a Hall of Famer point to. For two months in a 16 year career, Eli Manning was a championship caliber quarterback, each time in the month of the NFL year in which championships are decided. That is his case for a yellow sports jacket.
There are worse cases. There is only one other quarterback who was on the winning team in more than one Super Bowl or NFL title game and isn't in the Hall -- Jim Plunkett. Many (misguided IMO) football fans and media say Joe Namath is in the Hall of Fame for only one game.
Well, Super Bowl III was kind of an important game. You can't tell the story of the ALF-NFL war , the merger of the two leagues and the Super Bowl itself without Broadway Joe. Namath was considered the best quarterback in his league, the AFL, which Eli never was. And beyond all that, Namath was always a celebrity (there's fame again). He still is. Namath's on cable TV 100 times a day hawking Medicare supplement insurance and making people my age feel their mortality.
It is impossible to imagine Eli Manning doing that in 40 years time. He barely had any endorsements in his playing career. Former teammate and Michael Strachan is a big TV star. Unless somebody does a remake of the "Andy Griffith Show" that's not happening for Eli, either. He is by all accounts a wonderful teammate and good person. Charismatic? Please.
This shouldn't matter. There are athletes who were and are dull as the Federal Register in the Halls of Fame of every sport. But it does matter, a little. It's one reason why "No Hall for Eli" folks emphasize the parts of his career, the very long parts, where Manning was an unmemorable quarterback. Manning didn't force himself on the public mind. One is strongly tempted to argue that alone should get him into the Hall of Fame.
But for two winter Sundays, Eli Manning was as memorable and charismatic a player as the NFL possessed. He was the most important (not best) player on a championship team. He was a Super Bowl hero. Quarterbacks get to put that on their resume. Malcolm Butler ain't making the Hall for being one, and neither is David Tyree. Quarterbacks get all the breaks and one of them is how their performance is judged. Being great in the right games can make up for being just OK in 20 others.
So would I vote for Eli were some awful twist of fate to put me on the selection committee? I don't think so. But I would listen respectfully to his presenter's arguments and those arguments might, just might, change my mind.
(For those who don't know, a member of the selection committee, usually someone who regularly covered the player, serves as the player's advocate, making a formal presentation before debate and voting begins).
In the meantime, I make the following recommendation. If you're out for a cold one at your neighborhood local and somebody down the bar starts talking about Eli Manning and the Hall of Fame, settle up your tab as fast as you can and get the hell out of there.
A Potentially Great Joke Steps on the Punchline
Last Saturday night, Tom Brady was in Las Vegas to catch the Conor McGregor UFC bout. While there, the Patriots quarterback ran into none other than now-Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis and the two had a pleasant chat.
As you may have heard, Brady will be a free agent on March 18. Speculation on Brady's future is now the NFL's leading industry, far surpassing that game the Chiefs and 49ers will play on Groundhog Day, alleged insiders and outsiders in Boston and around the nation wondered aloud or in print if this meant the Pats' ultimate hero is considering becoming a Raider.
I wish. Brady becoming a Raider would be the most hilarious Boston sports story in my 45 years of living here, topping Rosie Ruiz's fake Marathon win by miles and miles of belly laughs. Instead of a midlife crisis, Brady would be giving us a midlife heel turn, making his NFL last act a boffo finale with a franchise that's been associated with pigskin villainy since the 1960s. He could show up at his first press conference holding a football and a bicycle pump. Raiders fans would eat it up.
Patriots fans would lose their shit entirely. This is a region that still holds it against Johnny Damon for going to the Yankees in free agency, that has reacted to a decade of unprecedented professional sports success with whiny paranoia. Given something to really be paranoid about, the frenzy would go off the charts.
That's not funny? Come on. Think about Jim Nantz having to cover his first Raiders game with Brady at the helm. Admit it, that image made you smile.
Sadly, as is too often the case in pro football, humor is always a four-touchdown underdog. Brady is about the last celebrity athlete on the planet capable of pulling a heel turn. Aside from fanatical competitiveness, his personality has no discernible rough edges. He likes an even strain, or at least likes the world to think he does.
That, however, is not the main reason my hoped for cosmic joke on the NFL will not come to pass. Great comedy requires a straight man. That would be the Raiders in this skit, and they have no reason to play the role. Except for publicity, Tom Brady would offer the new Vegasites nothing they're not getting from their incumbent starter Derek Carr. In fact, if we go by 2019, the Raiders are much better off with Carr.
In nearly every statistical category by which NFL quarterbacks are rated, Carr performed better than Brady this season, sometimes by dramatic margins. He completed 70 percent of his passes to Brady's 60. He averaged 7.9 yards an attempt to Brady's 6.6. Brady did edge Carr out in touchdown passes, 24 to 21, but he also threw exactly 100 more passes to do so.
Ah, but the Pats were 12-4 and the Raiders a most mediocre 7-9. Surely Brady was superior in the clutch moments when close games are won and lost.
Not so you could tell from the statistics, he wasn't. Brady had one fourth quarter comeback and one game winning drive in the regular season. Carr had two of the former and three of the latter. There are doubtless many reasons the Raiders were 7-9. It is hard to see how Carr was one of them. He had a good season for his team. Brady had an average one. Not average for him, average for anybody.
And of course there's the most obvious statistic of all. Carr will be 29 when the 2020 season begins in September. Brady will be 43. The Raiders may think they're a short term fix away from the Super Bowl. Many teams mistakenly think that. But Mike Mayock and Jon Gruden would be daft to think the fix is TB 12.
No, the Raiders almost surely won't be bidding for Brady's services. The harder one looks, the harder it becomes to see many teams that will. Only franchises with solid talent elsewhere and complete dysfunction at the quarterback position would find it worth their while. Few of those come to mind. The Chargers if Philip Rivers leaves the Bears, the Buccaneers, the Colts maybe. That's about it.
Then again, if Brady does leave New England, the Patriots will instantly become one such franchise and in a big way. The logic for both the team and Brady to renew the vows of their long if not currently happy marriage remains strong. As time rolls on towards March 18, that strength will grow.
Without Brady, the Patriots need a completely new starter. He's still the best quarterback in the AFC East, an admittedly small honor indeed. The idea it'd be easy to find that caliber replacement on short notice is silly. Brady may have been average this season. Andy Dalton just plain stunk. Counting on Jarret Stidham to step in without a hitch is hoping the Pats win the lottery twice with the same ticket.
If Brady wants to play for a team good enough to make the playoffs and contend there, well, he's already on one. That's what happened in 2019. The Patriots took Tom Brady to the playoffs, not the reverse.
The Weed of Crime Bears Stupid Fruit
The laws have probably changed by now, but for a very long time, California allowed one and only one form of table gambling as legal. Draw poker, a legislature and governor once agreed "was a game of skill, not chance." Stud poker, on the other hand, was the devil's tool, not much different than three-card monte.
This nonsensical position came to my mind as a first reaction to baseball's Great Astros Videotape Scandal, an event that has likely ended the careers of managers A.J. Hinch and Alex Cora and led to the usual unhallelujah chorus of the stuck-up scolds who seem to comprise an unhealthily large percentage of the horsehide pundit class. A World Series winner cheated! Oh, woe. Won't somebody think of the children who weren't allowed to stay up late enough to catch pitch one of the 2017 Fall Classic?
Yet the very rule issued by the Commissioner's Office outlawing real time video sign stealing made it clear that low-tech sign stealing by use of uniformed personnel's five senses was perfectly fine. That's not cheating, just more of the game's roguish, colorful history, like ogling women in the stands from the bullpen.
Throughout said history, baseball has let a LOT of cheating slide with only the mildest of penalties and no blemish at all on the reputations of the cheaters. The spitball and doctoring the ball by artificial means in general were outlawed in 1920. Gaylord Perry is an honored member of the Hall of Game. Cork a bat? If the ump catches it, you get ejected and likely draw a suspension. A season-long suspension? No way. Boys will be boys after all.
No, there have been only three cheating scandals in all baseball where the sport has responded with stern and strict justice untempered by mercy. First came the Black Sox. Perfectly understandable there, no sport can have competitors trying to lose on purpose. Even there, NFL and NBA team managements can create rosters seeking dismal seasons in pursuit of draft picks and draw little more than furrowed brows.
The second baseball scandal to draw an actual serious response from its management was the PED use explosion in the '90s and early '00s. Again, this is perfectly understandable. It played into our society's many irrational attitude towards DRUGS. But it also was a reaction to a demonstrable fact. PED use had a significant impact on player performance, and a significantly unfair one. The better a batter or pitcher was in the first place, the more benefit he got from PED use. Mark McGwire would've hit a great many homers no matter what. Seventy in a season? Probably not. Barry Bonds was the best all-around player in the sport. Then he started PEDs, and he made said sport a joke.
By common consent, including that of the player's union, this could not go on, and so the current testing and punishment regime has been around since the '00s. Only a cynic would note baseball's recent decision to physically alter the ball itself to allow for more of the home runs lost in the PED crackdown, so consider it duly noted.
Now we have this. I know the real reason the punishments dealt to the Astros were so severe (except for owner Jim Crane of course, owners are never responsible for anything bad in sports) is that the video sign stealing defied a 2017 edict by commissioner Rob Manfred, as weak tyrants cannot defiance by those safely beneath them in the pecking order. Yet Major League Baseball has yet to issue the most cogent defense of its sort-of-draconian stance. Video sign stealing was too efficient a means of cheating. Like PEDs, it gave the already advantaged player more advantage still.
Here's an oversimplified analogy. If you or I stepped into the batter's box to face Clayton Kershaw and knew what pitch he was going to throw, it would do us no good whatsoever. We still couldn't touch it. If a .200 hitting benchwarmer got the same break, he might improve to the .250 level, which ain't hay. But if Alex Bregman or Jose Altuve receives the same information, we move to another level. They become .400 hitters with power. It's insider trading for All-Stars.
So in one sense, the steep falls taken by Cora, Hinch and Co. are justified. In another, they are not. When some cheating is treated with a wink, all forms of cheating will be explored. Baseball is not populated by grown men playing a little boy's game. It is and always has been populated with psychopathically competitive men playing a cutthroat competitive sport for the highest of stakes. To expect such people not to blow past rules, let alone norms, is insane.
Would Ty Cobb have participated in a video replay scheme? Let's ask him. He's over there in the corner of Hell's dugout sharpening his spikes. Had the technology been available, Leo Durocher would've bugged the pitching rubber at the Polo Grounds.
No, the only way to prevent baseball cheating is to not put temptation in the way of baseball people in the first place. The best solution to video replay surveillance is to get rid of replay as part of the sport. This will never happen because once a sport lets replay in, it stays there forever. It makes all sports worse for spectators, but that doesn't count.
The most practical solution, which I've seen proposed by others, is to not let ballclubs have access to the replay system. Let managers base their challenges to calls on the evidence of their own eyes alone, so that only egregiously blown calls would draw them. You know, the way replay is supposed to function.
This won't happen either. Baseball is planning to move boldly in the other direction, because baseball's propensity for the wrong move is as old as sign stealing.
Before too long, the home plate umpire calling balls and strikes will be replaced by a computerized electronic ump whose calls allegedly will be devoid of human error. I've seen Angel Hernandez work many games behind the plate, so I understand the motive here, but this is a clear case of worsening by improvement.
Shortly after the electronic, computerized home plate umpire is installed, it will be hacked. Might be hacked by a demented fan, an Albanian thief, or some low level analytics employee in a team's office, but hacked it will be. And baseball will long for the days of the late Eric Gregg's strike zone.
Don't think that could happen? Do you follow the business news much? Or for that matter, the political news?
It's a Team Sport, Part Infinity Plus One
The elimination of the Ravens from the NFL playoffs last night continues the league's most singular streak for another year. Baltimore QB Lamar Jackson is going to be MVP. He will also be the 20th MVP in succession whose team did not win the Super Bowl that season. It hasn't happened in this century. Kurt Warner and the Rams were the last to pull this double in the 1999 season.
What takes this streak from "that's weird" to "that's eerie" is that this century has seen players with both multiple MVPs and multiple Super Bowl championships, just not in the same seasons. Peyton Manning and Tom Brady have both eight MVP awards (Manning five, Brady three) and NFL titles (Brady six, Manning two) between them. For good measure Aaron Rodgers has two MVPs and one Super Bowl title. But the two honors have never overlapped.
Brady has what to him must be a galling distinction. The three seasons where he was the losing quarterback in the Super Bowl were the very three where he won the MVP, in 2007, 2011 and 2017. For that matter, Manning was 2-2 in Super Bowls, and he was MVP the two seasons his team lost, 2009 and 2013. They are part of a trend. MVP winners have gone 0 for 8 in the Super Bowl from the 2000 season on, which means that in 12 other seasons, such as this one, they didn't even get to the title game.
At first I thought this might be because the MVP has devolved into the Quarterback of the Year award, and the QB with the gaudiest stats of the regular season is less than a cinch in the playoffs, where opponents usually have a pretty good one, too. A little research informed me I was mistaken. Since Super Bowl I to now, 54 NFL seasons, the league MVP has also been on the Super Bowl champions nine times. The current century's bad luck for the award winners is not so much a drought as a winning streak for the norm.
Today's divisional games will feature four exceptional quarterbacks, DeShaun Watson, Patrick Mahomes, Aaron Rodgers and Russell Wilson. Two of them have been MVPs and certainly the other could win it before their playing days are done. They are by far the most important (another word for valuable) players on their teams. But by definition, two of them will not be on a Super Bowl winner this year. "Most important" does not mean "all important." Pro football tells us that every year. Why won't we listen?
Mike Vrabel Leads the NFL to the Future Past
Titans quarterback Ryan Tannehill passed for 72 yards against the Patriots in the wild card round. He threw for only 88 last night against the Ravens. Tennessee, of course, won both games.
Believe it or not, this is not the first time this has happened in the Super Bowl era. Three other NFL teams accomplished the same odd feat of not passing for 100 yards in two playoff wins. Those were the 1972 and 1973 Dolphins and the 1974 Steelers. All of them of course won Super Bowl titles.
Equally of course, all three of them played when football was a very different sport with very different rules than it is today. No matter to the Titans. Their plan for revolutionizing pro football is to take it a half-century back in time.
There's No Algorithm for Funny Bounces
Suppose a more or less normal football fan had been awakened by a genie yesterday morning and was told that Lamar Jackson would have over 500 total yards for the Ravens while Ryan Tannehill would pass for only 88 yards for the Titans in last night's playoff game. A reckless and greedy fan would go out and bet the house and car on Baltimore.
Said fan would be sleeping at the bus station tonight, because the Titans won 28-12 and were never really threatened in the game. Meanwhile, a more cautious and informed fan would have told the genie "insufficient data," rolled over and gone back to sleep. He or she would have known that yards gained are to football what base hits are to baseball. Can't win without 'em, but they don't have a one-to-one relationship to the scoreboard.
If my genie had added the following phrase. "BUT, Tennessee will have no turnovers and the Ravens will have three and fail to convert two fourth and ones" even the greediest fan would keep their wallet in their pocket and be sleeping in their own warm bed. Had the genie added "Oh, yeah, Derrick Henry will run for 195 yards" even a prudent fan might've made a little flutter on Tennessee pulling the upset.
Football is not a linear sport, which is why the very smart people who trade in its "analytics" speak in a language hard for the rest of us to comprehend. They're smart enough to know that no other game has so many wildly different variables, and their efforts to encompass all of them into formulas and/or game plans get complicated, too complicated for those for whom it's not a life's work. But a long time ago, a then-Patriots player told me in a single sentence what all that math must account for.
Sean Farrell was a pretty good guard in the 1980s (those seeking truth in an NFL locker room should always head to where the offensive linemen dress. They are football's working class. Quarterbacks are management). One day he said, "A football game has five or six big plays and all the rest is filler."
Just so. The Titans pitched a shutout on the big play scoreboard against Baltimore. From Jackson's first interception to Henry's 66 yard run that broke the game open for keeps to their four for four in red zone touchdowns, the Titans were ludicrously dominant in the game's decisive moments. Baltimore won all the filler and a lot of good it did 'em.
New England fans may recall that the Titans won all the big plays in their 20-13 win over the Pats last week. Other stats were more even than they were last night, but otherwise pick a memorable moment in that game and it's a Tennessee highlight, not a Patriot one.
Running the ball and winning with big plays is an old and perfectly valid plan for winning football games. It is, however, dependent on the sports' most random variable, the fact those big plays can take place on ANY of the 120 or so plays in a game. You only know which ones they were after the fact. Without at least one of the sport's elemental strengths, no team will dominate the big plays enough to win.
Tennessee would not be in the AFC championship game without one of the most prosaic elements in football, a cliche known for over a century, yet also a part of the sport that is subject to the most sophisticated and detailed data analysis. The Titans went on the road and held an offense led by the greatest quarterback of his time to 13 points. It went on the road again and held the league's leading offense and the season's record-shattering MVP quarterback to 12. That's not funny bounces. That's not a fluke or two. That's basic.
Keep 'em out of the end zone, your team usually wins.
The Path of Least Resistance Is Always the Path Most Trodden
Tom Brady went on Instagram to tell the world he wants to play more football. Some NFL franchise will grant him this wish. Without the slightest inside insight into a man I haven't spoken to in 15 years, I am fairly sure that franchise will be the New England Patriots. It's the most sensible outcome, and when the topic is football, most of the time Brady, Bill Belichick and Robert Kraft are sensible people.
Inertia is a powerful force in human affairs, and the inertia drawing those three men to decide to stick together a few more seasons is particularly strong. It all boils down to the simplest of questions. Why wouldn't they?
Brady will be a free agent on March 18th, a status he requested and got with his last contract extension. We all like to be liked, and Brady doubtless relished the idea of being courted. But there's flirtation, and then there's breaking up the home for a new partner. For every human who does the latter, 20,000 or so stick to the former. Disruption of the familiar is scarier than it is exciting.
Brady wants a big annual salary number. The guy has his own frickin' island, so professional pride must be the reason. My guess is that the Pats will give it to him. Again, why wouldn't they?
The only surefire way Brady leaves New England is if the Pats offer him a sum he considers an insult to his professional pride. He'd be sure to let the world that was the reason, too. No coach and few owners have made gutsier personnel calls than Belichick and Kraft, but basically saying they think Tom Brady is washed up would be an all-timer. If he turned out not to be, life in Foxboro would be less than pleasant for those running the show.
Besides, those saying the Pats should cut ties with Brady (mostly trolls, I notice) ignore the small issue of who'd play quarterback come Opening Day 2020. The problem of replacing Brady, which is likely unsolvable without massive luck, would move from a serious issue of medium-term planning to a five-alarm emergency that would consume the franchise's every thought. Belichick may relish the idea of locating, acquiring and training a long-term Brady replacement, but he's probably less enthusiastic about having to do so by September 13th.
No, far better than to give Tom a two year deal with sufficient money to placate his pride and work quietly on the new QB issue. The best break Brady got in his career was the 2000 season in which he was a third-string backup in utter obscurity, improving every day away from the eyes of everyone but Belichick. His eventual unlucky replacement deserves the same courtesy.
Besides an argument over money (source of the end of many a previously happy marriage), the only other conceivable motive for Brady leaving would be a pigskin midlife crisis. He could decide that a new team would offer fun and excitement he's not getting from the Patriots after 20 years.
Just writing that sentence makes me feel it's utterly absurd. I can't think of anyone less likely to have a midlife crisis of any kind than Brady. He's too naturally sunshiny.
Brady's also a football realist, realist to know there's a limit to the fun and excitement his potential suitors can offer a man who defines those two nouns as "winning." Consider the following. 2019 was the least successful season for Brady and the Patriots in a decade. The team won 12 games and lost 5. The three teams most frequently mentioned as landing spots for Brady are the Chargers, Titans and Dolphins. Those three teams won 12 games ONCE between the three of them in those 10 years.
I'm sure there's a part of Brady's brain that says to him, "you can make loser franchise X a winner." Sports people always think like that. Joe Judge took the Giants job, didn't he? But Brady's already with a team that looks pretty far from championship caliber right now. Far more fun, excitement and glory in bringing the Pats back to their accustomed level of triumph, all accomplished without the need to call Allied Van Lines.
People are complicated and accomplished people more complicated than the rest of us. There's no doubt I'm oversimplifying the thoughts and emotions of three extraordinarily accomplished men. But Tom Brady stays or goes is a binary decision, and those tend to boil down to powerful but simple motives.
For both parties in that decision, there are far more good reasons to keep their relationship going than to end it. Brady and the Patriots may no longer be overjoyed with each other. But they have been and can be content in their sticking together. Contentment is an underrated pleasure of a good long-term relationship.
Nobody Wants to Hear "You Look Good for Your Age."
Tom Brady didn't get the week off he of all Patriots wanted most and a big part of it was his own fault, the pick-six he threw against the Dolphins last Sunday that would've been part of a comic highlight reel if it'd been launched by Jameis Winston.
Big does not imply "most important." New England lost its bye week and to the Dolphins for that most prosaic and often overlooked reason in sports -- Miami played better. Overall, Brady had an OK game, but Ryan Fitzpatrick had an outstanding one. Davonte Parker went one on one with Pats' All-Pro cornerback Stephon Gilmore and won the matchup far more often than not. If it weren't for those two and the rest of the Dolphins offense, the storyline this week would have been the tedious "Brady pulls it out as he always does" mantra after any kind of close Patriots' win.
But those two were there, so this week's storyline has been the even more tedious "does Brady have what it takes to win another Super Bowl?" mantra, one that has pretty much been an annoying mosquito buzz in our region's collective ear since Halloween. Some of that is also Brady's fault. The raging perfectionism that has made him an historic player boils over into pique when he and the Pats offense fail to live up to his standards. Immortals are like that, which is so many Greek myths are unpleasant tales. But the rest of us should take the nasty "wither Brady?" question at face value.
Its answer is quite revealing. A close examination of Brady's 2019 season is merely ample evidence for the off-the-cuff answer that pops into the brain as soon as the question is asked. "Can Brady quarterback another Super Bowl champion?" Sure, depending. Can Brady's Pats lose to the Titans on Saturday? Also sure, depending. The other 44 Pats are what it depends on.
Let's start with some obvious truths. This was far from Brady's best season as a pro and it got significantly worse in its second half when the Pats began playing actual NFL teams. He had an overall passer rating of 88.6, OK but no more. (passer rating is a flawed stat, but all football stats are flawed. We need 'em anyway). He had an over 100 rating, shorthand for a really good game, in only one of the Pats' final eight, in the 24-17 win over the Bills.
At the defense table, Brady's mouthpiece issues an objection. That rating is HIGHER than for Brady's 2001 and 2003 seasons, when he and New England won the first two of their six Super Bowls. Furthermore, in the four games this season where Brady had his lowest passer ratings, the Pats won three of them.
All true. The first stat cited, however, must be viewed in light of the fact Brady has been playing for roughly one-fifth of the NFL's entire existence. The sport has changed a great deal in two decades, all to the benefit of passers. A 2001 stat is not strictly applicable to today. Comparing Brady to his peers of 2019, we find his rating stood 18 among NFL quarterbacks. In a league of 32 teams, that's not so hot.
As for the second point of Brady's defense, it points to a football truth no amount of owner rules-tinkering can change. It is quite possible to win a championship with just OK or even mediocre quarterbacking if a team has a dominant defense (see Peyton Manning and 2015 Broncos, Brad Johnson and the 2002 Bucs, etc.) A team with a dominant QB and a mediocre defense cannot (see the entire careers of Dan Fouts and Warren Moon).
Brady could have weak games against the Eagles, Cowboys and Bills (first time around) and New England won because it allowed a total of 29 points in the three victories. Brady played somewhat better but below his Hall of Fame standards against the Ravens, Texans and Chiefs and the Pats lost all three because their defense was far, far less than dominant.
Talk radio trolls assume that Brady's lack of good cheer this season is because he's mad at the other players on offense. No doubt sometimes he is. But there are cold hard fact indications he has come to terms with his 2019 reality better than he gets credit for. In the Tom vs. Time bout, there are some punches he's just gotta try to block, not counter.
Of all the many passing stats compiled by the invaluable pro-football reference.com, Brady's worst 2019 performances are in the gunslinger departments. He was 27th among QBs in yards gained per pass attempt and 25th in percentage of touchdown passes compared to pass attempts. The only category where Brady is in the top 10 is the opposite of a gunslinger number. He was eighth in interceptions thrown percentage with 1.3 percent. And it should be noted that since interceptions are so rare nowadays except in Tampa, one less pick and he'd be near or at the top.
To translate numbers into words, it sure seems as if Brady has adjusted to a situation where his prime directive as a QB is first do no harm. And the evidence of our own eyes supports that notion. Brady has been more willing to abort plays with throwaways that look terrible and to take early sacks than in the past. Anything but a pick. He looks at the 2019 Pats and knows he can't do that. That accounts for his public self-criticism session on the radio the day after the Miami loss. That pick wasn't anybody's fault but his and he knows it.
The Patriots are now considered Super Bowl longshots not because Brady is in decline, but because it's just damn hard to win back-to-back-to-back games against playoff teams, two on the road, simply to reach it. But given my druthers, I'd prefer to enter the postseason with a quarterback who knows what he and his team can and cannot do to one who's sure his own abilities, no matter how great, can overcome any obstacle. That way lies late-career Brett Favre.
Nobody in the world of pro football, from owner down to fan at the end of the bar in Anytown, USA, will be surprised if the Pats win yet another title. Nobody will be surprised if they don't, either. No matter the outcome, Tom Brady will be a big but not the biggest reason it happened.
One final comment on statistics. Can you name the NFL leader in both passer rating and yards per attempt this season? That would be Ryan Tannehill of the Tennessee Titans. Any reader who sees that and wants to take the Titans and the five points is more than welcome to come over Saturday night and watch the game at my house.
