homegame

The Seven Ages of (NFL Super) Men

Sports time is different from real time. It is compressed, moving at a speed beyond the power of theoretical physics to envision. Only in sports can a 29-year old be described, quite realistically, as "aging," the silly synonym for "getting kind of old."

Those who step inside the world of sports as observers or fans adjust so effortlessly to this sense of accelerated time that we forget it's a way of looking at a part of time, not real time itself. The participants in big time sports age in sports time terms, but they also age in real time. And that duality I think explains why Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, two men who've aged to Old Testament lengths in sports time, have come to a parting of the ways.

Human nature is a better explanation for the Brady-Patriots divorce than money.  The significant fact about Brady's negotiations with New England since the 2019 season ended is that they never really took place. Each side had a proposal the other wouldn't even scoff at on January 5, and that's where matters stood until yesterday.  It is foolish to engage in the talk show dialectic of "whose fault is this" when it seems so clear both Brady and Belichick were ready for their separation long before it happened.

Why is that? Of course I'm guessing, but for a change of pace, I'm going to base my guess on treating two complex individuals as people rather than as cardboard cutouts in the NFL Takes Expanded Universe.

Brady is 42, as you may have heard. Forget the two decades of historic success, that is an age where the human male often gets a little restless. I'm not going to call it a "midlife crisis" because Brady's too positive a soul for such a thing, and besides, it's ridiculous. What's he gonna do, buy a sports car? Owns six. Have an affair with a supermodel? Uhh... No, if Brady's looking for something new, it'd be in his professional life. Not only has he worked for the same business for 20 years, which is rare enough in 21st century America, but he's had the same person as his boss all that time. He may be the only worker in 21st century America who can say that.  It wouldn't be surprising in the least if Brady was finding life as a New England Patriot getting a trifle stale.

That doesn't mean Brady hated life here, or that he couldn't stand to be in Belichick's presence for another second. It could mean that Brady found the idea of approaching his 21st season with a new team and new challenges refreshing. So much of football is so dull for the participants. All those meetings, all those practices of all those same plays, all that weight lifting in between. It shows how powerful a drug competition is that players do it at all, let alone for two decades.

Put yourself in Brady's position. The problem with being the greatest ever at what you do is that new worlds to conquer get much harder to find. Which would seem more of a mountain to scale, more of a thrill ride to pursue, chasing a seventh Super Bowl with the Patriots, or chasing being the first quarterback to win Super Bowls for two different teams? If the Buccaneers are willing to put a $60 million guaranteed price on that quest, why what a happy coincidence.

I assure you Brady is aware of the less-than-storybook endings of the careers of almost all great NFL quarterbacks. He doesn't care, nor should he. If he did, he wouldn't be one of the greats in the first place.

His age gets mentioned far less often that Brady's, but next month Bill Belichick turns 68. At that age, a man's thoughts turn end games, of the places, people and institutions he will sooner rather than later leave behind. For a CEO, which is what Belichick is with the Pats (Bob Kraft is the entire board of directors), that means planning a future for the organization so that it will prosper even after the CEO departs to what in Bill's case is the most well-earned retirement in business history.

One needn't be pro football's greatest coach ever to see what the main challenge facing the Pats was for the last two years at least. What will the team do to replace an irreplaceable superstar when he departs, as he will soon no matter how much we're winning right now?

Knotty problem that. Belichick is the smartest coach ever, and I wouldn't give him a one in three chances of solving it. And by solving, I mean "keep the Pats a consistent playoff team." Forget more Super Bowls. That'd be luckier than getting Brady in the sixth round.

So it is easy to imagine Belichick spending most of the 2019 season with an ever-growing part of his football brain thinking "got to do this sooner than later. My time's growing shorter in this game, too." And taking the steps, or in this case taking no steps at all, to insure that Brady would force the problem of his replacement from theory to reality.

Maybe I'm a chump. Maybe Brady and Belichick could no longer stand each other's physical presence. But I don't think so. Both men are not skilled liars, and their professions of mutual admiration have the ring of truth. I believe they knew their paths would separate long before March 2020, long before that last interception against the Titans, maybe as long ago as the Super Bowl win against the Rams. If it took this long for the separation to play out, it's a testament to how strong the bond was each man thought it would be best to break.

People are complicated, and accomplished people more complex than most. When Brady and Belichick think of each other today, I'm sure there's some anger. But there's a lot more sadness. And most all, right now, I think there's relief.

Art is not eternal, not even in the NFL. The greatest artists know this.

posted by Michael Gee @ 12:22 PM