| In today’s FOX Sports Insider: Tom Brady welcomes the world to his new, true self … the NBA is officially set to host a HORSE competition, featuring a future Hall of Famer … and Stephen Curry continues his admirable work during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. A person can say a lot in two hours and 10 minutes. Even then, the biggest takeaway from Tom Brady’s remarkable conversation with Howard Stern was a glaringly obvious statement that was left unspoken. With his words and actions and the simple fact that he was there, on the (remote) hotseat with the shock jock legend, Brady was declaring on Wednesday, “Welcome to the new me.” Doing interviews with Howard Stern is not the Patriot Way. Neither is talking publicly in depth and detail about both football matters and football emotions. And, most certainly, neither is getting into topics as serious as the state of your marriage or as frivolous as the structure of Rob Gronkowski’s private parts. This was indeed the new Brady, and let’s be honest about this — there was a lot to like about it. Greatness in sports and the men and women who attain it have a certain fascination about them. Some of them lay it out there for us to peek under the hood. Some keep it all buttoned up. |
Brady, during his time in New England, was a dutiful company servant. For the most part, he toed the Patriot line. He rarely spoke out of turn. He spoke often, as leading figures in the most popular sport in the country tend to do, but rarely were the answers particularly enlightening. And that’s exactly how the Patriots wanted it. An organization follows in the mold of its most influential figurehead. As we’ve seen from the mere fact that Brady is no longer there, that person is head coach Bill Belichick. And Belichick says nothing. Literally nothing. His answers would be more revelatory during press conferences if he kept his lips entirely sealed and drew a series of doodles instead. He has made dodging probing questions an art form, and he doesn’t care. It is by design. It is his method. Things in Foxborough are orchestrated with one intent. Winning is everything, and personalities take second fiddle. Players fall into line behind that.  That’s not the case for Brady anymore. He wasn’t just brought to South Florida to win football games. For the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to have landed his signature is one of the most monumental marketing triumphs in NFL history. Think about it for a minute. The Bucs organization persuaded a six-time Super Bowl champion to come to the franchise with the worst winning percentage in American pro sports. They’re entitled to crow a little bit. They want the world to know that Brady is theirs, and they want Brady to be Brady. The real Brady, not the corporate, toned down, say-the-right-thing kind of guy. They want him to be the biggest figure in football, because he is. They want every word he says to make national news. He is Tom Brady, for goodness’ sake. Why not? Brady unfiltered is, as it turns out, really entertaining. He sounds like a fun guy. On Stern, he sounded eminently likable, the type of guy you would want to have a beer with, albeit a low alcohol, ultra-low calorie one made with organic hops. For nearly two decades, Brady undertook a weekly segment with local Boston radio station WEEI during football season. WEEI’s Rob Bradford spoke to the producers who had handled Brady’s slot during that time on Wednesday. Both noticed a marked difference. “For the first 12 (years), producer Steve Ciaccio was the one who answered the phone when Brady would call,” Bradford wrote. “For the past seven years, it has been Chris Curtis. If anybody knows the peaks and valleys of what was usually the week’s most anticipated interview, from August through January, it is these two. “But talking to both after digesting the quarterback’s back-and-forth with Howard Stern, neither Ciaccio or Curtis could recall hearing ‘that’ Tom Brady.” Part of the credit must go to Stern. The 66-year-old is a megastar in his own right, and it is not often Brady talks to someone just as famous and even more wealthy than he. Stern was also unburdened in that he had never interviewed Brady before and perhaps never will again. He could ask anything he wanted, and he did. There was the comical and the bizarre, everything from smoking weed in high school to President Trump’s past attempts to play matchmaker between Brady and his daughter Ivanka, to why football players still shower together, to life as Derek Jeter’s tenant. And there was really meaningful stuff too, both about Brady’s life and how it pertains to football. His divulgences about his marriage troubles were intimate, honest and profound. “I had to make a big transition in my life to say, ‘I can’t do all the things that I wanted to do for football like I used to. I’ve got to take care of things in my family,’” Brady said. “Because my family, the situation wasn’t great. (Wife Gisele Bundchen) wasn’t satisfied with our marriage. So, I needed to make a change in that.” Brady also admitted that he knew he would be leaving before the start of last season, because of the way his contract had been shaped. He told how he doesn’t spend a moment thinking about his legacy. Tellingly, he voiced frustration about the ongoing sports conversation related to whether he would have been as good as he has been without Belichick’s influence. “Would I have had the same level of success without him?” he said. “I don’t believe I would. But I feel the same vice versa as well,” before deriding the topic as a “pretty (expletive) argument.” It was Tom Brady, uncut. It was, in some ways, the final cut, severing the emotional strings to not only the Patriots but to the old Brady, the way he used to do things. He is ready, it seems, to start living and acting like the biggest personality in sports. We are ready, too. We will be watching. It is going to be a lot of fun. Here’s what others have said … Michael Hurley, CBS Boston: “Alas, Tom Brady said revenge is not on his mind at all. And he even admitted to Howard Stern on Wednesday that he doesn’t want all the credit for his six Super Bowl victories and unprecedented success. He believes he wouldn’t have reached those heights without Belichick. … ‘Because I can’t do his job and he can’t do mine,’ Brady said. ‘The fact that you could say, would I be successful without him, the same level of success? I don’t believe I would have been.’” Nancy Armour, USA Today : “But it was Brady’s telling of a rough patch with Gisele Bundchen two years ago that might have been most revealing about why he left New England and signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers last month. Bundchen had grown unhappy at what Brady described as him taking advantage of her. His wife would take care of their children and their household during football season, but Brady said he didn’t realize he had been operating under the assumption she would do the same during his offseason. It wasn’t that they no longer loved each other or that he’d lost respect for her. Rather, Brady said it was a good reminder that healthy relationships don’t function on autopilot. ‘Things are going to evolve and change over time,’ he said. ‘What worked for us 10 years ago won’t work for us forever because we’re growing in different ways.’ And so it was with Brady and New England.” Deion Sanders, NFL Network: “I’ve been there, I’ve done that, I understand. Ladies and gentlemen, you know when you reach a point in a relationship — man, it’s time to go. This is not productive anymore. This is not what it once used to be. I’m not happy coming here every day doing the things we once did, smiling for no reason, the jokes ain’t even funny. It’s over. That’s pretty much what it is. You can’t blame Coach Belichick, you can’t blame anyone in management, front office. You can’t blame anyone. You can’t blame Tom. It was just time to move on.” |
