As Tom Brady’s celebration night at Raymond James Stadium nears the end of the most definitive Super Bowl victory of his career, he sits in front of a camera for his news conference. As he navigates questions, his eyes occasionally wander past the screen and connect with the teammates passing by. And in a moment that would ripple across social media, Brady caught Rob Gronkowski in his face level and called out to the player who will be inextricably linked to his BOK CV.
“Robby-G!” Exclaims Brady. “Robby-G!”
Brady gave a double wink in the distance, then grinned and gestured.
“Congratulations, baby,” he said. “I’ll see you later.”
Brady punctuated the exchange with a small fist pump and another double wink, delivering a lively stream-poison of narrative contentment.
You will never convince me that the moment had nothing to do with Bill Belichick. Just like you will never convince me that Brady and Gronkowski do not find a way of prestige after leaving the regimental discipline of the New England Patriots to look for the fun in football again. Both are determined to prove that joy and winning are not binary, and that both can be embraced simultaneously.
The pursuit brought Brady and Gronkowski together in Tampa Bay and brought about the entire 2020 effort. Start with Brady’s insistence that joy in a football season can be a journey as well as a destination.
And as we saw Sunday night, Brady proved he was right – the Patriot Way can be transplanted and supplemented. It seems that an NFL team can be disciplined, confident, hardworking and still have a constant sense of enjoyment during the process, even if the plan does not work out perfectly. For at least one season, the Buccaneers, Brady and Gronkowski have proven that the concept of it all is not a fool. It is admirable and achievable. And it does not seem to require Bill Belichick to carry it out.
For those who want to resist the very popular and ongoing story of the bond between Brady and Belichick, I get it. Not everything in professional football has to be to choose side. Especially when the best performances of the best quarterback and coach in NFL history are likely to stand the test of time and all challengers will return – including Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid. For many people, and perhaps even for many Patriots fans, it will be enough to look at the whole of the New England dynasty and appreciate it for what it was: a lasting gift of greatness that could never be diminished by anything that came after that.
Of course, not everyone is going to feel that way. Fandom and football history are simply too greedy to not wonder what could have been. Especially if there are Super Bowl rings involved.
And in the vein, there is suddenly no doubt that Belichick has undoubtedly been included in a subcategory of the Patriots Way that until 2020 will only support the assistant coaches and players who have left the womb through the GOATS of coaching and quarterback. And the subcategory is as follows: many achieved greatness in New English culture, but almost no one repeated the greatness without Belichick and Brady. Players and coaches would win, leave, get paid in the process and then languish as they tried to reach the summit without Bill and Tom.
Well, here we are again on the mountaintop and suddenly it’s a party of Tom and no one else.
By now, everyone knows the simple math. Brady as an individual has more Super Bowls than any team in NFL history. These include the Pittsburgh Steelers and Patriots franchises, both of which have six pieces. And within math, the inevitable reality is that Belichick as head coach has six New England Super Bowl rings, but without Brady as his fullback, without a zero. It makes him a bit like the other guys who left the New England system and could not do it without a GOAT carrying the load.
Belichick do has two other Super Bowl rings as defense coordinator for the New York Giants. If we are accurate, his overall ring count exceeds Brady’s eight titles. But history will always remember the dividing line of what the two did together as head coach and quarterback, followed by what they did separately. And at the moment, Brady suddenly seems to be carrying more of the Patriots’ cargo than his critics wanted to believe.
We can try to buy that the credit game does not matter to Belichick or Brady. After all, they were both quite exuberant in their praise for each other and tried to link the incessant measurement of each other against each other. And we can also try to pretend that some Patriots fans are not upset right now, after seeing a precious relationship uncomfortably resolved, followed by an icon who is blissfully blissful elsewhere. But accepting one of the suggestions means ignoring what happened. Brady and Belichick done divided in the midst of a frozen relationship. And just the social media showed a large number of Patriots fans who had a hard time understanding why it was a better scenario to roll the dice with Cam Newton, while Brady had a mediocre 7-9 Buccaneers team after a Super Bowl victory. It’s probably worth noting here that Brady’s latest Super Bowl victory also took place in Boston with higher television ratings than in Tampa, which says a lot about whether Patriots fans still care about him.
All of this suggests that it will linger at Belichick – perhaps even to the point that it has an impact on how we remember his stature as the greatest coach in NFL history. Because what Brady did Sunday was to add an asterisk to it. A qualifying player who opens the door for some who point out what is real at the moment: Belichick had great success with the Patriot Way when Tom Brady was in the building. Then Brady leaves and takes the Patriot Way with him, leaving Belichick behind to accomplish all he can in his remaining days. In the first year after Brady, it wasn’t much. Now, every consecutive year is only going to put more pressure on Bill to show that he is still the same great coach when he presents his own single buck show. None of this takes into account what could happen if Brady repeats this 2020 success for another season in Tampa. At that point, we might just have to end the score altogether and officially update The Patriot Way to The Brady Effect.
Not that Brady did it all in 2020 alone. He did not. The Buccaneers had a talented roster before he got there. And the Super Bowl victory was hoisted by Tampa Bay defense and coordinator Todd Bowles just as it was Brady. But it would be a mistake not to admit that it was Brady who also made the major impact on the import of two other former patriots in Gronkowski and Antonio Brown – who together captured all three of Brady’s passes against the Chiefs. It was also Brady’s draw that landed running back Leonard Fournette, who played a key role against Kansas City. And of course, there were the pandemic workouts and Brady’s impact on the offense and his pre-Super Bowl text messages and his endless expectations for teammates to work as hard as he did. It’s all a feature of who he became within the Patriot Way and with Belichick.
Now he is a man apart. He creates his own success away from the womb he and Belichick built. And he does it his way, with the blessing of a coaching staff, front office and roster who would love to be with him.
While Buccaneers coach Bruce Arians put it on Monday: ‘It was a very, very talented football team [in 2019]. But we really did not know how to win. And if you bring in a winner and he manages the ship, it makes a total difference – in your dressing room [and] every time we walk out into the field. We came back twice with 17 points lower. I think the leadership that Tom brings, and his attitude that, ‘Hey, let’s go play. It’s never over before it’s over, and we’re going to win this thing somehow. ‘It permeated our entire dressing room, and he believes we’re going to do it. And because we knew he was there and did it, our guys believed it. It changed our entire football team. ”
It’s hard to know what to label it for. Words like presence and leadership seem too small and ordinary to explain seven Super Bowl tips. But Brady has it. He wears it, uses it, sells it and makes others believe that it really is where it matters most: on a soccer field.
Now it’s up to Belichick to show that he can meet the standard without Brady. Whether it’s doing the right staff movements, finding another iconic quarterback or putting together a coaching masterpiece in 2021 or beyond, he’s getting his job cut out now. Brady certainly answered whether one of the two could survive without his counterpart. All Belichick can do now is respond with a different title. Even if it was only to show that the consistency of his greatness was not largely driven by the star who ultimately showed that he could thrive without it.
Super Bowl LV from Yahoo Sports: