I awoke this morning in a splendid mood. I went downstairs, had a cup of coffee, and sat down to begin gathering stats for my blog. Yesterday, I saw a ranking of the top 10 NFL running backs in my facebook feed, and I thought I’d write my own. Those plans were soon disrupted, as I went onto ESPN was confronted with this startling report from Adam Schefter:
This very well could just be ESPN fishing for clicks, as they’re known to do, but let’s assume for now that the implication of this report is accurate and that Tom Brady’s future is at least somewhat up in the air.
While Schefter makes it clear in his article that Brady will most likely be back this year, the fact that his future is even a question is absolutely outrageous. The narrative for years has been that Brady was playing until his mid-40s and his voodoo doctor Alex Guerrero was going to be able to make that happen. I always thought, as most people did, that this notion of Brady playing to age 45 was a bit silly, but I definitely didn’t think he would even begin to consider retirement just months after he reportedly teamed up with Patriots Owner Robert Kraft to strong-arm Bill Belichick into trading Jimmy Garoppolo.
As Schefter points out in his piece, Brady will be missing at least part of the Patriots offseason program for the first time in eight years (the last time he did that, the Pats were later eliminated in the first round by the Jets). Simply put, his lack of explicit commitment to 2018 and beyond is worth some concern.
I suppose we should have seen this coming, as NFL reporter Albert Breer pointed out:
Not sure what he’s referring to? Here’s an excerpt put together by CBS Sports:
“It's a big commitment. I'm sitting here, laying here three days after the year getting my Achilles worked on, my thumb," Brady says, “And you go, What are we doing this for? … What are we doing this for? Who are we doing this for? Why are we doing this? You've got to have answers to those questions and they've got to be with a lot of conviction. When you lose your conviction, you should probably be doing something else.”
Oof.
I believe Brady is coming back in 2018, along with Rob Gronkowski, but there’s absolutely cause for concern--even if they do return for next season, can we count on them both to come back for 2019? Based on what has been reported, I’m not sure how we could be. This leads us to an important question: Will the Patriots be prepared for life without Brady and Gronkowski, their two best players? Well, since the Jimmy G trade, the Patriots have no successor to Brady, and they have a horrendous defense and a questionable offensive line. So the answer to is pretty clear: an emphatic no.
If Brady decides to retire before this season or next, I think it’s very reasonable to consider his actions a personal betrayal of Patriots Nation. Although I understand that the NFL is a business and that Brady has every right to decide his own future, I can’t help but be irked by the fact that he wouldn’t be 100% committed after his reported role in the Jimmy G trade. By forcing Belichick to trade Garoppolo, Kraft had to be convinced that Brady was going to be around for awhile longer, and if Brady reneges on that promise to Kraft, he would leave the Patriots it an incredibly difficult situation. It would be nothing other than a complete betrayal.
Should this worst case scenario come to pass, it is hard not to wonder whether history will see the trade of Jimmy G as a resemblance of the deal that sent Babe Ruth to the Yankees.
Will the Patriots have their own Curse of the Bambino? Only time will tell.
P.S.: I saw this absurd tweet from Barstool Sports writer Smitty:
I understand that this guy is a moronic Eagles fan, and I’m truly happy that he and his comrades have finally won a Super Bowl--I couldn’t imagine the Patriots being as horrid as the Eagles have been over the years. Imagine your team failing to win a Super Bowl until their 52nd season.
Yikes.
But this time of joy for Eagles fans does not excuse this idiotic take. Seriously, it’s one of the worst takes I’ve ever seen. The Eagles didn’t kill Tom Brady; Tom Brady slaughtered the Eagles defense and put up the greatest performance in Super Bowl history. It was the defense that let him down, so please, @SmittyBarstool, quiet down kid.
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