Brady Saw What We Did

ROBBINS NEST

By Lenn Robbins,The New York Extra/TheNYExtra.com

Of course, the GOAT’s timing is perfect.

Tom Brady called it quits after the most successful career in NFL history. He will go out on his own terms; playing like a 28-year-old at the age of 44. In his 22nd season, Brady completed 67.5-percent of his passes for 5,316 yards with 43 touchdowns and 12 interceptions.

He didn’t get the Buccaneers to back-to-back Super Bowls but few get to write a Hollywood ending, especially when they already penned a Hollywood career – seven Super Bowl championships, five Super Bowl MVPs and career records for touchdown passes (624) and passing yards (84,250).

No player, regardless of position, has done it better.

So why now? Yes, a 44-year-old body, regardless of how well-conditioned and maintained, doesn’t rebound as easily from the sacks and bloodied lips. Yes, he’s acknowledged it isn’t easy on his wife to see him take the hits. Yes, his children have reached the age when they’re not as willing to tie their schedule to their parent’s lives.

But perhaps there’s another factor here. Something subtler. Perhaps this is a part of Brady’s thinking: He saw what we saw last weekend. The quarterback position is changing.

Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen gave us the greatest playoff game in NFL history with two performances for the ages. They ran, they threw, they threw while running, they eluded tacklers, they played the game in completely-unBradylike fashion – and it was spectacular.

No one will ever play the game with the precision, confidence, and clutchness, if you will, that Brady did. Pick your favorite Brady moment:

Down 28-3 at halftime in a Super Bowl? No worries.

The fourth quarter of Super Bowl XLIX? Brady completed 13-of-15 passes for 124 and two touchdowns with a 140.7 rating in the fourth quarter.

That 2013 game against the Saints? Brady took the Pats 70 in 73 seconds with no timeouts, throwing a 17-yard touchdown pass with five seconds less to claim a 30-27 victory.

Was there ever a doubt?

“We never think we’re out it,” Tampa Bay tight end Cameron Brate told reporters. “The belief that he inspires in all of us — he’s done it on the biggest stage. We’ve seen him do it. We have a ton of confidence in him, and he puts that confidence in us.”

Mahomes, or Allen, or both, might go on to break some of Brady’s records (the seven Lombardi Trophies seems out of touch, like Yogi’s 10 World Series titles). But they won’t do it as Brady did. They will contort their bodies, gyrate their legs, dislocate their arms into polygon-like angles. Brady doesn’t do that. He never did.

No. 12 worked the pocket like a figure skater doing compulsories – well calculated moves in a tight space. He found crannies in short-yard situations and converted one-yard sneaks like a commuter cramming into a crowded subway car just before the doors close. When he surveyed the field, it was with the detached calculation of a predator determining exactly which prey to attack.

And, remember, no one saw this football assassin coming.

Unlike first-round draft choices Mahomes and Allen, Brady carried the chip of being the 199^th player chosen like one of his designer suits. Beneath those threads, under those shoulder pads, was the bitter sixth-round draft choice in 2000 that factored into Brady being the ultimate competitor.

The suggestion that he would walk away from the game because a couple of young bucks are on the scene is preposterous. We wouldn’t insult the GOAT with such foolishness. But Brady’s strength always has been his ability to see it all: The cornerback who is creeping up. The mismatch his tight end enjoys. The soft defense that isn’t positioned to stop the run.

“Watching him play, he is a surgeon,” Buccaneers coach Bruce Arians said of Brady.

A surgeon considers all the options before making the first cut.

Brady knows he can’t escape the new-breed defenders like Micah Parsons who can run down and pummel quarterbacks. When the pocket collapses, he can’t break off 34-yard runs and turn disaster into opportunity as Mahomes did last week against the Bills. He can’t run the option like Allen or Kyler Murray or Dak Prescott.

Factor it all in – his health, his family, the younger, more elite athletes who are reshaping the game that Brady has dominated with his mind, arm, touch and leadership. He saw what we did last weekend. That beautiful mind is processing it all.

The time appears to be right. Let Mahomes and Allen and Murray and Prescott run with the torch. They will never outgain Brady’s legacy.