Even in losing, Tom Brady finds a way to dominate the conversation

Open this photo in gallery:

A few hours before he took the field on Sunday, ESPN published a story claiming that Tom Brady is considering retiring.

“Sources with the Bucs and close to Brady all recognize the star quarterback remains noncommittal to playing beyond this season,” it claimed.

“Close to Brady.” How close, exactly? Is it possible they were wearing his clothes?

Must be nice to be a pro athlete. You don’t have to bother writing news releases. Journalists do it for you for free.

The story guaranteed that no matter what happened in the NFC semi-final game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Los Angeles Rams later that afternoon, Brady would be the story coming out of it. He could launch every second pass into the stands and knock the mascot unconscious and the headline would still be, “Please Don’t Leave, Tom.”

For three quarters of the game, it looked like ‘total disaster’ was the narrative direction he’d chosen.

The main cause of his trouble was the Rams defensive front. Again and again, they washed up and onto Brady like an angry blue-and-yellow tide.

At one point, Von Miller closed on Brady after he’d thrown and gave him a little helmet-to-helmet tap. It was the sort of sneaky hit meant to enrage rather than injure. It split Brady’s lip and conned him into taking the first unsportsmanlike penalty of his career.

Brady came off the field screw-faced and bloodied. The high-def camera focused in on him and you saw something on his face you’d never noticed before – lines. For the first time, Brady, 44, looked his age.

After it was over, someone asked Miller – as salty a dog as you’ll find in the NFL – if he thought Brady was done.

“Nah,” Miller scoffed. “It ain’t gonna be the end of Tom Brady.”

The game should have been over in the first half. Then early in the third quarter. Then at the start of the fourth. But the Rams kept screwing things up and Brady kept hanging off their bumper.

L.A. led 27-3. With just more than three minutes to go, Brady made it 27-20.

“Why are we surprised?” play-by-play guy Al Michaels wondered rhetorically. It ought to be the title of Brady’s autobiography.

In the end, the only surprising thing was that the Bucs didn’t win. Brady drove them to a 27-27 tie, but left too much time on the clock. L.A. was able to go back down the field in the dying seconds and win it with a field goal, 30-27.

Gay’s 30-yard field goal lifts Rams over Brady, Buccaneers

The Rams are football’s ascendant team right now. Sexy defence. Quotable coach. Lovable quarterback. Cool uniforms, even. Next week, the Rams will play host to the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC title game. L.A. should be a consensus pick to fill out one half of the Super Bowl dance card in their own stadium in three weeks’ time.

And what’s the story coming out of Sunday’s game? Brady.

Does Brady still have it? Should Brady win MVP? Brady still has a year on his contract, so how does that work? What does Gisele think of Brady retiring? Or Bill Belichick? Or the aliens who are planning their invasion so that it happens on a day when Brady is busy and won’t be available to lead Earth’s counter-offensive?

(In order, the answer to those questions are yes; no; it’s just money; we’ll see what the family astrologer says; THIS PRESS CONFERENCE IS OVER; and the early line has Brady at -3 over the Martians.)

The only thing Brady produces more reliably than touchdowns and Men’s Health covers is storylines.

On Sunday, he birthed a dozen more. You think he’s not coming back after that near-miss? The only thing better than Brady defending a title is Brady after he’s been told he doesn’t have it any more. No one’s said that about him in years, but he has this wonderful way of pretending they have. One last run to the title is too tempting a challenge.

Contrast Brady’s mastery of the situation with Aaron Rodgers’s feeble attempts to do likewise.

The Green Bay Packers quarterback also lost on the weekend, but more awfully. Playing in his stadium in his favoured conditions against a team with a tackling dummy for a quarterback, Rodgers contrived a way to blow a lead, losing 13-10 to the 49ers.

NFL fans love a villain, and Aaron Rodgers has finally decided to give them what they want

Robbie Gould’s field goal on final play gives 49ers 13-10 upset of Green Bay Packers

Brady didn’t need to win this year to prove anything. Rodgers did. In mid-season, he’d picked a fight with half the country over vaccines. The only way you’re getting the last word in a scrap that expansive is by rubbing it in at the Super Bowl. Losing so meekly after talking so loudly made Rodgers look silly.

Afterward, he pulled a Brady. When reporters asked him what comes next, Rodgers began mooning like a man who’s thinking about spending more time with his (imaginary) grandchildren.

“Just so much gratitude for this city and this organization and such a long, long career that I’m proud of …” Rodgers said, and went on like that for a while longer. Like Brady (through his spokespeople at ESPN), Rodgers also alluded to talking over the possibility of retirement with his “loved ones.”

But Rodgers also offered this: “I don’t want to be part of a rebuild if I’m going to keep playing.”

Ah. So this humbling moment has not prompted you to enjoy a bittersweet reflection on life, after all. You’ve skipped right over that part and jumped into a staring contest with your employers and want to take this opportunity to publicly threaten them.

When you talk about legacies, there are a bunch of things that add up to a great one. Winning, sure. That’s the most important part. But losing, too. You have to have lost in crushing ways and come back from that. You must have been able to reliably manufacture drama. And you need to have left behind the impression of goodwill.

Note that you needn’t have produced actual goodwill. Most people either can’t tell if you were genuinely nice, or they don’t care. But they would prefer it that you weren’t constantly complaining about being paid millions of dollars to work weekends six months a year.

Rodgers doesn’t have that ability. He did once. But then, like so many insufferable people these days, he ‘found his voice’. It’s been downhill since then.

Rodgers and Brady are both remarkable quarterbacks. But Brady knows how to play the game above the game. He is thinking in terms of 20 years from now while Rodgers isn’t quite sure how he’s going to play things in 20 minutes.

They’re both winners. But only one of them has the knack of feeling like a winner even after he’s lost.