New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady hugs coach Bill Belichick after the AFC championship NFL football game against the Jacksonville Jaguars in Foxborough, Mass., on Jan. 21, 2018.David J. Phillip/The Associated Press
In 2015, just before America’s political divide would become an impassable DMZ, Tom Brady put a MAGA hat in his locker.
When he was asked about it, the-then New England Patriots quarterback said a Trump presidency would be “great.” He said that the hat had been sent to team owner Robert Kraft and “found its way to my locker.”
The whole thing had a teenager-y vibe – a 38-year-old kid delighting in the shock he was causing. It was the first twinkling of a self-destructive streak in Brady.
At that moment, only one of the two men had real power, and it wasn’t the future president. That power stemmed from the brand Brady repped – New England Patriots Inc.
The Patriots and their famous Way were the distilled essence of what remained of American exceptionalism in the 21st century.
Yes, the country had lost in Afghanistan and Iraq. And yes, it had cratered the global economy. And sure, it could not stop people from shooting up schools and synagogues. But it was still a winner. Just get a look at these guys over here.
As the old institutions went to pieces, Brady and his opposite, head coach Bill Belichick, stood in. They represented American quality. They don’t any more.
It’s been a bad couple of months for the former lords of the NFL.
Brady has been adrift since he quit the Patriots in a huff. He won a Super Bowl in Tampa, but it didn’t feel right. Snow White does not chuck the dwarves at the end of the second act because she’s not happy with the offence.
That was nothing compared to indignities of retirement. Aside from showing up places to be photographed, Brady seemingly has no clue what to do with himself. He took a job at Fox Sports two years ago and has yet to show up for work.
Have you seen his Hertz ad campaign? Car rental does not scream glamour, especially when the company’s last famous football pitchman was O.J. Simpson.
Every time I see one of those Hertz ads, I’d like to hire Brady’s agent, just so I could fire him.
The current nadir was reached in May when, for reasons known only to Brady and a publicist who must hate him, he agreed to be the focus of a roast.
Bad enough to do it. To do it on a Netflix livestream was incomprehensible.
In the ribald tradition of such things, Brady’s personal life was crudely pulled apart over three hours. The thing that most offended him was a soft joke about massages lobbed at Patriots owner Kraft. Brady popped out of his seat, ran over to the comedian who’d made the dig and said, “Don’t say that again.”
That may have been the moment that tipped people over. He didn’t mind exposing his former partners and kids to ridicule, but he was worried about the billionaire who made him famous?
Shorn of the Patriots, what was Brady? An extremely famous person demoted to very famous person fixated on getting back all the attention he’d lost, by whatever means necessary. In other words, a sad sack.
Belichick also left the Patriots. He’d always cultivated a Richielieu-esque public persona – the power behind the power. His whole approach was camp – taciturn, monosyllabic, dressed in rags. That worked when Brady was being Brady and the Patriots were winning.
Without those two things, it started to look like what it was – an act, and not a charming one.
If Belichick was as cunning as he liked to be portrayed, he would have quit with Brady. That would have left open the question of who was most responsible for the Patriots’ greatness. All those last four years revealed was that he was not the miracle worker he’d been playing.
Still, you expected Belichick to retreat with honour. Take a job as a special advisor somewhere. Maybe go into government. Something that fills out a résumé.
Instead, Belichick is now best known as the horniest 70-something in America. For several weeks, he’s been single-handedly keeping the American yellow press afloat with scoops about his relationship with a 24-year-old former cheerleader.
If Belichick had played the nutty professor his whole career, people might’ve been able to wrap their heads around it. Instead, he went with ice-cold and methodical. That’s hurting him now. Consenting adults and all that, but the whole thing lands somewhere between undignified and creepy.
It’s put the rest of the football world in the unwinnable position of having a position. One former player called him “a pig” and “an absolute clown.”
On his podcast, Kansas City tight end Travis Kelce called Belichick “a smooth operator. I mean his girlfriend …”
At which point, his older, smarter brother, Jason – the former Philadelphia Eagles centre – jumped in with, “Let’s not go there. Please.”
Every time a sports person talks about Belichick now, it’s in one of three ways – disgust, leering approval or furious backpedaling. You spend decades building up a forcefield of gravitas, and – poof! – it’s gone in a week.
It’s the end of a long social experiment conducted by and on Belichick and Brady. Its goal was to determine what matters – the man or the institution he represents.
The current culture tilts heavily toward the individual. Thursday’s U.S. presidential debate was about two people, not the vast structures of power they represent. Afterward, no one was interested in discussing the substance of their comments, only how they’d said them.
In the midst of their glory days, you’d have said that Brady and Belichick were both bigger than the Patriots, and football, and even sport. Each represented an American type – the striver. They were charting new statistical territory, teamed together, but also in competition.
One of the lovely little details in the stories about Belichick’s trysts is the name of his boat – ‘VIII Rings’. One more than Brady has.
Eventually, they left the institutions that created and supported them and everything turned to ash. They haven’t just been diminished. Each has become a punch line.
If we care to explore it, there’s a lesson in there for all of us. And it has nothing to do with football.