Shots Heard 'Round The Web - Patriots Links 5/06/09

Is apparently not allowed to enjoy life and have perspective’s beyond the normal platitudes. Oh no, a healthy football player! From what I’ve observed of Tom here is my opinion.

1. When he does quit, it will be for good. No Favre-waffling.

2. He will play, if his body allows him too, until Belichick admits he does not need him too, or Belichick himself retires. I feel they have a bond of loyalty to one another. Could be naive of me but I don’t see him leaving the Pats without a good replacement ready.

3. His performance will not be affected by his monetary success. Anyone who reads about Tom knows he has always gone all out in whatever he has attempted. He showed no slowdown in 2007, and even the beginning of the 1st game last year he was on target with his passes.

Am I slightly worried that Giselle will be texting him during qb meetings? I dunno, maybe, but somehow I doubt he will be easily distracted once he gets into game mode. It doesn’t fit who he is based on all other accounts of his personality which is about achieving what he sets out to do, whether it’s win football games or wooing supermodels.

The man has not played a full game in over a year, so it’s easy to forget his game personality for that of his public life…one that makes anyone jealous.

I wouldn’t mind these articles so much if there were any solid measurables to back up the writers’ assertions that Brady is done. In both Jim Donaldson’s article yesterday and DJ Gallo’s today, the only “evidence” of Brady not being the same is that the guy married a supermodel, dresses differently, and takes a lot more airplane trips than he did before he met Giselle. Oh, and he didn’t win the “coveted” parking space for working the hardest in practice last off-season – which had no bearing on his injury eight minutes into the first game of the season.

The strange thing is that he broke the single-season record for touchdown passes in Dec. 2007 before his knee was torn up. That was after breaking up with his actress girlfriend, after meeting his hot supermodel girlfriend, and after his son was born. If there was ever a time that personal issues may have affected his play, that may have been it, but he only improved.

Now, the standard is so high – if he’s not on pace to hit his own touchdown passing record this year or keep up his lowest interception rate (1.4%) in a season, his performance will be viewed as dropping off. As I’ve emailed to each of these writers, “If you have nothing to say, just leave the guy alone.”

Writing on sports always relies a lot on clichés: Overachievers, underdogs, rivalries etc. This is just a way of trying to give more meaning to sport, than it actually has, and as fans we appreciate this, because we also treat our team way more seriously than it really deserves in the larger scheme of things.

But writers are also extremely traditional in their view of what a “real” football player is. If he is not a bit of a brute or sound like he is boyish and just “having fun out there” it is suspicious. They – or at least the bad ones – seem to be quite unable to grasp the idea of a football player being a metrosexual, who might actually be interested in fashion or art or politics.

Brady has to my knowledge never been anything but a workout wonder and never showed up to a game, a season or a even a practice unprepared. And if he was downing beers with five strippers in Vegas, nobody would question his commitment to football. Ridiculous.