When Tom Brady’s night of celebration at Raymond James Stadium came to an end after the most definitive victory of his Super Bowl career, he sat in front of a camera for his press conference. As he navigated the questions, his eyes occasionally wandered past the screen and connected with passing teammates. And in a moment that would spread across social networks, Brady caught tight end Rob Gronkowski in his line of sight and called the player who will be inextricably linked to his GOAT resume.
“Robby-G!” Brady called. “Robby-G!”
Brady gave a double wink away, then smiled and pointed.
“Congratulations, baby,” he said. “See you later.”
Brady punctuated the exchange with a small flick of the wrist and another double wink, delivering a live-streamed gif of revealing satisfaction.
You will never convince me that the moment had nothing to do with Bill Belichick. Just as you will never convince me that Brady and Gronkowski do not feel any significant revenge for leaving the regulated discipline of the New England Patriots in search of football fun again. Both decided to prove that joy and victory are not binary and that both can be embraced at the same time.
This search brought Brady and Gronkowski together in Tampa Bay and brought all this 2020 effort into existence. Starting with Brady’s insistence that joy within a football season can be both a journey and a destination.
And as we saw on Sunday night, Brady proved he was right – the Patriot Way can be transplanted and increased. It turns out that an NFL team can be disciplined, confident, hardworking and still exercise a continuous sense of pleasure during the process, even when the plan is not working perfectly. For at least one season, Buccaneers, Brady and Gronkowski have proved that the concept of having everything is not a chase of fools. It is admirable and achievable. And apparently, it doesn’t require Bill Belichick to do it.
For those who want to resist the very popular and ongoing history of the tape between Brady and Belichick, I understand. Not everything in professional football should be a team selection. Especially when the joint achievements of the best defender and coach in NFL history are likely to stand the test of time and keep all opponents at bay – including Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid. For many people, and perhaps even many Patriots fans, it will be enough to look at the entire New England dynasty and appreciate it for what it was: a lasting gift of grandeur that could never be diminished by anything that came after.
Of course, not everyone will feel that way. The history of fandom and football is simply too greedy to not ask what it could have been. Especially when Super Bowl rings are involved.
And in that sense, suddenly there is no doubt that Belichick unceremoniously entered a subcategory of the Patriots Way that until 2020 had plagued only assistant coaches and players who left the uterus supported by coaching and quarterbacking GOATs. And this subcategory is this: Many have achieved championship greatness within New England culture, but almost none have replicated that greatness without Belichick and Brady. Players and coaches would win, leave, be paid in the process and then languish as they tried to reach the top of the mountain without Bill and Tom.
Wellllllll, here we are at the top of the mountain again, and suddenly it’s a party for Tom and nobody else.
Now, everyone knows simple math. Brady as an individual has more Super Bowls than any team in NFL history. This includes the Pittsburgh Steelers and Patriots franchises, which have six units each. And within that math is the inevitable reality that, as head coach, Belichick has six New England Super Bowl rings, but none without Brady as a defender. It makes him a little bit like the other guys who left the New England system and couldn’t do that without a GOAT carrying the load.
Belichick does has two other Super Bowl rings as defensive coordinator for the New York Giants. If we’re accurate, his overall eight-title count exceeds Brady. But history will always remember the dividing line of what the two did together as coach and defender – followed by what they did separately. And now, Brady is suddenly looking like he carried more of the Patriots’ payload than his critics wanted to believe.
We can try to believe that the credit game doesn’t matter to Belichick or Brady. After all, the two have been quite effusive in praising each other and trying to diminish their relentless measure of each other. And we can also try to pretend that some Patriots fans are not upset right now after watching a precious relationship dissolve strangely, followed by an icon running for happiness elsewhere. But accepting any of these suggestions means ignoring what happened. Brady and Belichick did broke up in the middle of a frozen relationship. And social media alone showed a huge number of Patriots fans who absolutely had a hard time understanding why it was a better scenario to play the dice with Cam Newton, while Brady took a mediocre team of 7 to 9 Buccaneers to a Super Bowl victory. It is probably worth noting here that Brady’s last Super Bowl victory also occurred with a higher television audience in Boston than in Tampa, which says a lot about whether Patriots fans still care about him.
All of which suggests that it will continue for Belichick – perhaps to the point of impacting how we remember his stature as the greatest coach in NFL history. Because what Brady did on Sunday was add an asterisk. A qualifier that will open the door for some to point out what is real right now: Belichick had a huge success with the Patriot Way when Tom Brady was in the building. So Brady left and took the Patriot Way with him, leaving Belichick behind to accomplish what he can in his remaining days. In post-Brady year 1, it was not much. Now, each consecutive year will only bring more pressure to Bill to show that he is still the same great coach when he runs his own GOAT show. None of this takes into account what might happen if Brady replicates this 2020 success in another season in Tampa. At that point, we may have to end the count and officially update The Patriot Way to the Brady Effect.
Not that Brady did it all by himself in 2020. He didn’t. The Buccaneers had a talent list before he arrived. And the Super Bowl victory was lifted by both Tampa Bay defense and coordinator Todd Bowles and Brady. But it would be a mistake not to recognize that it was Brady who also made the decisive effort to import two other ex-Patriots into Gronkowski and Antonio Brown – who agreed to take all three of Brady’s touchdown passes against the Chiefs. It was also Brady’s tie that brought running back Leonard Fournette, who played a key role against Kansas City. And, of course, there were pandemic training and Brady’s impact on the attack and his pre-Super Bowl text messages and his endless expectations that teammates would work as hard as he did. All this because of who he became within the Patriot Way and alongside Belichick.
Now he is a man apart. Creating his own success from the womb he and Belichick built. And he is doing it his way, with the blessing of a technical commission, front office and team that are happy to accompany him.
As Buccaneers coach Bruce Arians said on Monday: “This was a very, very talented football team [in 2019]. But we really didn’t know how to win. And when you bring a winner and he’s running the ship, it makes a total difference – in your locker room [and] every time we went out into the field. We were disadvantaged twice by 17 points below. I think the leadership that Tom brings and his attitude of ‘Hey, let’s play. It never ends until it’s over and we’re going to win this thing somehow and some way. ‘It permeated our entire locker room, his belief that we are going to do this. And knowing that he was there and did that, our guys believed it. It changed our entire football team. “
It is difficult to know what to label this. Words like presence and leadership seem small and common to explain seven wins in the Super Bowl. But Brady does. He carries it, wields it, sells it and makes others believe that it is real where it matters most: on a football field.
Now it’s up to Belichick to show that he can meet that standard without Brady. Whether making the right personnel changes, meeting another iconic quarterback or putting together a coaching masterpiece in 2021 or later, he now has a lot of work to do. Brady definitely answered whether one of the two could survive without his counterpart. All Belichick can do now is answer with another title of his own. If only to show that the consistency of its greatness was not largely driven by the star, which ultimately demonstrated that it could prosper without it.
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