what I think are two totally different things. I would say
90% of what I say is probably not what I’m thinking.”
Whatever the case, lately we’re hearing from Brady more
often than ever before. There he is on late-night couches.
There he is in a self-effacing Subway commercial. And
calling into Howard Stern. The podcast medium suits him
especially well—not just his own, but others (“What did
[I] major in? F------ football, man,” Brady said on actor
Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert). He’s also jacked up his
activity on social media, often hilariously. After a tweet sur-
faced comparing the TB12 Method with Terry Bradshaw’s
“TB 12 beers a day methods,” @TomBrady issued the
A-plus retweet last month, “Tomato, tomahto.”
Brady accepts the premise that lately he has put himself
out there. “I’m rediscovering my voice,” he says, “and I’m
having fun with it.” The obvious correlation: Brady feels
he is able to reveal himself and have this fun now that
he is liberated from his coach in New England and from
the tight organizational controls. He doesn’t deny that.
But there’s another correlation. His age. “I think there’s
more comfort just as an older guy, too. My give-a-s--- levels
are probably a lot less. I’m kind of like, O.K., what’s it gonna
be like in 10 years? I’m really not going to give a s--- then.”
It is, of course, irresistible to hear Brady talk about his
future and not indulge in speculation about how many
more times the odometer can turn over. Licht has already
stoked f ires (and social media accounts) when he predicted
Brady would play until age 50. He doubles down with SI:
“I don’t see any signs of decline whatsoever.”
Brady predicts that the source of his decline—whenever
that may be—will be spiritual, not physical: “Regressing
would be a very difficult thing for me to see. As soon as I
see myself regress, I’ll be like, I’m out. I don’t really want
to see myself get bad. So it’s just a constant pursuit of
trying not to be bad.”
Trying not to be bad? Really?
“I think if anything, the most challenging part is the
emotional aspect of football for me,” Brady says. “When
we lose, it’s depressing. When we win, it’s a relief. It’s not
like the joy, the happiness—it’s a relief. Because when
we win, sometimes just winning isn’t good enough for
you, because you expect perfection, and when you expect
perfection and it’s less than perfect, you feel like there’s
a down part to that.”
Then again, this drive, this internal combustion engine,
is what keeps Brady playing at this exalted level. Winning
a seventh Super Bowl doesn’t dull his ambition for an
eighth. Throwing a pass into a window the size of a play-
ing card only increases his desire to deliver another one.
“It’s like hitting the perfect 7-iron,” he says. “You go,
‘How was that?’ And I go, ‘That was pretty great! I want
to do it again!’ You just constantly keep chasing it.”
It was recently put to Brady: Is there anything specific
he has yet to achieve in his unrivaled career? His first
answer: not really. But he did note that, in all his years
and for all that success, he has never won a game on a
last-second Hail Mary.
The temptation is to tell Brady that he’s completed foot-
ball’s ultimate Hail Mary. The backup at Michigan whose
40-yard dash time could be clocked with a sundial going
from the sixth round to the GOAT pasture, with seven
Super Bowl rings? Whose excellence remains unabated
at 44? Except that a Hail Mary implies a level of luck. The
Legend of Brady is predicated on anything but fluke or
chance. It’s deliberate and smart and rational.
So here is a man—and a sportsperson—for all of time.
And for this time. And as aging does its thing, as mito-
chondria begin to deteriorate, as the mortal coil unwinds,
Tom Brady comes bearing lessons for us all about con-
torting and distorting time, if not stopping it altogether.
Balance routine with new adventure. Even more than
anatomy, it’s attitude and character that shape destiny.
Head off into the sun, not the sunset.
And if we hydrate and eat right, so much the better.SPORTS ILLUSTRATED Q SI.COM 38SIM
ON(^) BR
UT
Y
LOOKING FOR MORE
At the end of November, Brady was the front-
runner for his fourth MVP, with the Bucs ahead
of where they were at this point last season.
SPORTSPERSON OF THE YEAR