TAMPA, Fla. — He looked awkward, he looked indecisive, he looked slow.
It wasn’t just a game that slipped from his grasp on Sunday against the Bengals, it was the perception that Tom Brady always finishes near the top.
He looked pained, he looked tired, he looked beaten.
It’s not that his career has been flawless or that his life was unblemished. Brady has had plenty of bad games, and he’s had more than one season end in disappointment.
But Tom Brady has never led a losing team.
Until now.
With the Bucs at 6-8, Brady is teetering on the edge of his first losing record as a starting quarterback. That includes 20-plus years in the NFL. That includes two seasons as a starter at Michigan.
That includes taking over a woebegone jayvee team at Junipero Serra High in Northern California and leading it to the league championship game in 1992.
Unless Tampa Bay wins its final three games, the most remarkable streak of success in the NFL is about to come to a crashing end. Since taking over as a starter and leading New England to a Super Bowl title in his second season in 2001, Brady has never finished a season with more heartache than joy.
From 2001-21, Brady’s teams won an average of 12.3 games a season. His 249 regular-season victories are, far and away, the most of any QB that’s ever run an NFL huddle. Peyton Manning and Brett Favre are a distant second at 186. Even Brady’s idol, Joe Montana, won only 117 games.
So, yeah, it looked unnatural to see Brady sitting stone-faced on the Bucs bench in the second half on Sunday. It sounded uncomfortable to hear him taking the blame afterward for four turnovers.
And it was downright depressing to listen to Brady sounding like some kind of morbid life coach on his podcast Monday evening.
“There’s ways you can handle adversity,” Brady said to host Jim Gray. “One is, you point fingers at other people — which we don’t do. Another thing you do is you quit — and that’s not what we do. Another thing is — you point a finger at yourself. And that’s what we do. I have to do a better job.
“All it does is motivate me to work harder. This is what resilience is all about.”
He sounded like a man trying to convince himself of something he no longer believes. That’s what happens when you suddenly reach the end of the world’s longest hot streak.
In the past, Brady was always able to outwork doubt. He did it at Michigan after sitting behind Brian Griese. He did it in New England after being snubbed 198 times in the 2000 draft.
In the past, Brady was always able to overcome adversity. He did after blowing out his knee in 2008. He did after his four-game suspension for Deflategate in 2016. He did when Bill Belichick assumed age had finally caught up to him in his final season in New England in 2019.
But this? This is something different, and Brady finally seemed to grasp that last weekend.
The combination of a weaker team, a new head coach and an older version of himself may have finally coalesced into a nightmare Brady is unable to survive.
He is on pace to throw an NFL record number of passes with about half as many touchdowns as he had in 2021. And while never a great scrambler, he is in danger of finishing with a negative rushing total for the first time in his career. Most remarkable of all, the Bucs could go from scoring 511 points in 2021 to less than 300 points in 2022.
All under the command of the greatest quarterback in history.
And so it’s logical to wonder:
Does Brady regret coming back?
Is he second-guessing his decision to reverse his retirement and take one more shot at the Super Bowl? One more shot at glory? One more wager with his legacy as collateral?
The answer would seem obvious, but Brady is not going to acknowledge it while the season is still going. On his podcast, he made it sound as if he welcomed the opportunity to grow from a losing season.
“We’re not a victim of losing games,” he said. “The sun came up today, we’ve got something to do about it. We woke up, we’ve got a chance. This is not the time to feel sorry for yourself. So get up, go in to work and make it better and improve it and work harder and work more determined.”
That’s an admirable way of approaching a year of disappointment and woe.
I just never expected to hear Tom Brady say it.
