Confession time: As I watched Trevor Lawrence hobble off the field Monday, after going through the various stages of grief for the player and the position, after performing remote, restorative witchcraft rituals of healing so as to avoid a playoff matchup between C.J. Beathard (no offense) and Mitch Trubisky, there was a section of my brain that turned to the great quarterback savior.
If Lawrence’s injury was more than just a sprained ankle, would that flip on the proverbial bat signal and finally lure Tom Brady out of retirement? I remember something about him needing to work—if he did choose to work—in the state of Florida, hence all the backroom horseplay involving the Dolphins. There is a narratively pleasing aspect about Brady’s teaming up with Doug Pederson, the offensive mind who outdueled him in the quarterback’s second-to-last Super Bowl. There is something vaillant about the idea of Brady coming back amid a season where so many of the great quarterbacks are gone, when efficiency and scoring and generally aesthetically pleasing football has bottomed out, to rescue us, and to remind us of the limits of what is possible.
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