Richard J. King - Meeting Tom Brady: One Mans Quest for Truth, Enlightenment, and a Simple Game of Catch with the Patriots Quarterback

MEETING

TOM BRADY

One Mans Quest for Truth, Enlightenment, and a Simple Game of Catch with the Patriots Quarterback

RICHARD J. KING

with illustrations by the author

ForeEdge

ForeEdge

An imprint of University Press of New England

www.upne.com

2015 Richard J. King

All rights reserved

For permission to reproduce any of the material in this book, contact Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court Street, Suite 250, Lebanon NH 03766; or visit www.upne.com

This book is a memoir. It contains the authors recollections.

Certain names and identifying characteristics have been changed and certain incidents have been compressed or reordered.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.

ISBN 978-1-61168-804-7 (cloth)

ISBN 978-1-61168-844-3 (ebook)

TO UNCLE FRANK

And to all the people associated with Westerly Area Rest Meals. A quarter of the authors proceeds for the book will be donated to this organization.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU,

fan of the patriots of New England

PREFACE

On the night of February 1, 2015, the New England Patriots trailed in the fourth quarter by ten points, a deficit from which no Super Bowl champion had ever recovered. Their quarterback, Tom Brady, faced third and fourteen. He scanned across the line at the young and brash Seattle Seahawks, the reigning champions and the stingiest defense in the NFL. Brady hollered signals over the bellows of more than seventy thousand fans at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. More than 121 million other people watched him on television or on a tablet or on some other device, which is, as far as I can figure, the largest audience for a single live performance of any kind in human history.

From his own twenty-eight-yard line, Tom Brady took the snap, stepped back, then had to run forward in the pocket as the Seattle linemen grappled in. He planted and slung a dart down the field to Julian Edelman, his most trusted receiver, who snagged the football for a long first down and held on to it, somehow, even as Seattles bruising safety Kam Chancellor cracked into him at full speed. Still alive. From here, Brady led his team down the field for a touchdown. When the Seahawks gave the ball right back, Brady drove his offense a second time, methodically and artfully, without missing a single completiona perfect eight for eightputting his team ahead 2824 with a fourth touchdown pass, this last one to Edelman.

Brady jogged to the sideline, took off his helmet, and sat on the bench. With less than a minute to play, he watched a Seattle receiver with the appropriate surname of Kearse make an absurd, falling, bobbling, deep sideline catch after the football bounced off his knee, putting Seattle within a few yards of the goal line. (I crawled behind the bar to try to hide from my own despair, because this threatened to be the third time in a row that an impossible catch had whisked away a Patriots victory when Brady had them ahead in the closing minutes of a Super Bowl.) If Brady and the Patriots lost yet another championship, all the questionsabout his age, his abilities, his toughness, and his integritythat had dogged him for the last several seasons would not only spread, they would solidify.

Then the gods of fortune struck once more. With twenty-eight seconds left, a rookie third-string cornerback named Malcolm Butler preserved the win with a sensational and shocking interception on the Patriots own goal line. (I saw this only on replay, because I had rested my forehead on a steel sink.)

Tom Brady walked off that field, under the rain of ticker tape, earning a fourth Super Bowl ring, a third Super Bowl MVP, and a string of postseason records, including the most playoff fourth-quarter comebacks in the history of the sport. He is now, if not the greatest, undeniably on the shortest of lists of the best to ever play the game. The Sports Illustrated cover that week featured him peering wide-eyed over the swarming Seattle defense as he released the football from his fingertips toward the viewer, toward you, toward me, toward the one who would catch his pass for another first down. The headline read: On to Immortality.

But as the offseason of celebration wore on, an FBI-style enquiry reported that Tom Brady probably knew that two locker-room equipment managers had softened the footballs to his preference, outside the rules, before the AFC championship game. Maybe they had done the same in prior games. The controversy, which became known as Deflategate, slashed the first deep cut in the quarterbacks flawless image and historic career. Smelling blood in the water, a frenzy of media, fans, and current and former players surged in to take a bite. The league gave Brady and the New England Patriots one of the stiffest punishments it had ever handed down. For my part, Im still trying to parse out exactly what happenedboth with the slightly under-inflated footballs and with the ferocity and ubiquity of public response. To be honest, I was more disappointed in him when he did not travel with his team to the White House in the springwhen President Obama honored the Patriots for their Super Bowl victory.

None of this matters, of course, against the scale of real concerns in the world, such as hunger and terrorism and police brutality and the downhill speed of environmental degradation. But Bradys success in this Super Bowlor maybe more importantly, his evasion of another defeatmeant a hell of a lot to me. And it still does, however scarred. Because when I got it into my head that I needed to meet Tom Brady two years earlier, in the spring of 2013, I didnt know all this was going to happen. In fact, several analysts doubted if Brady had much good football left in him at all. He was in his mid-thirtiesyounger than I was, but a dinosaur in the NFL. He was the oldest player on his team by several years. Some analysts declared that Tom Brady had enjoyed a Hall of Fame career, but it was time to hang up the cleats. Two years ago, they said Tom Brady was in decline. I knew I was.

PRESEASON

STAYING OFF THE CRAZY LIST

JULY 26, 2013 / 5:30 A.M.
FOXBOROUGH, MASSACHUSETTS

Im parked here beside Gillette Stadium, where the New England Patriots play football. Its raining, but sitting here in my van I have a perfect seat to watch the Mike and Mike early morning radio show, which is on location to cover the opening of training camp. Heres a birds-eye view:

I am stating here, for the record, that I was the first fan to show up this season. A few others arrived this morning before I pulled up at 5:00, but I was here last night. Ruby and I parked in the lot, closed the curtains, and set up the bed inside. I parked right next to a porta-potty, and I was dozing off when I got the knock on the glass. A flashlight in the window. Ruby didnt bark. The security guy said we couldnt stay.

So I drove away from the stadium and found a campground, where I asked the night watchman if I could park. I look even sketchier these days in the van because the power window on the drivers door is stuck shut, so I have to talk through the small swing window over the side-view mirror. The night watchman let me park in an outer lot and wouldnt take any money. So in the end I got to the stadium this dark early morning after a few other people. But again, I was here last night to sleep out.