Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
A down-to-earth Super Bowl legend
The generation gap doesn’t get in the way of Brady and the Patriots’ success thanks to open communication and camaraderie
TOM Brady made history in winning the Super Bowl for a sixth time at the age of 41. ADAM KILGORE writes about how Brady relates to teammates who are closer in age to Brady’s 11-year-old son Jack than the game’s most celebrated quarter-back.
PHILLIP Dorsett sat on a table inside the New England Patriots’ training room, having just completed the physical that made him an official member of the franchise. Just then, one of his new teammates entered the room and walked straight toward him. “Hi,” the teammate said, “I’m Tom Brady.”
“I’m like, I know who you are,” Dorsett said this week, laughing. “You don’t have to introduce yourself.”
Dorsett, a wide receiver, is like almost every other Patriot. As Brady was winning Super Bowls and becoming an international celebrity, Dorsett was growing up. He was nine when Brady won his first Super Bowl. For their whole lives, football players are never more than four years apart from their teammates. Patriots rookies this season suddenly had a quarterback 19 years older than they were.
Brady turned 41 in August, which makes him the oldest non-kicker in the NFL. He belongs to a protected class under the Age Discrimination
Act. He’s a decade older than all but six Patriots. About 30 of his teammates this season are closer in age to Brady’s 11-year-old son, Jack, than to Brady.
It places him in an unusual position. As Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels said: “One of the big roles that a quarterback plays on the team is just being able to communicate openly with each of his teammates.”
For Brady, age presents a hurdle to that role. As he grew older, the age gap between him and his teammates inevitably grew, until his teammates were from an entirely different generation.
Brady’s primary strategy in navigating the age gap at his workplace is to ignore it.
“You know, I don’t think about those things,” Brady said. “The fact I’m older just means I’ve been around a little bit longer. I just feel like I’m doing what I’ve always done. I really enjoy it, having a great time practising, playing. It’s great being part of a team.”
It’s possible for Brady to push aside age difference because of the nature of his workplace. Brady has fit into the Patriots’ locker room for his whole career, and little by little, he became surrounded by millennials. A football locker room, though, is a place of suspended youth.
“We joke about it: He’s 41, but he’s really 24,” backup quarterback Brian Hoyer said.
“When I go home, I might feel
33. But when I come here, I feel the same age as I did when I was a rookie. The locker room doesn’t change.
The people may change, but the environment and the atmosphere – they’re not talking about what we talked about 10 years ago, so you better get with it or get lost. I think he’s very aware of those things. Doing this job keeps you that young.”
But Brady takes connecting to his teammates seriously. It starts with the greeting Dorsett had in the training room. Every time a new player signs, regardless of stature, Brady makes it a point to say hello. A quarterback who requires no introduction has nonetheless grown expert at it.
“He’s one of the first guys in the building to know a new person’s name,” McDaniels said.
Wide receiver Damoun Patterson, 24, joined the Patriots’ practice squad in November. On his first day, Brady held a door open for him, which was “kind of shocking to me”, Patterson said. The next day, Brady approached Patterson and asked: “What’s up, man? What’s your name?”
“That was kind of a dream,” Patterson said.
Younger teammates say they can converse with Brady about the music and pop culture they consume. In training camp, teammates spotted Brady attempting the Kodak Bop, a dance move running back James White had performed after a touchdown.
“He’s a very down-to-earth guy, easy to talk to,” 24-year-old defensive end Deatrich Wise Jr said.
“That’s what makes him so lovable on the team, how he builds team chemistry amongst everybody on the team, through just talking, just interacting. And everybody knows who he is, and he knows who he is. He doesn’t allow the stature he has to distance himself from everybody.”
Said Brady: “I just play the role I can given the person and what I think they need at the moment. It could be a rookie. It could be a veteran.”
The value in those connections cannot be measured, but it is unquestionably part of the Patriots’ success. Brady possesses more insight into football than perhaps any active player. It would mean little if he could not relate to teammates well enough to pass it on.
That connection may matter more to Brady’s youngest teammates than at any point in his career.
Megan Gerhardt, a Miami University professor who specialises in leadership and generational differences in the workplace, said this generation thrives on interaction and relatability.
“Somebody that’s willing to build a relationship and connect with them and engage has a much better opportunity to pass down that experience and that wisdom than somebody who wouldn’t have that relationship,” Gerhardt said.
“That means a lot more to millennials than it has to prior generations.” |