BRADY IS SIMPLY THE BEST
Pats star’s stats stood out in an era featuring some of greatest pivots in NFL history
The NFL’S top newsmaker of the decade? Tom Brady and it wasn’t close.
The New England Patriots quarterback had a starring role in the biggest NFL stories of the 2010s, both on the field and off.
On the field before this season — from age 33 to 41 — the native of San Mateo, Calif., racked up arguably the most impressive accomplishments by a quarterback in one decade in NFL history.
With the last season of the 2010s yet to be completed, Brady already has won two regular-season NFL MVP honours, led the Patriots to at least 11 wins and division titles every year, won five AFC championships, won three Super Bowls in five appearances and twice was named
Super Bowl MVP. Yeah, not bad.
The Pats’ crazy 21st-century success has continued this season. They clinched their 11th consecutive playoff berth.
Off the field, Deflategate became the most embarrassing and ruinous episode of Brady’s life. Deservedly so? Depends on your perspective.
From January 2015 through September 2016, barely a week went by without some news update pertaining to Brady’s alleged central role in a purported scheme to remove tiny amounts of air from footballs the Patriots used in the first half of the AFC championship game against the Indianapolis Colts.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and a few members of his football operations staff were hell-bent on proving
Brady’s guilt. The league paid a renowned lawyer to head a threemonth, multimillion-dollar investigation. The probe uncovered only muddied, disputed, circumstantial evidence, which included improper employment of a physics formula — without which the league could not establish the crucial fact that illegitimate deflation of eight of 11 New England footballs even took place.
After a year and a half of bitter appeals and numerous battles in court and in public, the league prevailed — Brady had to sit out the first four games of 2016 without pay as punishment. Brady steadfastly denied his guilt.
Postscript: Over the next four seasons following the Deflategate game, with the NFL randomly testing air pressure in footballs leaguewide, Brady threw more touchdowns (125) than anyone.
The NFL’S other “gate” of the 2010s was Bountygate, in which various New Orleans Saints coaches and players were censured and suspended without pay in 2012 for an illegal pay-for-pain scheme, wherein Saints defenders were rewarded for injury-causing hits.
Other NFL scandals involved violence and were more despicable, such as when Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice’s career ended after he was caught on hotel video brutally punching out his then-fiancée. And when then-minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson was charged with child abuse for wickedly beating his preschool son with a switch.
No matter how many criminal justice and domestic violence experts the league hired in the hope of getting it right, punishment after punishment continued to feel arbitrary and either insufficient when proof was thick or overly harsh when it was thin.
Of all the black eyes on the league this decade, though, history probably will judge most harshly the ostracizing of quarterback Colin Kaepernick just four years after he led the San Francisco 49ers to within a whisker of a Super Bowl championship. Why was he ostracized? For leading divisive anthem protests, whose purpose was to shed more light on racial, social and criminal injustices in the U.S.
Although the anthem protests of 2016 and, to a lesser degree, 2017, drove a small but noticeable percentage of fans and TV viewers away, by decade’s end NFL games remained by far the most popular programs on U.S. television and among the most watched of any sports on Canadian TV.
On the field, big-name quarterbacks from last decade (in addition to Brady) continued to shine, often even brighter.
Peyton Manning sat out the entire 2011 season after undergoing multiple neck surgeries, which ended his 14 seasons in Indianapolis. Yet he was better than ever in 2012 and 2013 with the Denver Broncos, before riding off into the sunset at age 39 as Super Bowl champ in February 2016.
Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers became the foremost thrower of footballs this planet has yet produced. From 2015-17, he completed four
Hail Mary passes for the ages on incredible throws. But after winning a Super Bowl in 2010, Rodgers and the Packers have yet to return to the big game — an immense disappointment that finally got head coach Mike Mccarthy fired in 2018.
Drew Brees of the Saints is still going strong at age 40, having set a slew of NFL career passing records.
As wide receivers became more valuable with an ever-rising reliance on the pass game, running backs became devalued. The Baltimore Ravens this season, however, aimed to break that trend with a bold reliance on run/pass quarterback Lamar Jackson and a highly creative, but still teeth-jarring rushing attack.
The ruthless churn of head coaches continued. Incredibly, the Cleveland Browns have had seven this decade. Seven! Namely, Eric Mangini (2010), Pat Shurmur (2011-12), Rob Chudzinski (2013), Mike Pettine (2014-15), Hue Jackson (2016-18), Gregg Williams (eight games as interim in 2018) and Freddie Kitchens, who already was embattled not even three-quarters of the way through his rookie season and was fired at season’s end.
The New York Giants were the decade’s most disappointing franchise but Giants fans can always cling to that one great memory of the 2010s: Upsetting the Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI — and their QB, the omnipresent Brady.