Victory would let Brady sleep easy
HIS team-mates were mostly showered and gone but Tom Brady was having trouble even bringing himself to move. He sat in front of his locker in Indianapolis, pulling on a pair of boots with a pained look seemingly etched on his face.
Brady’s Super Bowl had ended badly once again, and he was trying to make sense of it all. In a few minutes he would walk down a hallway and tell the media why he had the ball in his hand to win the game with 57 seconds left and couldn’t deliver the long touchdown drive every New England Patriots fan was expecting three years ago against the New York Giants.
‘‘It always comes down to one or two plays,’’ Brady said then. ‘‘If you make them you’re celebrating. If you don’t, you don’t sleep for a week.’’
Celebrating or sleepless, Brady knows both well. The first three times he took the Patriots to the Super Bowl he came away with three championships.
That there were more Super Bowls to come was certain. Coach Bill Belichick was building a dynasty behind Brady, and the quarterback was just beginning to feel comfortable as a superstar at the age of 27.
But Brady has lost his last two, and the opposing quarterback was the MVP in both of them. Eli Manning outplayed Brady not once but twice, the first time in the very stadium where the Patriots will play the Seattle Seahawks today (NZ time).
There hasn’t been another Super Bowl championship in a decade now. And there’s a real chance that should the Patriots fall again, losing three straight Super Bowls might define Brady’s eventual legacy nearly as much as winning the first three.
Greatest quarterback of his era, sure. And should the Patriots beat the Seahawks, Brady would join Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw, two names long enshrined as greats, as the only quarterbacks to win four Super Bowls.
But where do you put a quarterback with a .500 Super Bowl record in historical context? What do you say about one who won his first three, and lost his next three?
Brady was asked several times and in different ways last week about playing in the Super Bowl six times and what he thinks his eventual legacy will be. He didn’t bite, refusing to rank himself while talking in generalities about how great it is to be playing in his sixth.
‘‘It’s hard to think about those things,’’ Brady said. ‘‘I’ve just been fortunate to be on some great teams.’’
It will be hard to call him the greatest ever, even with four Super Bowl wins. Three losses, and you can’t even put him in the conversation.