Brady Retiring…
 

Sorry, Leon… might be in the wrong place but…

Tom Brady is retiring….

Wow - greatest team player athlete of all time? Sad day.

Just unbelievable the level at which he played at all those years. It was a true pleasure to watch him at work. I hope he enjoys his family now and for the rest of his life. Nothing else to prove Tom, good choice.

And he went out on a high note, another trademark comeback, even if it fell short.

I'm sad. He was the only football player that I was a real fan of - I love old pitchers and quarterbacks.

Interesting how Boston had two guys widely acknowledged to be the greatest ever at their positions and arguably the greatest ever in their sports, during nearly their entire careers: Brady and Bobby Orr. I would put Bill Russell up there but Wilt Chamberlain was simply a better overall player, just with crappier overall teams. I don't count Babe Ruth because, let's face it, he was a Yankee icon.

Every thread needs cards:

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...20Orr%201.jpeg

I'd post a Brady but my football collection cuts off at 1975.

Anyone who thinks all Wilt could do was score (as if that was a bad thing in a game where the team with the most points wins) should find film of the 1972 Knicks Lakers finals. I have nothing but good things to say about Russell, but it always seemed to me there was something perverse about people who ranked him over Chamberlain and found it to Russell's credit that he did not score a lot.

Transcendent players are so few. Brady is a once in a lifetime talent. We all got to enjoy him in borrowed time. Can't ask for more than that.

Great career for sure...just imagine if he hadn't the misfortune of facing Eli Manning twice in the Super Bowl :D

+1 agree but I am glad he is retiring so it gives other teams a chance to win.

Not that my team will ever win

Brady Retires!
 

If ever there was a modern athletes with a career that justifies the crazy modern card prices it is Brady!
https://nationalcardinvestors1.com/n...rady_small.jpg

One word to describe him: Inspirational.

Browns fan?

Probably Jets.

Sad to hear this, but at least he went out before he declined.

If this were baseball, wouldn't people be making all sorts of PED assumptions if someone was still playing at a very high level at 44?

https://nyhttps://profootballtalk.nb...irement-drama/

https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...e-up-his-mind/

I KNEW he couldn't make it to 50...what a wuss!


so, it's on to senior flag football

.

Just as long as he doesn't start making lousy insurance commercials.

I'm sure there are more than a few members here who are working on increasingly zany conspiracy theories for how he was using all this time but never tested positive.

Well, Edelman who worked with Brady's personal and very controversial trainer was suspended for PEDs, right?

PED's and a guy who looks a lot skinnier than when his career started don't make lot of sense to me as a narrative, but it's not exactly proof. And, as a Giant fan I love to hate on Brady. Hell he couldn't even beat Eli.

Edelman was caught by the league's urinalysis program that Brady was also subjected to. If Brady was using, he would've been caught too.

I wasn't suggesting Brady used, only saying that given the Edelman situation I am surprised it isn't the subject of more speculation.

From this morning's news it looks like this story is bogus. EIt seems ESPN blew it. It would be nice if some of these news agencies actually had the truth once in a while.

All about the clickbait these days. So what, what are the damages? Just a sad state of "reporting"

so is he or isn't he???? Im watching ESPN right now and they're celebrating his career????

I think he is, the reporting just jumped the gun and didn't let him do it at his own time in his own way.

I see! Some mens Australlian open finals, huh!!!!!!

Spectacular and what an outcome, I don't think anyone thought Nadal would ever win a Grand Slam event again, certainly other than the French. And from two sets down.

He just made it official.

While I do think the game today suffers from infalted offensive numbers, I don't think we can deny his spot as the greatest QB to ever play. Seven Super Bowls, almost every passing record in the books, incredible longevity. I truly think he could've played another couple of seasons at a high level, but he wanted to go out on his own terms. Which I understand.

As a side note one has to wonder what QB's like Marino, Montana, Elway, or Unitas would do in this extreme passing offensive era of football. Discussion for another thread I suppose.

No mention of Belichick by name or the Patriots.

I noticed that too. I'm going to be optimistic and say maybe he left them off because he said his goodbyes two years ago? He doesn't seem like the type to snub anyone like that, but he's also too deliberate for that to have been an oversight.

Just remember, Gronk retired too. Brady might be playing with us. ;)

Just when I started to not hate his face so much lol.

Gronk will play for the Bills in 2022 - write that down.

As a huge Bill fan I have hated Brady for so many reasons but I put him as the football GOAT and probably the GOAT of all major sports. Just wondering why he was so good. Wasn’t arm strength, wasn’t mobility, certainly wasn’t top notch receivers for some of his years. My view is he comes down to a brilliant reader of defenses, an uncanny ability to not get nervous in the pocket (eyes in the back of his head to avoid pressure and just enough mobility to slide around it), odd QB sneak smarts, plenty enough arm strength, and darn good accuracy. All combined those things allowed him to put up video game numbers. Eventually he was so good that his and the Pats’ mystique got into the heads of other teams almost as much as his ridiculous ability. Oh, also important is film study and a commitment to doing whatever it takes, including maintaining his body, stemming from pure love of the game and desire to be the best. Thoughts?

It may not sound like much, but I always thought one of his great strengths was knowing when to just throw the ball away and wait for the next play or series. Obviously he threw his share of picks but a lot of those were on the receivers and my impression over the years was that he threw relatively few in important situations.

Yeah, knowing who would be open and being able to find another guy that’s open if he isn’t. Pretty key.

I agree with all of that, but on the flip side there may have been too much film study, if you know what I mean . . . ahem, the spygate scandal. And although Brady was in a key position to benefit from the Cheatriot's knowledge of their opponents signals during games, I put the blame for that scandal squarely on Bill Bellicheat. Still, I believe that scandal enabled Brady to be more successful early on than he should have been in helping him earn as many as three tainted Super Bowl championships.

I know; I know; it's poor form to say stuff like that when you're supposed to be paying tribute to a retiring great of the game like Brady, but I think it still needs to be considered as a major blemish on his NFL resume.
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/...deo-punishment

If there’s a good reason to take him down a notch, I’m all for it!!!!

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My thermodynamics professor had worked on the Apollo program at NASA; a couple days after that scandal broke, he spent an entire lesson debunking the NFL's case.

The whole thing was surreal.

Maybe so, maybe so. But as Mike Tomlin said a few years ago when detailing some of the disadvantages that visiting teams have had to deal with, "... It's always the Patriots." For example, his team had never had any trouble with radio headset communications anywhere in the NFL except at Gillette Stadium (and his wasn't the only visiting team that had those same issues).

I remember that. The truth is that the NFL provides the equipment to both teams, and the game Tomlin went postal the Patriots also had problems all game long. According to one version at least lol.

Agree, and the same analysis has been used to describe The Great One (Wayne Gretzky.) He wasn't the fastest skater, the biggest, the strongest, he didn't have he hardest shot.......

To me, what sums that up is the clip from SB 51 of two Falcons on the sideline, and one of them is saying “We’re about to drop 40 on them” and the second one says “we’ve got to.” The first one says “they’ve never seen anything like this” and the response is “It’s Tom Brady though.”

But Gretzky had an uncanny ability to see openings and to read defenses, similar to Brady.

What sort of team uses signals that can be easily read or learned from videos of practice?
One that really doesn't want to win.
I'm sure there are guys who can sit in the stands and memorize that stuff without a camcorder. And I'm also sure every team employs at least one or two.

Heck, Tony Romo as a broadcaster was saying what plays were before teams ran them just going off where the different players lined up.

The gas laws are or at least were HS physics. Reinforced in college.
I hadn't bothered with the math in decades, but did some when they gave numbers.

When they showed the guages used by the officials, to me that was the clincher.
The ones used were cheap stuff you can get anywhere for a few bucks. Even most decent guages are only accurate 5% lower end of the range 3% mid range and 5% upper end. The cheap ones are more like 10-5-10. And they were using them at the lower end of the range. A difference within the accuracy range of the guage is essentially no difference.
(So if the guage goes to 100psi, a 15 psi reading will actually be between 5 and 25. or between 10 and 20 using a slightly better guage.

The bent pin may have also changed the reading but I'm not certain of that.

Now if they'd used a calibrated guage that was something like 1% .5% 1% that would be a different thing altogether.

But rules are rules for a reason. It's one thing to analyze signals and formations during a game, but quite another to film an opposing team while they are going through their practice time. This is why they were penalized hundreds of thousands of dollars and the loss of draft picks. I, for one, believe it gave them a decided edge during those early 2000s. One year the Colts averaged over 30 points per game, but couldn't even get into the end zone against them. It was like they knew what was coming on every play (because they did). It was actually Peyton Manning who busted the Pats. There was an article interview quoting him in Sporting News (I think) during the 2006 season when he said that he knew they videoed the Colts during their practices up there (at Gillette Stadium). About six months later, the scandal of Spygate was revealed.

The simple solution is to use different signals in practice than you use in the game. Not doing that is in my mind really dumb and just the sort of stupid the Jets seem to like.

Filming the practice or signals isn't against the rules, and wasn't then. It was a matter of where the recording was done from.
All teams film all their games no doubt including signals. That's allowed from some areas. Pre 2006 it was pretty much ok from wherever.
It's not allowed to use that footage in the same game, which everyone admits was not done.

The rule in question.
Article 9.1 (C) (14) of the Constitution and Bylaws of the NFL (p 39 of this pdf): No member shall: "Use at any time, from the start to the finish of any game in which a club is a participant, any communications or information gathering equipment, other than Polaroid-type cameras or field telephones, including without limitation videotape machines, telephone tapping or bugging devices, or any other form of electronic devices that might aid a team during the playing of a game.”

How that applies when they have the teams using tablets I can't say. Perhaps it changed when they got the Microsoft sponsorship.

That quoted rule above is from this writeup of it all
https://yourteamcheats.com/what-is-spygate

So I guess the penalties were indiscriminate and unjust in your opinion? We all have an opinion, but it is what it is - just another reminder that the Patriots would try to win at all costs, regardless of the rules. Belichick tried to apologize for his "misinterpretation" of the rules, but Dungy wasn't having any of it. He publicly criticized Belichick, saying that the rules are so clear that they couldn't be misinterpreted without some intent to break them.

The penalties were more about disobeying the commissioner than the rule breaking. I'm trying to remember if it was this one or a different thing where the penalty was way beyond what the rules called for. (Or if it was both?)

That website is a fun one by the way. It pretty well covers all the stuff each team has done to try to get an edge that wasn't quite by the book.

That didn't last long. He's back.

Maybe the Falcons can finally beat him in ‘22, the Bears did for the first time in '20.

I bet Giselle is not happy. For years she's been legitimately terrified of concussions.

I warned you in Post #34. He was just playing with us. ;)

One other person who might not be happy would be the winner of this...
https://auction.lelands.com/bids/bidplace?itemid=108647

Not sure last TD in first retirement has the same ring to it as last TD of your career.

Giselle not worry herself too much over concussions. Typically they do not happen that often to wives of NFL players.

As long as they stay out of elevators I guess that's right.

Clever.... you set that one up beautifully. ;)

I see what you did there..Nice!!