Tom Brady has elevated his place in the NFL from one that was contested alongside Peyton Manning for best QB of his generation to being unquestionably the best player ever.
Having every record imaginable, and playing in 20% of every Super Bowl ever, helps with that.
Think about that: There have been 50 Super Bowls. Tom Brady has been in 10 of them. What the actual fvck, that is insane. In his 20 year career, half of them ended in the Super Bowl. Good gracious.
Anyways, there is a new series on ESPN+ called The Man in the Arena which chronicles Brady and his thoughts to each season/game/whatever… it is an inside look with him.
Talking with PopCulture.com, the director of the series said that Brady has figured out the game mentally, and that the advantage he has on the field has to do with what he does off the field.
“I think we’ve all heard, and probably because of what we did with Tom vs. Time about the physical aspect of his training, and his pliability work, and TB12, and all of that sort of stuff,” Chopra told PopCulture. “He’s a 24/7 operation. But I’m convinced more and more that I talk to him, and I get to know him, that it’s not that. That’s restoration work, that cosmetic work, but it’s the mental and emotional aspect, especially as his life in these last five years, six years, has gotten more complicated with kids, dealing with fame. Age-wise he’s radically older than most of his teammates.”
Chopra added: “I think it’s just wrestling with all of that and continuing to find ways to motivate himself and to be emotionally grounded and present because that’s really what it takes. I talked to another older player, or a player who’s now since retired, actually, Michael Strahan, who’s in the series, and Michael said something like, ‘You get to a certain stage of your career where physically you figured it out. You know what you have to eat. You know how to train your body. It’s sort of mentally and emotionally do you still want to do it.'”
“It’s a little bit of what I was just saying at the risk of sounding too arrogant,” Chopra said. “It’s a master class in leadership. This is a guy who has done something — this is trying to decode how did Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel or how did Mozart compose the 9th Symphony. It’s a guy who’s achieved something really epic, and by the way, is still doing it. How did that happen? What are the components of the heart that made him the greatest ever? And so, you almost take Tom Brady out of it. It’s just studying a subject and really uncovering greatness.”
Brady has now become the odds on favorite to be the NFL MVP this year.
Incredible.
As of November 23, TB12 has separated from the pack on the FanDuel Sportsbook, checking in at +270.
Now, listen, that is bad value on Tom at this point in the season. When he was nearly +2000 in the preseason, that was the time to pounce. Now… there is still too much time left in the season to get value on that play.
Either way, watch Man in the Arena. It is good.
