Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Man In The Arena: Tom Brady’ on ESPN+, a Nine-Part Documentary Series on the NFL’s Greatest Quarterback

Tom Brady’s one of a small handful of athletes who can make a compelling case for being The Greatest of All Time, and thanks to a new ESPN documentary miniseries, he’s getting the GOAT treatment. Man In The Arena: Tom Brady, a nine-part series debuting this week on ESPN+, follows the NFL legend throughout his long, record-setting career. Each episode focuses on one of his Super Bowl appearances, and follows his evolution from unheralded backup to the most decorated player in league history.

MAN IN THE ARENA: TOM BRADY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Brady strides onto the field in the uniform of the New England Patriots, before things cut to a montage of him throughout his football career—from Pee-Wee ball to the University of Michigan and NFL glory, while Brady himself offers narration.

The Gist: The NFL loves making legends out of men, and the legend of Tom Brady is the stuff of Hollywood magic. Famously overlooked, drafted in the sixth round of the NFL draft, Brady was thrust into the spotlight his rookie season, when the high-dollar starting quarterback in front of him was injured. He led his team on a dramatic, twist-filled run to a championship, and never looked back. Now more than twenty years later, Brady has seven Super Bowl rings and nearly every statistical record a quarterback can have.

But for all that… do we really know Tom Brady? The man is a cipher; at times wooden, at times alien, and for all his accomplishments, he can feel remarkably inaccessible to sports fans as a person. Man In The Arena promises to offer a welcome window into the record-setting quarterback’s bubble.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? There’s no secret about what ESPN is trying to do with Man In The Arena: Tom Brady—it’s an obvious attempt to recapture the magic of the ten-part Michael Jordan hagiography The Last Dance, and it’s similar in many ways, though more linear than that film’s time-line hopping structure. There’s also a definite whiff of classic NFL Films work here; they’re not reinventing the wheel with this, because they don’t need to.

Our Take: It can be easy to forget that there was a time when we didn’t know the name Tom Brady, and didn’t associate it with Super Bowl glory. But in 2001, he wasn’t the household name that he’d half-jokingly promised his family he’d one day be. He was simply a kid too young to rent a car, drafted to be a backup quarterback, and far from anyone’s radar as a future game-changer.

Man In The Arena: Tom Brady is structured to focus each episode on one of the quarterback’s first nine Super Bowl appearances (he’s made ten, counting last year’s victory as a Tampa Bay Buccaneer, but that one’s too fresh to factor in here). Whether you love the New England Patriots or hate them, there’s something especially compelling about his first improbable run during the 2001 season. Expected to sit for years behind Drew Bledsoe—an established starter who’d just signed the largest contract in NFL history at the time—Brady stepped under center when a hard hit left Bledsoe with internal bleeding and sidelined him for weeks. Brady started winning… and simply never stopped, leading the Patriots to a last-second win over the heavily-favored, defending-Super-Bowl-champion, “Greatest Show On Turf” St. Louis Rams, and then five more titles in New England before departing for Tampa last year.

It’s wildly entertaining to relive that season, and fun to remember Brady as an unproven, wet-behind-the-ears rookie, considering what we know about the ensuing two decades of his career. Brady provides a large part of the narration himself, with the assistance of several teammates from that season—linebacker Willie McGinest, and Bledsoe, who offers his own perspective on behind pushed aside by the future GOAT.

There’s nothing particularly revelatory about Man In The Arena’s offering—that is, we’re not getting the troves of unseen archival footage that The Last Dance provided—but that’s not to the documentary’s detriment. The real value is in the extensive on-screen interviews, which give a much-needed human edge to something that could otherwise be little more than a highlight reel. Brady himself comes off more charming than he has perhaps ever, seeming almost human at times. It will be interesting to see how the story stays compelling as Brady’s character shifts from plucky underdog to decorated champion, but if the first episode is any indication, it’s got a good chance at success.

Sex and Skin: None, not even the famous draft-combine of a shirtless Brady that’s long given hope to other men lacking in muscle definition.

Parting Shot: After the Patriots stun the Rams to win their first Super Bowl, we return to Brady as narrator, as another montage of his glories shows on screen. Brady philosophically muses: “It’s a series of small steps that seem so insignificant at the time you’re making them, it’s only when you look back you see the distance traveled. It’s been incredible for me to love what I’m doing, and chase something for so long… and I’m still f**king doing it.” It’s a rare glimpse of personality from the often Sphinx-like Brady, and it bodes well for a compelling run in the remainder of the series.

Sleeper Star: The first episode revolves around the Patriots’ surprising run to their first Super Bowl victory in 2002, and a large part of that storyline focuses on Brady taking the QB helm away from established starter Drew Bledsoe. Bledsoe provides extensive interviews for the episode, and his obviously-conflicted emotions about losing his job while winning a Super Bowl are surprisingly touching.

Most Pilot-y Line: “Without that play,” Brady notes about the infamous ‘Tuck Rule’ call that swung the result of a Divisional Playoff game against the Oakland Raiders in the Patriots’ run-up to Super Bowl XXXVI, “there’s a lot of lives that are changed… trajectories of careers that are changed.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. For football fans, Tom Brady has been a part of our lives for more than two decades now, but it’s still easy to feel like we don’t know him. Man In The Arena: Tom Brady goes a long way toward changing that.

Scott Hines is an architect, blogger and internet user who lives in Louisville, Kentucky with his wife, two young children, and a small, loud dog.

Watch Man In The Arena: Tom Brady on ESPN+