you could argue—pretty convincingly—that the NFL didn't miss a beat last season. That after Tom Brady went down with a torn ACL in the opening week, Peyton and Eli and Big Ben all stepped up and guided us through yet another intensely competitive regular season, a relentless playoffs, and an unforgettable Super Bowl (well, the fourth quarter, at least).
But one season doesn't make a league—its players do. And as many marquee QBs as the NFL can throw out there—guys who can put up 400-yard games and orchestrate last-minute game-winning drives—sorry, but none of them are Tom Brady. Not even close.
Would you even recognize Drew Brees if you walked past him in the frozen-foods aisle? Can you imagine Brett Favre in his Wranglers hobnobbing with supermodels and fashion designers in Paris?
Didn't think so.
Brady is like no other player in the league. Hell, like no other athlete in America.
Which is why we're giving it up for him this year, raising a pint to the fact that he's back in the game. Sure, we can carp about whether or not he was stepping into his throws early in the season and whether his mechanics were...Bradyesque enough. But think about it for a minute: The dude had his ACL and MCL sheared against Kansas City, underwent three surgeries, rehabbed it back into form by early spring, and didn't miss a beat in training camp. And amid all the leg presses and wind sprints and crunches, he not only got engaged to the world's most famous supermodel but married her twice (more on that later) and announced that he and Gisele are expecting a baby this month. And by the way, do we need to remind you about the ridiculous game he had against the Tennessee Titans in week six, throwing five TDs in one quarter? Have some of that, Dan Marino.
So yeah, while the Patriots won't finish 16-0 this season, stop for a moment and consider all that the 32-year-old quarterback (and new groom and soon-to-be father of two) endured and accomplished over a twelve-month span and ask yourself, What more could the guy have done? Of course, convincing you that Brady deserves to be one of our Men of the Year is one thing; telling him what a totally awesome time he's been having is something else.
torn and frayed
i hook up with him in the parking lot at Gillette Stadium less than twenty-four hours after the Patriots go scoreless in the second half against the Broncos—in Denver—and fall in overtime, 20-17.
"You're catching me at a tough time," he says with a grin (or maybe it's a grimace), extending a golem-sized right hand. We climb into his Lexus sedan: A/C blasting (even though it's forty-five degrees out), blacked-out windows. The fellow commuters on I-95 heading back into Boston have no idea who they're stuck in traffic next to.
I explain that if we're going to talk about his year, we're going to have to start with that exceedingly crappy Sunday at Gillette Stadium, September 7, 2008.
It wasn't one of those oh shit! cough-up-your-buffalo-wings knee injuries, but Brady knew—even before he was carted off the field—that he was done for the season. His left leg buckled under Chiefs safety Bernard Pollard, who lunged at him as Brady planted his foot to throw the ball. All the trainer had to do was perform a simple manual test (grasp the calf with one hand, just above the knee with the other, and gently shift it about) to determine that he had blown out his anterior cruciate ligament.
Translation: reconstructive surgery, six months of grueling rehab, a nation of Patriots fans bitching and moaning and blogging.
Brady opted for surgery in L.A. by surgeon Neal ElAttrache (not the Patriots' team doctor), and that should've been that. Except that's when things got complicated.
"I had the full-leg brace for two days, and then I said, 'Okay, enough with that brace.' And that's why I got the infection," Brady says. "I was just really hardheaded. I decided I wanted to prove to everybody how fast I could return from this, and I was out doing way too much stuff two days after surgery."
Nine days later, Brady underwent a second surgery, to clean out the infection, and then a third a few days after that for more cleaning. Even if you're a six-foot-four tough-as-titanium QB, it ain't fun.
"You're never prepared for that moment when you wake up after surgery and the nerve block wears off and you're like, 'Why am I in so much pain?' " he says as we cruise in the slow lane. "And then I had the second and then third surgeries. And at that point, I said, 'Guys, when I wake up, I don't want to be in any pain. So whatever you have to give me, go ahead—I'm all pained out at this point.'"
a new year
by January, after a couple of months of rehab in both L.A. and Boston, Brady was already rounding in form, playing eighteen holes with his dad at his dad's golf club outside San Francisco ("I think I shot like high seventies, low eighties"), tossing the ball around, and, oh yeah, asking Gisele to marry him. Two months later, they were standing in a church in Santa Monica.
"We planned it in like ten days, and it was perfect," he says. Gisele's parents flew in from Brazil, joining Brady's parents and his then 18-month-old son, John, from his relationship with the actress Bridget Moynahan. "We went back to the house and I barbecued aged New York strips. We had champagne, a cake, some ice cream. It was a great night. I think you always have this idea that weddings need to be 200 people and you invite everybody, and I'm all for it if people want to do that, but I think there was really something special about just having our parents there."
In April the world's most photogenic couple threw another wedding in Costa Rica, where they own a house. A bigger affair, but hardly big. About forty people, extended family only. None of Brady's teammates, none of his boys from the University of Michigan, no Karl Lagerfeld.
"The thing about it is, the day's for you," he says. "It's nothing personal against anybody, but it's not about them. It's about what you and your wife need for that day."
Brady and Gisele stayed on in Costa Rica, and then it was back to work. Serious work.
passing grade?
"no matter how strong you are, remember—you just had major, major surgery on your knee. It will never be the same. No matter how much rehab you do, how many squats and sprints, it will never, ever be the same."
That's Rodney Harrison talking. He's worth listening to. The former Pro Bowl safety returned from ACL surgery in 2006, and although he thinks he was a productive player for the Patriots after the injury, he says he never returned to that "high, high level of play." He retired three injury-plagued years later, at age 36.
Brady knows all too well the stigma that an injury of this severity leaves. And in his absence last season, let's remember that the Patriots didn't do so badly. Brady's backup Matt Cassel led the team to an 11-5 record. In the off-season, they slapped the franchise-player tag on him. And ludicrous as it seems now, there was chatter about whether the Patriots would consider trading Brady.
"You think you're going to be the same place your whole career," Brady says. "But look at Joe Montana, the best quarterback of all time: When it doesn't work out for the team, the player is going to move on. That's why the league's so strong, because it's so highly competitive."
Ultimately, the Patriots traded Cassel to the Chiefs, and Brady sailed through the preseason. But when the real action began, the Patriots played herky-jerky—a good quarter here and there but never a full sixty minutes. Analysts and fans alike questioned his confidence, his mechanics, his fire.
"If people were to ask me, Is Tom Brady back? I couldn't have said yes till what I saw in the Atlanta Falcons game," says Brady's former teammate Tedy Bruschi, now an ESPN analyst. The Patriots won in grind-it-out fashion, 26–10. But it wasn't Brady's on-field performance that impressed Bruschi. "I'm talking about his mentality. He was expecting performances from his receivers, and when he wasn't getting it, he got in their grilles. He yelled at them on the sidelines. That's the final step, when he says, 'I'm back—now you guys better join me.'"
Brady agrees, to an extent.
"The Friday before the Falcons game, Kevin Faulk came up to me and said, 'You doing all right?' And I was like, 'Yeah.' And he just said, "Well, I've played with you for a long time, and there's just something that's a little different now.' And for me, I think it was my intensity—or lack of it. And after the game, I said, 'Man, I really appreciate what you said, and know that I take it to heart.' I'm a person who plays on emotion and energy and excitement, and when I'm not like that, there's something missing. And I think there was probably a little bit of that yesterday against the Broncos. I gotta figure out the reason why it hasn't been there."
playing the other game
after pulling up to Brady's apartment in Boston's Back Bay, we keep chatting. We talk Michael Vick and concussions and roughing-the-passer rules, or at least try to. Brady's not big on tackling controversial subjects; anyone who thinks he's destined for a career in politics might want to try lobbing some tough, complex questions his way first.
So I ask him about his condo, the top two floors of a brick town house a few blocks from Newbury Street. Much as he and Gisele enjoy living in the city, he says they'll look for a bigger house—closer to the stadium, in a town like Chestnut Hill or Wellesley—to make room for their new baby.
But mostly, I want to know how he manages to lead a team through a six-month season and do this—the interviews, the high-gloss photo shoots, the red-carpet appearances.
"It's about looking back at your life and taking advantage of opportunities," he says. "They're not always going to be calling me to be on the cover of a magazine, you know? And also, it's very out of my comfort zone; it's a different side of me. I'll reveal more with something like this than I would on a Wednesday afternoon in front of my locker."
More than any other player since Joe Namath, Brady lives—and looks—the part. He's the only player in the league to be shot by fashion's most revered couple, Inez and Vinoodh (a tandem much more of his wife's world), not to mention by the likes of Steven Klein and Bruce Weber. He wears custom-made suits by Zegna and Tom Ford. Two buttons, usually. Sometimes even with a vest, if he's feeling spiffy. "If I wear a vest, I usually like to wear a tie," he says. "But last night, after the game, I didn't, because I was pissed off, and I was trying to button the shirt, and my neck for some reason felt swollen. So I couldn't get it closed. I just said, 'Fuck it!'"
Get Brady going and he'll gladly talk fashion. I fire off a few quick questions.
Pleats or flat fronts? "Flat fronts. Always. I see so many guys, really athletic guys, wearing pleats and I just shake my head. Like, Tiger Woods used to wear pleated pants! I'm like, C'mon, Tiger!"
Boot-cut or straight-leg jeans? "I go back and forth. It depends what mood I'm in. I'm more of a boot-cut guy when I'm dressed like this—casually—but when I want to wear something nice, it's all straight-leg."
Does the wife tell you what to wear? "I think any man who lets a woman pick what he should wear... I mean, you gotta draw the line somewhere as a man. I see these guys, 'My wife told me to wear this!' And I just shake my head."
a model marriage
So yeah, the wife. I want to know about life with Gisele. Is it tough for her to be married to a guy who doesn't even crack a beer on the flight home from a road game but instead immediately starts studying next week's opponent? He laughs. "Yeah. Yeah. You know, we find time to spend together," Brady says. "But Gisele understands the job requirements. I get some time with her on my day off, Tuesday, and then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday nights. Probably after wins I'm more with her. After losses, I don't think much of anything other than the game. This morning at breakfast, for instance, I was talking to her, but I just wasn't there."
(Odd Brady breakfast fact: He doesn't drink coffee. Ever. "I've never had a cup in my life," he says. "I've never liked the smell of it, so I've never tasted it.")
Not that Brady doesn't put in the time with Gisele, hobnobbing with the folks in her world. He has met the famously eccentric Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld (while picking up Gisele after a photo shoot at Lagerfeld's house in Paris). And he's had dinner with Christian Dior designer John Galliano—he of the whisper-thin mustache, non-ironic pirate shirts, and tight-as-sausage-casing trousers—in both Paris and New York, where they sat together at fashion's annual big powwow, the Metropolitan Museum of Art costume gala. ("He's a really nice guy—not a big sports buff, though.")
Brady's a quick study: "Fashion people, they always kind of shake your hand and look you up and down. I'm a fairly reserved person, and when I'm with her, most people like to talk about themselves—so I'll just ask a question and they'll talk for hours."
Do they ever ask you about your job? "No," he says with a laugh. "There's no interest."
what a difference a week makes
six days after I interview Brady, the dude goes off—like he used to back in the Patriots' record-breaking 2007 season. In a mid-October snowstorm at Gillette, he completes twenty-nine of thirty-four and erupts for six TDs in a 59-0 romp against the Titans. It was the kind of performance that reminds us—and the entire league—what Brady can do when he's clicking. For anyone who's not a Patriots fan, it was frightening.
"It actually did feel a lot like a couple of years ago," he says, calling from his car two days after the game. "We hit a couple of TDs, and then you just gain so much confidence from that. For me, after this game, it was like, 'It's about time. This is how we should be playing.'"
So does this mean that, yes, Brady's officially back? That he's the same quarterback he ever was?
Who knows? One game doesn't make a career, or a season. But for a week at least, no one was talking about Brady's knee. And for at least one Monday morning at the breakfast nook, the world's most beautiful woman was getting the attention she deserves.
adam rapoport is gq's style editor.