The epilogue to 'Tom vs. Time' dropped at noon on Wednesday.
Everybody’s had more than enough at this point. Just stop the damn fight. Tom vs. Time wound up being a bloody draw.
In my estimation, Tom Brady and filmmaker Gotham Chopra overplayed their hand with this one last installment days before the season opener.
Sure, it’s good for business. But even the most sycophantic Brady crotch-nuzzlers (insert my photo here) got worn out on the introspection, hint-dropping and tea-leaf reading of the 2018 offseason.
We didn’t really need closure. And we didn’t really get it. But, interestingly, Brady had an answer to that in the short film when addressing outside criticism.
“I’m learning to deal with it better,” said Brady. “I just don’t give a shit that much anymore about anything. I think keeping things in perspective and caring about things that really matter like my family, like people’s health, like life and death. To worry about a lot of bullshit about what people may think or feel or say, I really don’t care anymore.”
Fair enough.
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The most newsworthy part of the episode? Brady’s plans. He leaves the door plenty open for an early departure, but states again that his preference is to play until he’s 45.
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“I would love to play five more years,” he said. “It will be a challenge for me. I don’t think it’s gonna be easy. It’s gonna be hard to do. It’s gonna be very hard to do. But I think I can do it.
“Once you stop you’re done,” he added. “I think I’m not ready to say that I’m done. I don’t feel like I am. I feel there’s still things to accomplish. It’d be like getting close to the top of the mountain and then saying, ‘I’m good, that’s good.’ No I worked really hard to get to this point. Why not finish it off?” (Story continues below.)
It’s hard to pin down what “finishing it off” must mean? His resume is becoming Ruthian. He’s won more Super Bowls than any other quarterback, played in more Super Bowls than any other quarterback, won an MVP at 40, authored comebacks that finally moved even his most entrenched detractors off their spots. What peak does he seek?
Brady alludes to the lack of “fun” he’s been feeling the past couple of seasons. And he also alludes to relationships that “ebb and flow.”
“If I’m gonna do something at this point, it’s gonna be because I enjoy it,” Brady said. “The last couple of years, a lot of parts about football were not enjoyable when they should have been. Some of it was my approach. And I think anytime you are together with people for a long period of time, relationships ebb and flow.”
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In a pretty disingenuous moment, Brady then pinned the offseason hubbub about the climate within the Patriots hierarchy on insatiable fans and media.
“I think people are looking for something to write and talk about,” he said in the final installment of a six-episode documentary about his football life that ended in February with him asking existential questions about the meaning of football and life.
“They want to talk about a lot of drama and I’m sure a lot of teams have things like that but ours is to the tenth degree,” he said.
I don’t know if the inference is that the drama was conflated, contrived or merely garden-variety drama every team experiences. But the high degree of intensity to this offseason conversation was thanks to the fodder provided in the documentary, not to mention sitdowns with Oprah and Jim Gray.
In the end, 'Tom vs. Time' is less about football and more about a search for personal and spiritual meaning. And a lot of people smash into that after the age of 35 when the pursuit of career, individual stability and beginning a family has already happened.
You turn around and say, “I have these things I wanted while I was growing up. I guess I’m grown up now. So now what do I do? Why don’t I feel satisfied? What am I here for?”
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And, as awkward as it was to watch at times, maybe that’s where the documentary has most of its value. Here’s a guy who undeniably has it all deciding not to wall off his emotions and really confront how he feels.
Even though he took a lot of shit for it. Even though we all feasted on the drama.
“When I look at the last six months, it’s been the first time I’ve taken a little break from what I’ve done and what’s been cyclical and monotonous,” Brady said at the outset. “But I just think I needed something different this year. My family needed something different.”
Who can’t relate to the “cyclical and monotonous”? Who can’t relate to feeling like you’re a needle on a record, spinning around and knowing you need to change your groove?
Heading to Dubai! Who’s with me!!??