In late November, Tom Brady offered up a bleak assessment of the divorces that ultimately occur between sports teams and their best players.
“I think there’s always these types of situations,” Brady told Jim Gray of Westwood One in the aftermath of the clumsy benching of Eli Manning by the Giants. “I think as a fan growing up, I mean to see Joe Montana playing in another uniform and again to see Jerry Rice or Ronnie Lott, you know, guys that I really looked up to and admired, there’s not many happy endings in sports, and you know that’s just the way it is. You always wish for everything to go, you know, like a fairy tale but it doesn’t. Michael Jordan played for the Washington Wizards. I mean who would have ever believed that? And that’s just pro sports.”
The quote seemed odd, given that there are indeed fairy tale endings in sports, typically when a player or a coach wins a championship and walks off into the sunset. A new article from Seth Wickersham of ESPN.com could help explain why Brady would be thinking that even a sixth Super Bowl and an exit stage left wouldn’t be a “happy ending.”
The article, which we’ll be dissecting via a variety of articles throughout the day, suggests that the end is coming for the Patriots dynasty, as a result of what appears to be (based on the Wickersham report) very real tension and dysfunction between and among Brady, Bill Belichick, and Robert Kraft.
So sit back, grab your favorite warm (or cold . . . we won’t tell anyone) beverage and enjoy our take on the various facts and theories and angles that flow from Wickersham’s article.