Would It Kill Tom Brady to Act Like a Human for Once?

Tom Brady, every day morphing closer and closer into a sentient version of Rob Lowe’s NFL shield hat, this week gave the most boring possible answer to a question on the podcast he used to co-host.

“I don’t have a dog in the fight in this one,” Brady said on the Let’s Go! podcast, after host Jim Gray asked whether he’d be rooting for either the Patriots or the Seahawks in the Super Bowl on Sunday. “May the best team win.”

Yeeeeeeesh, dude. Brady is a man of many talents, but he really struggles to act like an alive human sometimes. Try to describe his personality to yourself right now, and see how far you get. I’m coming up with … competitive? That’s about it. Anyway, his answer seemed awfully dispassionate given that one team playing in the big game has his statue outside the stadium and is coached by a former teammate he won Super Bowls with.

If you’d like to read some words that don’t collectively carry meaning, here’s the rest of what Brady said.

“In terms of the Patriots, this is a new chapter in New England, and I’m glad everyone’s embraced the Mike Vrabel regime, all the amazing players that have worked so hard to get their club to this position,” Brady said. “We did it for 20 years. There was a little bit of a hiatus in there, but the Patriots are back and it’s a very exciting time for everyone in New England.”

“I just wanna see good football. I wanna see good plays, good throws, good strategy, good decisions.”

For a meaningless answer, it’s impressively annoying. I think most of us can acknowledge that the “I just want to see a good game out there” genre of sports observer is a buzzkill. The human condition is full of strange little biases and preferences that shape all our experiences, and the only point of denying them is to preemptively save face in case things don’t go your way. It’s no fun and it’s not worth it!

One possible defense of Brady’s milquetoast position is that his role as a FOX broadcaster and minority owner of the Raiders creates a need for impartiality. This is, however, absurd. So many rules related to actual competitive advantage have been bent or broken in order for Brady to keep both gigs, the idea that a little bit of well-earned personal preference is the place to draw the line is highly goofy. Brady is clearly a big fan of Seattle offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak, who is expected to become the next head coach of the Raiders, but until Monday, Kubiak is still a Seahawk, and the Raiders are–respectfully!–not relevant to any Super Bowl-related conversation.

Brady’s former teammate Rob Gronkowski, in an appearance on FanDuel TV’s Up & Adams show, said he could see Brady speaking out of a bit of professional jealousy.

“He probably wants to be the quarterback,” Gronkowski said. “He’s that competitive. He probably wants to be the guy in the Super Bowl right now.”

Another former teammate, Vince Wilfork, posited on WEEI that Brady could just be avoiding alignment with a Patriots team he thinks is going to lose on Sunday.

“If you don’t think we’re going to win, just pick Seattle then,” Wilfork said. “Don’t straddle the fence.”

Brady’s tendency towards fence-sitting has dogged him a bit in his post-playing career. He struggles to make a choice and then own it. He wouldn’t even tell Kendall Jenner who he’s picking in the game. His Netflix roast last year made Brady seem like a good sport, but then he ruined it by saying he regretted doing it. Maybe all the years in the Bill Belichick school of media training have sanded down his ability to react with any goal other than avoiding controversy, or maybe he just spends too much time with dog-cloning weirdos and Michael Rubin. He often seems allergic to sharing an opinion, which is a tough trait in sports media. Brady is an interesting broadcaster because of his personal experience, but he hides the ball to avoid taking positions.

It may be a drag, but Brady giving an overly diplomatic answer is not that surprising. A little more notable is how loud and unanimous the collective groan over his comments has been, especially from other Patriots players current and former.

“At the end of the day, if you’re a Patriot for life, you know what it is. Don’t give me that political bullcrap,” Wilfork said in his WEEI interview.

Another former teammate, cornerback Asante Samuel, who also played with Vrabel, was, uh, more pointed.

Several current Patriots have been asked about Brady this week, with most deflecting or saying they don’t care. Though at least one, linebacker Robert Spillane, took the bait.

“Personally, it makes me sick,” Spillane said Thursday.

The real galaxy brain take, of course, is that Brady is rooting for the Patriots and is negging them publicly to fuel them to win.

I’ll offer another suggestion, which is that the electrical substation near the 49ers practice facility in Santa Clara is not, in fact, to blame for shredding Niner tendons and ligaments throughout the season but did turn Brady into a gifted demi-cyborg as a child in nearby San Mateo. If not, he should lighten up and tell us he wants his old friends to win the game.

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