It’s Time to Hate Tom Brady Again

It is easy to forget that when Tom Brady first emerged on the global stage, during Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002, that the nation was cheering for him: This was back when a bunch of insurgent men calling themselves “Patriots” and sprinting and screaming together as one was something inspiring, rather than terrifying. Brady had begun the season as an unheralded backup, and his team was a 14 point underdog to the defending champion Rams, so their improbable victory was greeted with joy and surprise; you’ll never admit it now, but you were rooting for him.

Brady was a new face then. Now he’s the ultimate old face. In 40 years, assuming there is still football and the planet has not yet exploded in flames, your grandchildren or great-grandchildren might ask you who the greatest NFL player you’ve ever seen is. The answer is going to have to be Tom Brady. With the Buccaneers’ 31-26 win over the Packers in the NFC Championship Game on Sunday, Brady secured his record 10th Super Bowl appearance, and his first with his new team, which suffered through four consecutive losing seasons until he arrived. If he returns next season, as he is widely expected to do, he will pass Drew Brees for the most passing yards in the history of the sport, which will complete his statistical sweep: Most yards, most touchdowns, most Super Bowls, most championships, most Super Bowl MVPs. He’s the best. Your hypothetical grandchildren will not question your answer. It’s obviously Brady.

It’s what else you’ll have to explain that will confuse them. “What was it like to watch him play? Was he thought of as some sort of god?” they’ll ask, presuming that a player of Brady’s quality, media savvy and, still, at 43, cartoonish handsomeness would be heralded with universal praise and glory. And, if you are being honest, you will tell them: Well, we responded to the great Brady by hissing at his very presence, screaming that he is a fascist and doing Photoshops of his head as a penis. And everyone complained about having to watch him every Super Bowl. There was no player we hated more. I bet you decide, ultimately, to lie. I suspect our raging antipathy to Brady will end up saying more about us than it will about him.

This season may end up being known as one of the quietest of Brady’s career. His offseason separation—Brady has become such a celebrity that you want to call it a “conscious uncoupling”—from the Patriots and coach Bill Belichick turned down the temperature on both of them; it is much easier to hate a team that plays in Boston than one that plays in Tampa. (Most Patriots fans I know treated Brady’s exit less as a betrayal than an older relative deciding to retire to Florida.) There have been several NFL seasons fueled by Brady Debate alone, but this wasn’t one of them. With the pandemic, and racial strife, and the presidential election, and just the general weirdness of NFL games with fake crowd noise and no fans, Brady, as much as he possibly could, almost slipped under the radar.

Or, more to the point: He was allowed to play football in peace, perhaps for the first time in two decades. For all the talk of Brady’s supposedly polarizing off-field activities—having a model wife, briefly sporting a MAGA hat in his locker, kissing his son on the lips—he is at heart a football nerd; you pretty much have to be to make it to 10 Super Bowls. To see him in interviews is to see him as relaxed as he has been in years; he has told teammates that going to Tampa has made “football fun again.” Getting out of Boston will do wonders.

I expect that, if Brady ever quits football, we’ll soften on him: He will be less of a constant irritant in retirement. Mark Leibovich, the New York Times Magazine political writer and author of the terrific book Big Game, about the NFL and its never ending parade of capitalist madness, once told me that he thinks Brady will finally be able to reveal his true self when he retires and that it’s “much goofier and funnier.” Leibovich points to Brady’s father, who is a much looser and gregarious presence than his son, as further proof that the real Brady is much more likable than the Brady we see. Brady has reached the level of fame at which people either become more private or more weird (or both) to mentally survive. But Brady seems more human in Tampa Bay than he did in Boston. He really does seem happier.

Not that it matters: The mere image of Brady on Super Bowl Sunday will have many Americans hurling objects at their screens. Part of this is politics, of course: Brady will never live down that Make America Great Again hat in his locker, even if he’s clearly tried to distance himself from Trump for several years now (unlike his former coach, until very recently), and even if Leibovich reported that it was Patriots owner Robert Kraft who put that hat there. But hating Brady has become a sort of default comfort food, making him a public figure whose loathsomeness is more a matter of public utility than a richly deserved condemnation. It’s good, even healthy, to have some built-up distaste for our sports stars; sports exist, in part, to get out emotions that would be unacceptable in other aspects of public life. But I wonder if Tom Brady has served that purpose for so long that we hate him more out of inertia than any deep reserve of feeling. This is still not a reason not to boo him on Super Bowl Sunday: It is your civic duty, just as it is mine. But I just bet, in 40 years, we all pretend we didn’t.

Will Leitch will be writing weekly for GQ during the NFL playoffs. He is a contributing editor at New York Magazine, national columnist for MLB, a writer for Medium and the founder of Deadspin. Subscribe to his free weekly newsletter and buy his upcoming novel “How Lucky,”out from Harper Books this May.

Originally Appeared on GQ