Patriots’ Tom Brady named one of GQ’s men of the year

It’s been quite the year for the New England Patriots’ Tom Brady, though off-field has not been all good, as the deflate-gate saga has dragged on and is still not over. On the field, the Patriots haven’t lost in 2015, winning their playoff games earlier this year, including a thrilling Super Bowl, and are 9-0 entering this week against Buffalo.

Now the quarterback is in the headlines for a different reason: he has been named one of GQ Magazine’s men of the year. There is an accompanying photo shoot, and thankfully this time GQ didn’t ask Brady to pose with a goat – though there is a declaration from writer Chuck Klosterman that Brady is the GOAT, as in greatest of all time at the quarterback postiion. 

“Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback in NFL history,” is how Klosterman begins the article.

“That’s just my opinion, and that opinion is fungible. If someone else had made the same claim five years ago, I would have disagreed; five years ago, I didn’t even think he was the best quarterback of his generation. But the erosion of time has validated his ascension. Classifying Brady as the all-time best QB is not a universally held view, but it’s become the default response. His statistical legacy won’t match Peyton Manning’s, and Manning has changed the sport more. But Brady’s six Super Bowl appearances (and his dominance in their head-to-head matchups) tilt the scales of hagiography in his direction. He has been football’s most successful player at the game’s most demanding position, during an era when the importance of that position has been incessantly amplified. His greatness can be quantified through a wide range of objective metrics.”

Klosterman asks Brady about deflate-gate several times, and not surprisingly, he deflects the questions. Klosterman offers the transcript of the back-and-forth, with Brady saying he won’t answer questions in part because the (literal) federal case the NFL has made over the air pressure in footballs is still in court, and also because, Brady claims, he’s “answered them multiple times for many different people.”

Klosterman disagrees.

“I don’t think you have, really. When I ask, “Were you generally aware that this was happening,” what is the answer?”

Brady: “I’m not talking about that, because there’s still ongoing litigation. It has nothing to do with the personal question that you’re trying to ask, or the answer you’re trying to get. I’m not talking about anything as it relates to what’s happened over the last eight months. I’ve dealt with those questions for eight months. It’s something that—obviously I wish that we were talking about something different. But like I said, it’s still going on right now. And there’s nothing more that I really want to add to the subject. It’s been debated and talked about, especially in Boston, for a long time.”

And that’s just part of the awkward back-and-forth between Klosterman and Brady on the topic, which goes on for several questions, and includes Brady at one point saying, “Chuck, go read the transcript from the five-hour hearing.”

So, no clarity from Brady on the ball issue. The 38-year old does, however, seemingly put an end to the idea that he’s headed into politics once his playing days are done, an idea that’s been swirling around Brady for years.

“There is a 0.000 chance of me ever wanting to do that,” Brady says.

He says that in football, there’s a scoreboard, and at the end of every game he has “tangible” proof of how well he prepared, how well he and his team executed their game plan. But in politics, “half the people are gonna like you and half the people are not gonna like you, no matter what you do or what you say.”

Oddly enough, that’s pretty much the position Brady and the Patriots are in now. It might not be a 50-50 split, but there are people that love the quarterback and his team (nearly every one of them a card-carrying member of the Patriots’ fan club), and there are people that hate them, believing every victory they’ve earned should have an asterisk next to it.

While he didn’t give Klosterman too much during their phone conversation, Brady did talk about his preparation habits and his Super Bowl rings in a video accompanying the story: