Tom Brady: Hero Worship Leads To Lame Crisis Response
On Wednesday, a 243-page report found it was “more probable than not” that New England Patriots Quarterback Tom Brady was “at least generally aware of the inappropriate actions” his team’s staff took to deflate footballs in January’s AFC Championship game against the Indianapolis Colts.
In other words, there’s a better chance than not that Brady is a lying cheater.
Yesterday, Brady gave his first interview since the report’s release as part of a prescheduled interview at Salem State University. If you believed Brady was innocent of the allegations against him before the interview, you might have changed your mind after watching him dodge question after question in a manner that strained credulity.
Interviewer Jim Gray did his journalistic duty by asking Brady for his reaction to the report. The audience heartily booed every question Gray asked on the matter and enthusiastically applauded every Brady evasion.
Kelly Carlin, George’s daughter, summed up the interview perfectly in a tweet last night:
I believe the crowd’s hero worship will work against Brady, who relished the audience’s response and hid behind their angry boos to Gray’s fair and necessary questions. Brady’s response may not lose him any diehard fans, but the audience beyond the room—including many people reasonably asking whether Brady is the latest Lance Armstrong, Mark McGwire, or Barry Bonds—were probably not impressed.
My biggest problem with this interview is that his tone was generally unserious. The questions swirling around him go to the center of integrity, honestly, and playing within the rules. Regardless of his guilt or innocence, he treated the cheating allegations with a defiant and casual air instead of as the legacy-tarnishing accusations they are.
Brady should have stepped up and managed the crowd. He would have scored points by encouraging them to listen to Gray’s questions respectfully and giving him a chance to respond to them. He could have said:
“Jim is asking me fair questions, and it’s his job to ask them. So let me do my best to answer them.”
If he didn’t want to answer the questions, he could have said something along the lines of what he did say at one point during the interview:
“I haven’t had time to read the full report yet, and I’d like to have the chance to read it in full before commenting on it.”
Instead, he hid behind a hometown crowd, made a lame joke about his reading skills, and played the victim. And not once did he say he was innocent. All of that leads me to believe that he’s a cheater.
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This is inane and insane. I don’t feel Tom Brady was evasive at all. I think its clear that he is innocent. Why should he continually answer the same questions ? He has already stated that he was innocent months ago. So the writer of this for shit article thinks Brady should answer the same questions for as long as they feel they want to ask them. Beating redundancy into the ground isn’t going to make it true. Its a bitch when all of these folks feel they can’t retaliate against the Patriots by having their favorite teams beat the patriots so they have decide to bitch and whine like the real housewives of the NFL. Jim Gray is a sorry little man who is grabbing his moment and trying to make it last. Tom Brady has never been anything but a gentleman in front of the camera and a winner on the field.
Robert –
Although I rather enjoyed your phrase “inane and insane,” hurling insults doesn’t make your case any stronger.
You said that you think it’s clear that Tom Brady is innocent. What you didn’t do is offer any evidence to support that claim. In fact, the Wells Report made a strong case, with evidence including text messages, that Brady knew what was going on and allowed it to continue.
You’re entitled to dislike my post. I just wish you’d offer a stronger counterpoint.
Best,
Brad
Hi Brad,
I agree with what you’ve written about Tom Brady. It certainly looked like he was trying to avoid offering anything of substance. Even if he hadn’t read the report, he could easily comment on what he did or didn’t know, or did or didn’t do.
He could’ve told the interviewer “I’m sorry, I haven’t read the report fully, and I’ll want to do that before offering any in-depth comments. However, I have never directed anyone to deflate footballs and I had no knowledge of those activities.” Of course, he would have to be innocent to say that.
Seeing Robert’s response to you made me think. Overall, it’s really unfortunate that more people aren’t willing/able to reconsider their own ideologies in light of actual evidence. The media could/should be of some help to us here… instead of trying to balance a story by offering competing viewpoints equal amounts of ink, time and prominence, they should skew more towards favoring the facts and evidence and downplaying dissenters who have nothing but rhetoric on their side. There are some stories where the critics arguments simply don’t deserve the time of day.