Latest Patriots-Tom Brady buzz from 2020 feels like a bunch of nonsense
There’s no doubt the New England Patriots missed Tom Brady in 2020.
The offense was stagnant. A new quarterback was learning a complex playbook.
The team lost a ton of talent.
Brady was the unquestioned leader of the organization and had been a force for two decades. That kind of influence just one day disappearing has to have serious lingering effects.
However, Patriots fans might not believe the latest report from team insider Ben Volin, who revealed on his podcast that the main topic of conversation in New England’s locker room last year centered around … Tom Brady.
You mean to tell us that after the Patriots lost a league-high amount of players to opt outs and experienced a free agency exodus led by Brady, Kyle Van Noy, Jamie Collins, Danny Shelton, Stephen Gostkowski, Ted Karras and others that the locker room was still fixated on Brady? Who was talking about him?!
Here's a little scoop from 'The @BenVolin Show' yesterday after talking w/ a few Patriots players about what the main topic of conversation was in the locker room last year: pic.twitter.com/J0Ji9Ej568
— Ken Laird (@KenLairdWEEI) May 16, 2021
The Patriots’ locker room talking nonstop about Tom Brady in 2020 doesn’t seem real.
Not to mention, Julian Edelman missed most of 2020 with a knee injury and Stephon Gilmore hit the COVID-19 list before a quad injury ended his campaign. Who was starting these conversations? Joe Thuney, JC Jackson, N’Keal Harry, Shaq Mason, David Andrews, Sony Michel?
You mean to tell us that an energetic force such as Cam Newton allowed the rest of his team to be distracted by talk about a player that wasn’t even in the organization anymore? You mean to tell us Bill Belichick was letting this slide?!
New England dealt with so many problems in 2020. It’s difficult to comprehend that “talking about Tom Brady too much in the locker room” was among them.
It’s like when your high school friends meet your college friends 😬 https://t.co/RF5zVB9rI1
— Tom Brady (@TomBrady) May 13, 2021
The entire roster was a shell of its former self. Perhaps we’d feel differently if Brady had left behind cavalcade of well-known teammates who embodied the Patriot Way, but that was hardly the case. The seven-time champion skipped town at the perfect time and only a handful of recognizable members were left on the 2020 roster.
Brady did have an historic run with the Pats, but those more likely to be chatting about his heroics are a bunch of Bostonians slugging back Sam Adams and reminiscing about the good times — not a group of professional football players trying to get through a season in the middle of a global pandemic while trying to carve out a definitive role for themselves on a middling roster.
