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Tom Brady was better than literally anyone else at the sport of football. And after his playing career, he’s also excelled at finding the right way to subtly remind us all of that. Brady’s sense of being has long been centered around the construction of his personal yet accessible fairytale, which, if you’ve read his books on diet and nutrition and listened to his podcasts about practice effort and preparation, are meant to be served in a way that makes you feel like you can be Tom Brady, too.
He’s like all of us (except not at all).
The issue with transcendent personal greatness is that it’s often not a gift you can pass down. It’s an incredibly (and often accidentally) selfish pursuit, and we’ve heard time and time again examples of the children of all-time great athletes—read: Bronny James—attempting to exist within a gargantuan shadow. And, if those all-time great players go into coaching or ownership, their players and other employees also fail to thrive simply by being in proximity to greatness (read: Michael Jordan’s Charlotte Bobcats).
What a test case new Raiders quarterback Fernando Mendoza will be of Brady’s hypothesis that someone else can be Tom Brady. Brady’s eagerness to be all in on every single one of his pursuits has unfortunately boxed him into a situation where he’s just as responsible for the development of the biggest selection he’ll make as minority owner of the Raiders as the team’s head coach, Klint Kubiak, or GM, John Spytek. The football world will be watching and, if we’re being honest, ready to pounce quickly if greatness doesn’t materialize.
To Brady’s credit, he was at Mendoza’s final college game. He FaceTimed Mendoza during the combine and was on location when Mendoza made his official visit, which also coincided with the start of Raiders voluntary workouts. Despite his myriad commitments and outside pursuits, he has visibly done more than any owner in recent memory who was responsible for a decision of this magnitude.
The Raiders are helmed at the GM position by one of Brady’s closest friends in Spytek. Brady’s personal health guru, Alex Guerrero, has surfaced in reports again recently and maintained a presence at the facility. So it’s fair to refuse Brady himself any slack when it comes to Mendoza’s development because the prized quarterback prospect will be surrounded by an environment that was so heavily influenced by Brady.
I am of the mind—and have always been—that Brady came about as a kind of spontaneous combustion. Here was a kid at a point in his life when he was willing to do anything to make a roster, who ran into a coach who was searching for that exact character trait in order to create a team of nameless, faceless football drones who could buck the establishment by forming a sort of guerilla army. Brady surpassing Drew Bledsoe was wholly symbolic of the ethos.
I don’t know if there could be another Brady. Coaches have no time to develop players now. Colleges have no time to develop quarterbacks. The NFL is now simply an extension of the NIL-ruined pipeline from which their prospects come. It can take good players three stops—see: Baker Mayfield, Geno Smith and Sam Darnold—to realize the depth of their potential.
Brady is supposed to provide the cheat code to all of this. To prevent Mendoza from, some Sunday 10 years from now, throwing three touchdowns and whipping Las Vegas by 24 points as a member of the Panthers. Brady was inescapable in the predraft fanfare and media coverage of Mendoza, who, as our Greg Bishop illustrated, knows what foods Brady has suggested to avoid and evangelizes sleep as a means of recovery, just like his idol.
Right down to the Raiders’ signing of veteran Kirk Cousins—which came on the heels of Brady expressing the importance of having Bledsoe in front of him on the depth chart, which bought Brady more time to develop before seeing his first professional snaps—it feels like we’re attempting a reboot à la The Karate Kid Part II or Batman Beyond. In those fictional Hollywood creations, it’s easy for the greatness of one man to be understood and mimicked by another. When placed in the context of Brady searching for the next version of himself, it feels a little more macabre, depending on how one looks at it.
In the ice-cold world of NFL football, there is often no Hollywood ending built merely through intention. Only after the fact does the narrative emerge. This is what happened to Brady himself, whether or not he chooses to believe it. Now, we’ll see if he can recreate the path step by step.
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CONOR ORR
Conor Orr is a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, where he covers the NFL and cohosts the MMQB Podcast. Orr has been covering the NFL for more than a decade and is a member of the Pro Football Writers of America. His work has been published in The Best American Sports Writing book series and he previously worked for The Newark Star-Ledger and NFL Media. Orr is an avid runner and youth sports coach who lives in New Jersey with his wife, two children and a loving terrier named Ernie.
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