"He really was just an average Joe," Kontoulis said. "Now he's a legend. He's Hollywood."
As the Patriots open a new season of hope and opportunity today, their leading man returns to football as a figure almost entirely transformed from the unassuming, and ferociously talented, number 12 the region fell in love with as soon as the spotlight found him, in 2001, his first Super Bowl season. He was the rare superstar with a convincing common touch, the oddly approachable, albeit absurdly handsome, boy next door.
Seven seasons later, the talent remains unrivaled, but almost all the other adjectives have changed.
Brady comes back to Foxborough's artificial turf from one of the most rarefied offseasons imaginable. With the world's wealthiest model at his side, he has been juggling the unrivaled pampering of money and privilege and the jangling discomfort of serving as daily prey for the gossip mongers and the stalkarazzi.
And for the first time in the Brady Era in Boston, the iconic quarterback begins a season trailed by a word rarely associated with him: uncertainty. Nursing some sort of injury to his foot (As is the pattern with the Patriots, no one will say what the problem is.), Brady missed all four pre-season games, all losses in which the team looked ragged and leaderless. Brady also opted out of the team's voluntary offseason workout program for the first time since he arrived as an unheralded backup in 2000. It seems a small matter, but it was always part of his charm - that the quarterback would also show up as a grind-it-out workout warrior.
Brady, in short, has been more visible to television viewers this year on shows like "Access Hollywood" than ESPN's "SportsCenter."
The last time he touched a football in game action, Brady heaved a desperation pass to Randy Moss - an incompletion - with 10 seconds remaining in a devastating 17-14 loss to the New York Giants Feb. 3 in Super Bowl XLII. The loss spoiled an otherwise perfect season for the Patriots. For Brady, was it also an intimation of mortality?
