I could see a potentially insurmountable problem if Tom Brady were 36 or 37, seeking a long-term contract that could wind up strangling the team with an untenable, cap-busting salary for an unproductive, aging player. But he’s not 36 or 37. He’ll turn 33 Tuesday and is very far from finished, or even winding down.
He’s still very, very good. In most of our minds, it seemed as if he had an “off’’ year in 2009 after returning from his left knee injury. During this “off’’ year, he threw for 4,398 yards, his second-highest total, and he had 28 touchdown passes for the third time in his career. The problem, of course, is that our last look at him, save for the beginning of the game in which he was injured, was the transcendent 2007 season, when he passed for a career-high 4,806 yards to go with an other-worldly total of 50 touchdown passes. Tough act to follow, you know?
Whatever the final numbers may be, the logical assumption is that he will be a more efficient quarterback this year than he was in 2009. He was understandably tentative in the early part of the season. This year he is fit and ready to go.
“I’m feeling good,’’ he said during a morning media session yesterday.
After 10 full years of media sparring experience, Tom Brady has become the master of moving the words around in a coherent manner without ever saying much of anything. He’s still capable of some animated postgame insight about why a play did or didn’t work, as befits any intelligent player who really and truly loves the game, but he can seldom be trapped into any self-revelatory musings.
It was a given he wouldn’t say much about his contract situation, and he didn’t, relying on the easiest New England Patriots dodge of all.
“Coach doesn’t like us talking about it a whole lot,’’ said Brady.
There it is. Daddy wouldn’t like it. End of story.
Except, of course, that it isn’t.
