“Failure will not ruin Tom Brady’s Legacy”

-Colin Cowherd

I have problems with Tom Brady’s legacy. I have problems with everyone giving the Quarterback position too much credit. I do not mean to say that Tom Brady is not a good player nor that he isn’t great. There are almost nothing but upsides to having Tom Brady on your team; you are not just given hundreds of touchdowns and passing yards in the NFL. But, I believe Tom Brady is wrongly being given Bill Belichick’s legacy. I believe the head coach has done much more for Brady’s legacy than Brady for Belichick’s. But that goes unnoticed because of the spotlight placement.

But this is not just about football. I take offense to this statement because it is true. Failure in Tampa Bay will not damage Tom Brady’s legacy. People will be angry but those people are already angry because Tom Brady keeps winning and they don’t like him. Tom Brady has been part of and an asset to a winning culture for too long, so much that any failure will not hurt him, he’ll always be given another chance, there are too many good things. This failure may expose how he struggles with consistent pressure and it may show any quarterback can struggle with a weaker offensive line or a struggling organization. But he’ll continue to have opportunities and success because he brings in money and increases the chance to win a super bowl at a cheaper price because he was basically rent-controlled in New England.

My offense from Cowherd’s quote comes in support of all the people that do not get an opportunity to fail and have a chance for future success. For every Tom Brady, there are at least 31 others fighting for the same position who do not get a proper chance because no one wants to wait for someone to be successful. This goes beyond the NFL. Cowherd’s focus is on success and aggression but he overlooks opportunity. There are waves of other people who do not have opportunity, they’re not given any semblance of a chance to attain the same success. This is where I take offense. Someone like me who continually fails is never (has not yet) been given a proper chance to take over a starting position, so I have to sit, wait, and plug away at my less-than-ideal situation. I take offense to the fact that failure will not tarnish Brady’s legacy because he has been in a successful environment (from what I understand) for a very long time. I don’t mean to limit his success, I just mean that there is a semblance of luck and inequality across all people; no one has the same opportunity and some paths are unfortunately more difficult.

For reference, I want to compare the path of my last favorite Quarterback who was not given the best opportunity to succeed (from what I understand). While I don’t know the whole story — the operations, the conversations, the clubhouse entanglement — there is a lot of film on tape. As a fan of the Denver Broncos, I see as much of every game as possible and fill-in gaps with highlights and news. After Super Bowl 50, Peyton Manning and Brock Osweiler left and Trevor Siemian won the starting position for the upcoming season. The problem for him was that he is not Peyton Manning. The problem was that HE finished 9 and 7 after the TEAM had won a Super Bowl, the previous year. What people overlook is that Peyton Manning struggled. The offensive line wasn’t great, the Defense were the drivers of the team as they won major battles in last-minute situations [if there would ever be a moment where I would have a heart attack, it would have been like 6 or 7 of those games that season]. Manning was injured, Osweiler performed as a back-up in the best way possible but when he struggled, Manning got his job back. The Super Bowl 50 Denver Broncos season is the epitome of a team win.

This sucked for Siemian because he had to be the solution to all the problems that got overlooked. Siemian played 14 games but got injured, his head coach left at the end of the season, he had to fight for his position against a promising rookie and any other available option. No one attributes Siemian’s lost opportunity to an offensive line that wasn’t improved (it wasn’t bad, just not great) nor that some major departures from a championship defense left or faced other adversity. Peyton Manning was sacked 16 times in that championship season, where he played 9 games [not counting the post-season (9)], Brock Osweiler was sacked 23 times in the 8 games he played. Trevor Siemian was sacked 31 seasons, as a starter, the following season [in 2015 Tom Brady was sacked 38 times, not a Super Bowl winner. In 2016, he was sacked 15 times; Super Bowl winner]. There were a lot of times where I saw Siemian on-screen, get hit hard but get up and continue to push through for the success of the team and as a leader for the others, until he couldn’t because he got injured. I don’t blame the offensive line but the quarterback needs to be protected. Still, this did not translate to enough success or support for people to give his failures a pass when they seemingly became a problem. More importantly, 9 and 7 is a winning record and should not be recognized as a failure.

People are supposed to realize that sometimes they only have one opportunity, as Tom Brady did in New England. He was placed in a difficult situation and he has seemingly worked every day since to continually make sure that he proves people were wrong about him under-performing or not being a great draft pick. He has still faced similar situations with Jimmy Garoppolo and now with Tampa Bay. But he made his “big moment” count, when he replaced the injured Drew Bledsoe. Trevor Siemian was not as immediately successful so he was not given a chance to continue winning and, soon after, was let go. Owners and managers need to be more realistic about the lives they are playing with and the organizations they control. Higher-ups need to give people a realistic chance to fight for their position and not just cast them off after they find a scapegoat for failure.

People should actually realize that the opportunity that gets seen (Tom Brady’s first start) is not the one opportunity you have to find success. The one opportunity is the whole of your life. People have created an environment of unequal opportunity but the one chance you have is not limited to one moment.

References

Pro Football Reference. (2020). Tom Brady; Peyton Manning; 2015 NFL Standings; Brock Osweiler. https://www.pro-football-reference.com/

Werner, B. (2016). Tom Brady made his first start for the Patriots 15 years ago today. FOX Sports. https://www.foxsports.com/nfl/story/tom-brady-made-his-first-start-for-the-patriots-15-years-ago-today-093016

Wikipedia. (2020). Trevor Siemian; 2015 Denver Broncos season; 2016 Denver Broncos Season. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page