'Das Boot' drama could be a Belichick head game
Posted: Friday, January 25, 2008 12:41 PM
It probably shouldn’t be surprising that Tom Brady chose not to discuss “Das Boot” and his injured right ankle with the media on Thursday or Friday. You have to remember that he’s playing for Bill Belichick, a man who’s never heard a question he couldn’t avoid answering or a reporter he wouldn’t cross the street to avoid meeting.
Brady should have showed up to chat with the media if only because it’s part of his job. That said, I understand why the Patriots would want to keep him invisible. The less available he is, the more the Giants get to wonder about his condition.
And I wouldn’t put it past New England to be playing some head games with the Giants. Not that New York is going to do anything but prepare for the game as if Brady is going to play – they know he’s never missed a start and isn’t going to pick the Super Bowl to break that streak. Still, if the Giants are foolish enough to spend even a half hour preparing for the possibility of Brady not playing, it’s a victory.
I doubt they’re that foolish, and I wouldn’t worry about Brady not answering the bell for the Super Bowl. As Sports Illustrated’s Peter King pointed out earlier this week, if his ankle were seriously injured, he wouldn’t have spent his off days gimping around New York with his Brady Bundchen girlfriend. He’d have been in Foxboro with the medical staff making it better. The man’s too competitive to do anything else.
Belichick made a joke of it on Friday, teasing reporters that the team would issue its injury report next Wednesday and was pretty sure they were anxious to get it. If anything were seriously wrong with the Patriot quarterback, the Pats wouldn’t be making jokes about it.
Just the same, there is some concern in Patriot Nation. Over at boston.com, a lot of fans are saying that Brady didn’t seem his usual bubbly self against the Chargers last Sunday. One writer observed: “We were worried about Tom's lack of emotion during the AFC Championship. Any reasons why? We usually see him rallying with his positive energy. We saw him hanging his head low and just not playing like himself.”
There’s no question he was hurting against the Chargers. He threw three interceptions. Still, he completed 22 of 33 passes, which are numbers that are ordinary only by his standards. He’s getting two weeks to get better, so he’ll be healthier than he was against the Chargers, and that’s no comfort to anyone.
As silly as this whole episode may end up being, we should be glad we had it. Without Brady’s foot and the missed practices, it would have been a dull week, indeed. It’s also injected a bit of doubt into the game itself and established one of the main story lines for Super Bowl Week – Tom Brady’s right foot.
I can hardly wait for Media Day to watch him spend an hour not talking about it.
