Bill Reynolds: An imperfect world and time have made Bledsoe a has-been
01:00 AM EST on Tuesday, November 16, 2004
Three mini-columns for the price of one . . .
DREW BLEDSOE
In a perfect world, he would have come in here Sunday night and had a great game. Maybe not good enough to beat the Patriots, of course, but a great game nontheless. The kind of game that resurrected all those long-ago Sunday afternoons when he was the young kid with the magic in his right arm, the kid who once brought this franchise from anonymity to respectability, the one who once seemed like a young Marino.
In a perfect world, he would have given us one more reminder of how good he once was here, before it all changed and he became just another quarterback who struggles against the Pats, all those past Sunday afternoons nothing more than fading snapshots in some old photo album, memories of the past.
But it's not a perfect world, and Sunday night we saw Drew Bledsoe at his worst. As immobile as a statue. Making bad decisions. Throwing interceptions. Unable to generate anything. Just another quarterback in peril against the Pats' defense, the magic all gone.
We know the reasons by now. Time has not been kind to Bledsoe. The NFL game gets quicker, more athletic; he seems slower. He's always needed time; now he's with an offensive line that gives him too little time. One of his faults always was that he got too locked in one one receiver; now, it seems even more so.
In the end, he threw the ball away three times and had only 76 yards. In th end, he looked old and slow and all about the past tense, the glory days gone.
TOM BRADY
He likes to portray himself as the anti-star, just another one of the guys, just another guy on this wonderful team of Patriots.
It's one of his wonderful characteristics, the self-effacing way he deals with both his success and his growing celebrity, no small thing in this chest-thumping, look-at-me world we live in. No small thing in this age where too many athletes are all but falling over themselves to draw any kind of attention.
Tom Brady, just one of the guys.
Don't you believe it.
He has become as good as there is. Peyton Manning may put up bigger numbers, and Brett Favre has more cachet, and Michael Vick is far more athletic, but no one is any more effective than Brady. Not for nothing does he have two Super Bowl MVP awards in three years. Not for nothing has his team now won 23 of its last 24 games.
Does he benefit from being on a great team?
No question.
But Brady makes everything look simple. It's been said that the great ones make the game slow down, and maybe that's the best description of Brady. Making good decisions always has been his great strength, arguably the most important skill a quarterback can have. He also knows how to make the pocket his home, is comfortable in it in ways lesser quarterbacks are not. All this and a growing confidence, too, the palpable sense that he knows what it takes to win. Sunday night, he did it again, even on a night when he wasn't particulary sharp.
So Brady can continue to downplay his own performance, continue to say he's just part of the team, no different than anyone else. He can continue to say he's just one of the guys, certainly not a star.
Don't you believe it.
BRADY-BLEDSOE
They are forever linked, the franchise quarterback and the sixth-round draft choice who would take his job. The franchise quarterback and the sixth-round draft choice who would end up with two Super Bowl trophies, the two Super Bowl MVP awards, all of it.
Drew Bledsoe and Tom Brady.
As if one's dream had to die before the other's could be actualized.
That's the back story, and it's always there, even now. Even if both are too classy to really talk about it, Brady forever saying how much he respects Bledsoe, Bledsoe always saying how he and Brady always were friendly, even if the situation became so uncomfortable.
But you know it's more layered than that. It has to be.
Would the Patriots have two Super Bowl trophies now if Bledsoe had not gotten hurt against the Jets in 2001? Would he still be the Patriots' quarterback? And where would Brady be, the boy wonder who got his opportunity when Bledsoe got hurt and made the most of it, forever changing the football fates of both himself and the man he replaced?
These are the questions, and maybe there are no easy answers.
So much of sports seems to hang on fate, the strange bounce of the ball.
For here Bledsoe and Brady are three years later and so much has changed, two careers that have gone in different directions, even if the two men are forever linked.
