TAMPA, Fla. — For many Buccaneers fans, having Tom Brady become your starting quarterback is like starting to watch a great TV show in its 21st season.
A lot has already happened, and while you know most of the main characters, you don’t have much time to catch up.
I could recommend any number of books written about the Patriots’ dynasty, and I’m reading Michael Holley’s “Belichick and Brady” now. But even with all the collective downtime these days, I wanted to offer up something lighter from a time-commitment standpoint.
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Having 20 years in the NFL spotlight (oh, and nine Super Bowls and six championships) has made Brady one of the most easily GIF-ed players, with a ton of moments captured on video and ready for convenient use when fans want to respond to any sort of Brady news online. This will only get better next year when ESPN’s massive nine-part “Man in the Arena” series gives him Jordan-level GIF exposure.
So here are the backstories, the context and explanations for where and when those GIFs took place in Brady history. This is your remedial lesson, so you can act like you were a Brady fan way back before March.
10. Brady displays his Super Bowl rings
This is a tricky one. If you encounter a pic of a Bucs player proudly showing off a Super Bowl ring, there’s a pretty good chance it’s from the 2002 season, unless of course it’s Doug Williams or Steve Young or, well, you get the point.
With Brady, there are two popular and similar GIFs of him flaunting his rings. One is from 2015, the other from 2019 — you can tell easily by the number of rings on his fingers.
The first — with just four rings — is from the Patriots’ banquet in summer 2015 when they got their rings from their Super Bowl win over the Seahawks. That ended a decade-long drought without a championship, so Brady was especially giddy, as you see here. Two rings on each hand, four total, and the dress shirt is unbuttoned.
At some point in the evening, he switched all four rings to one hand. There’s actually a website called howmanyrings.com that just answers how many rings various stars have in different sports, with Brady and Rob Gronkowski as the top two players on the NFL page (no love for Charles Haley).
Brady now has six, of course, and there’s another popular GIF that shows him with all six, from the 2019 banquet where the Patriots gave out their rings from their win over the Rams. Here he’s wearing a tie, just in case the actual number of rings doesn’t help you remember which is which:
9. Brady flashes a peace sign after a win
A little more obscure, but back in 2013, after a 30-23 win over the Falcons to improve to 4-0, Brady signed off with NBC’s Michelle Tafoya by flashing a peace sign as his postgame interview ended. The game was 13-10 entering the fourth, and the two teams combined for 30 points, with Atlanta scoring the final 10 points to make the finish interesting. Brady finished with 316 passing yards, two touchdowns and one memorable signoff.
8. Brady crying as he recalls his parents’ support on draft day
It’s not to the level of “Crying Jordan,” but you’ll see this one quite a bit. ESPN did a great package in 2011 called “Year of the Quarterback,” in which they talked to NFL quarterbacks about their paths from high school to college to the NFL, and Brady got emotional during his segment. Brady and his father were interviewed, and the quarterback cried remembering his parents’ support in 2000 as he fell to the sixth round before he was picked by the Patriots.
Of course, it’s used mockingly now, but here’s the full clip, talking about how much it meant for him to have his parents there as his football world seemed to be crumbling. We forget Brady didn’t always have six rings or the certainty of an NFL future: “I don’t have to be an insurance salesman!” he said.
7. “Missed it!”
The Patriots had all but wrapped up their sixth Super Bowl win last year, up 10 points on the Rams with eight seconds to play. But Los Angeles went for a 48-yard field goal (they would still need to recover an onside kick and score a touchdown to tie), and when it went wide left, the cameras caught Brady on the sideline shouting “Missed it!” as another championship was clinched. Now it’s used by fans in far less meaningful circumstances.
6. Brady blowing his nose on the sideline
They can’t all be championship GIFs. You play 20 years in the NFL, and cameras will eventually catch you blowing snot rockets on the sideline. This is from the AFC Championship Game against Pittsburgh on his way to a fifth championship in January 2017. It was only 41 degrees at kickoff at Gillette for this game, and one nostril at a time — one gloved hand, one bare hand — he clears things out. There are other similar videos. Use this one sparingly.
5. Brady in a questionable hat for postgame interviews
Not that anyone takes the preseason lightly, but last year, Brady showed up for postgame interviews after an exhibition win against the Panthers wearing this hat, drawing some good-natured parallels to famously oft-haberdashed Panthers quarterback Cam Newton. “He’s got similar style,” Brady deadpanned. “He wears it a little better.”
Esquire traced his choice to hatmaker Nick Fouquet and frankly didn’t like the look. Brady Hat Twitter had a brief, wonderful run, with references to Jim Carrey in “The Mask”, Woody from “Toy Story”, top-hatted Mr. Peanut and, yes, the “Hello, my ragtime gal” singing frog from Looney Tunes, whose name is ironically Michigan J. Frog, but who, in fairness, also plainly wore a black top hat.
If this was a preseason hat imagine what I’ve got planned for the regular season! pic.twitter.com/ox2PRq72ua
— Tom Brady (@TomBrady) August 23, 2019
4. Even Brady gets frustrated on the bench
Finding GIFs of a frustrated Brady isn’t as easy, but there are plenty out there, like this from December 2016, when he was frustrated after missing on a deep ball to Julian Edelman and threw a water bottle on the Patriots bench. (New England won 30-23.)
There are a handful of facepalms out there, as TV cameras will find Brady on the Patriots bench whether things are going well or not. Here’s a shot from 2018, when New England trailed the Jaguars 14-0 on a pair of Blake Bortles touchdown passes in what ended up being a 31-20 Jacksonville win.
Some frustrated Brady GIFs can help us appreciate his comebacks better, like this overhead shot from just before halftime of the Patriots-Falcons Super Bowl as New England trailed 20-0. That one turned out OK in the end for Brady.
Last year saw some frustrating moments for Brady, and New England’s first loss came after an 8-0 start, falling to Baltimore 34-20 on a Sunday night. NBC’s cameras caught Brady reviewing photos on a Microsoft Surface on the sideline and not liking what he saw.
Look at Tom Brady, Y’all! 😂😂 #RavensFlock #Patriots pic.twitter.com/vw9CV170mx
— Chanel (@Teaaaaaaaaaa) November 4, 2019
3. Brady jumping for joy in celebration
This is a great moment, from the Patriots-Seahawks Super Bowl in February 2015. If you remember, New England trailed by 10 in the fourth quarter, but Brady threw a pair of touchdown passes, the latter to Edelman with 2:06 left, giving the Pats a 28-24 lead. But Seattle rallied back, with Russell Wilson throwing passes of 31 and 33 yards and Seattle reaching the 1-yard line with a minute left. Touchdown wins and Patriots miss out on another title, right?
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But Malcolm Butler’s improbable goal-line interception of an ill-advised Wilson pass had Brady leaping in disbelief.
Here it is from another angle:
You can appreciate it more in this 90-second flashback from the NFL — the audio of Brady screaming is great, all the way to “We did it, Josh!” as he hugs Josh McDaniels on the sideline:
#TBT to @SuperBowl XLIX.@Patriots pic.twitter.com/OvmqzhXk9p
— NFL Films (@NFLFilms) May 21, 2020
2. Brady struggles to get a sideline high-five
This goes back to 2013, when it was a recurring gag for Brady to seek high-fives from teammates on the sideline and to constantly be left hanging. There are short PSA videos (complete with piano renditions of Sarah McLachlan songs) telling fans to please donate a high-five to Brady if they can spare one.
The most common of these comes from December 2013, when the Patriots routed the Ravens and got a defensive touchdown late (Tavon Wilson returned a Tyrod Taylor interception 74 yards for a 41-7 lead) and CBS’ cameras quickly showed Brady on the sideline coming up empty. The announcers didn’t even pick up on it on the broadcast, but it’s now part of GIF lore.
Better still is his buddy Julian Edelman leaving him hanging on the bench, if only for the inconsolable look on Brady’s face. This is from October 2013 after a Stevan Ridley touchdown gave New England a 17-7 lead in a win over the Saints. The GIF is edited well, as on the original broadcast, a Patriots staffer helped him out and gave him five just a split-second after Edelman dissed him.
And just so you don’t think he never got a sideline high-five that season, he did. This one is from LeGarrette Blount during a 55-31 win over the Steelers in November 2013.
1. A familiar rallying cry: ‘Let’s go’
It’s simple enough, but if Brady wants to fire up his teammates on the sideline, his go-to phrase is “Let’s go.” It’s been upgraded in recent years to the hashtag #LFG (we’ll leave the F up to you), but you can find an entire one-minute supercut of Brady saying “Let’s go” all over the place: the sideline, while he’s riding his bike, Super Bowl parades and more.
Get a closeup on camera, slow it down a bit, and it isn’t hard to read his lips.
(Top photo of Brady yelling “Let’s go!” during pregame warmups on Sept. 29, 2019: Barry Chin / The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
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