The End of Brady
Decline comes for us all. Rome fell. The British empire receded. The Romanovs, the Habsburgs—gone. And on a fog-enshrouded night last weekend in Foxborough, Massachusetts, the most impressive and enduring sports dynasty of the 21st century sputtered to its inevitable end, as the Patriots lost to the Tennessee Titans, 20–13, in a first-round playoff game.
If this was Tom Brady’s last game as a Patriot—he is 42 years old and a free agent—or indeed his last as a professional quarterback, “Hub Kid Bids Fans Adieu” it was not. In 1960, in his final at-bat at Fenway Park, famously memorialized by John Updike in The New Yorker, Ted Williams hit a home run, an apt capstone to a legendary career. With his final pass in what may be his final game at Gillette Stadium, Brady threw a hapless pick-six—an interception that was run back for a touchdown—an ignominious and undignified end that seemed almost contrary to nature.
