By Ira Miller
Tom Brady’s hero growing up in the Bay Area was Joe Montana, and don’t be surprised if there is yet another parallel between the two of them after Brady returns this weekend from his four-week suspension.
Montana played his best when he was doubted.
Brady, like his hero, has shown incredible resolve when backed against a wall. It is a trait normally associated with those at the top of their profession; it is the desire that is fueled to get them to the top.
Brady, a man whose focus never has been doubted, will be even more honed in than usual and it doesn’t hurt that the worst team in the NFL, the Cleveland Browns, will be his foil for the first game, essentially giving him little more than a scrimmage workout to get his timing and game focus back.
Like Montana, a third-round draft choice, Brady’s career has been fueled by little slights, from falling to a sixth-round draft choice to the Spygate controversy eight years ago to Deflategate now. With Montana, it was the manipulation by Hall of Fame coach Bill Walsh that kept him on edge, and Walsh’s fascination with his eventual successor, Steve Young.
This doesn’t just happen in football.
With Arnold Palmer’s death and golf’s Ryder Cup fresh in mind, we are reminded of a moment more than a half-century ago that helped cement the Palmer legend.
It occurred at the 1960 U.S. Open at Cherry Hills in Denver, back in the days when they played 36 holes on the final day. At the lunch break, Palmer was seven strokes behind. He casually asked a couple of sportswriter pals what it would take to win, and they told him to forget it, he had no chance.
That was all Palmer needed to hear. He drove the green on the 346-yard first hole, two-putted for a birdie and launched his greatest comeback. He shot 65 to pass Jack Nicklaus, at the time still an amateur, and Ben Hogan, and leave third-round leader Mike Souchak three strokes behind. It was Palmer’s only U.S. Open championship.
Continuing with the golf theme, it happened with Jack Nicklaus, too. In 1986, at age 40, Nicklaus had not won a major championship in six years. But he got fired up before the Masters when he read a story in an Atlanta newspaper about how he was washed up, and he went out and won the tournament, his last major championship.
Count on Brady, returning to the lineup with his team a game ahead of Buffalo in the AFC East, to have that same laser focus starting on Sunday.
Just consider what he did after what he considered past slights, and we’re not talking about his rookie comment to Patriots owner Robert Kraft when he called his own draft selection the best choice the team ever made.
New England played the entire 2007 season under the shade of Spygate, the controversy that erupted over coach Bill Belichick ordering an aide to film signals of opposing teams. It was as if Brady was saying he didn’t need the help when he set an NFL record by throwing 50 touchdown passes with only eight interceptions and leading his team to the league’s only 16-0 regular season.
That the Patriots failed to cap it off with a Super Bowl victory was just one of those quirks. Brady left the field with 2:45 remaining in the fourth quarter after driving the Patriots to a go-ahead touchdown. It took that crazy off-the-helmet catch by David Tyree on the Giants’ ensuing drive to help give New York the title.
And, of course, in the Super Bowl game immediately following the Deflategate accusations after the 2014 season when, with the Patriots trailing the Seahawks 24-14 in the fourth quarter, Brady drove them to two straight touchdown drives by completing 13 of 15 passes for 124 yards and both touchdowns.
On the first drive, he bailed his team out of 3rd-and-14 and 3rd-and-8 situations. On the second, all he did was complete eight passes in eight attempts. Sure, everyone remembers the Malcolm Butler interception but without that Brady comeback there would not have been an interception. It is the biggest fourth quarter comeback in Super Bowl history.
Montana’s anger-fueled comeback began after Walsh benched him for Young during the 1988 season, saying Montana was “tired.” But the week after the 49ers blew a 23-0 second half lead behind Young and lost to the Cardinals, Montana was back in the lineup and took off on the best two-year run of his great career.
The 49ers went 36-6 in Montana’s next 42 starts. He had a TD-interception ratio of 81 to 26. Along the way, San Francisco won its third and fourth Super Bowls — one when Montana drove to the winning touchdown in the final minute, the next a 55-10 blowout in which Montana threw five touchdown passes.
That run finally ended in the NFC championship game following the 1990 season when Montana was knocked out with an injury in the fourth quarter and, with the 49ers still ahead, a Roger Craig fumble led to the Giants’ winning field goal. Montana never again started a game for San Francisco.
Brady’s run will end someday, too. But for now the question is, re-energized and as motivated as ever, how much more damage will be wreaked on the league by the only quarterback to start in six Super Bowl games.
–Ira Miller is an award-winning sportswriter who has covered the National Football League for more than five decades and is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Selection Committee. He is a national columnist for The Sports Xchange.