8th
On knees
Five minutes into the first game of the season, a Kansas City helmet twisted Tom Brady’s knee, snapping some tendons, and ending his season.
What’s amazing about ACLs is how delicate they are. Here are men who do nothing but train, diet, and train some more. They are the fastest, strongest, most physically disciplined people on the planet, and yet their knees buckle and break easily and often.
In the day since the hit, I’ve been thinking about the Patriots, and how different a fan I’ve become in the last 7 years. Being a Boston fan as a kid was different—not tortured like people will say—it was about cheering on a team no matter what the outcome was. You cheered if they won and you were disappointed if they lost but you never really expected one over the other (except with the Celtics for some stretches). But now I’m used to winning, used to blowing teams out. I’ve never seen the end of a dynasty, the end of an era. For the past few years Tom Brady had been an athlete and a human operating at peak performance. I wonder if Brady had gotten used to it too. The Super Bowls and records seem to be in a past they hadn’t been in before yesterday.
