For more than 20 years, Tom Brady knew whether he’d won a game the moment the clock struck zero. In his next venture, there will be no objective evidence of whether he won or lost.
Appearing on Colin Cowherd’s show today, Brady addressed the question of how he’ll know if he’s done well.
“I’ve asked a few people, like, ‘How do you know that you did a good job?’" Brady said. “I think, for me, so much of this is gonna come down to the preparation. Did I feel like I was prepared? Did I feel like our crew was prepared? Did I give them the best over the course of the week so that we could give ourselves the best opportunity to be successful for the fans?”
He recognized that the game is the show. “Did we feel like we added to the broadcast?” Brady said.
Preparation helps — and his own preparation could be hindered if he becomes a partial owner of the Raiders and has his pregame access is limited. But delivery will be a big part of it, too.
How much criticism is too much? How little isn’t enough?
Every bad play for one team is a good play for the other. Even though he has recently bellyached about the quality of quarterback play, his best move during a game if/when the quarterbacks suck could be to praise the defenses.
That was the John Madden approach. Beyond making the game accessible to all fans by avoiding jargon and coming up with ways to make the game seem and sound simpler than it is, he celebrated what needed to be celebrated. And when something needed to be criticized, he did it in a light-hearted way that stopped short of mean-spirited finger wagging.
Ultimately, no one knows how Brady will do until he does it. Even he won’t know. And if he dares to look at social media for reaction, he’ll see that, after every game, there was enough for the Brady fans to love — and enough for the Brady haters to hate.