“They hate us cause they ain’t us” is the story of the year for the Buccaneers and Tom Brady.
It is no secret that the media and NFL world have mostly done everything in their power to discredit the Buccaneers and Tom Brady after one of the most surprising seasons in recent memory. Still, we have reached a new low.
Yesterday, news broke by Tampa’s own Rick Stroud that Tom Brady played the entire 2020 season and in the playoffs with a fully torn MCL. You read that right. There is no GOAT debate and certainly no comparison. Brady’s 2020 season with a torn MCL has no equal in anything.
This is not a “Flu Game” or a dramatic return from a massive injury; this is greatness beyond compare.
As the rest of the league struggles to find quarterbacks that can extend plays with their legs and athleticism, the Buccaneers just convincingly won the Super Bowl with a quarterback that had a major ligament tear in his knee.
The MCL may not be as vital to knee movement as the ACL, but it is still no small task to put consistent weight on a body part that has lost one of its primary stabilizers. Tom Brady did this while also putting together one of the best seasons of his career.
As is typical for the Buccaneers, this story has to go beyond the obvious. Instead of taking this for its worth, this has now become an indictment against the Buccaneers and Brady.
Pro Football Talk is the most recent entity to take issue with Brady and the Buccaneers.
Bucs played it fast and loose throughout 2020 when it came to Brady. Tampering violations, injury-report violations. But Machiavelli would approve.
— ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) July 16, 2021
The insinuation that the Buccaneers “cheated” due to hiding Brady’s injury is ludicrous, and PFT also makes plenty of other claims on Twitter that appear to indicate an emotional level to this argument; something good arguers know has no place when trying to make your point.
Brady didn’t miss games, he didn’t miss practices, and it didn’t impact the season in any significant way. It’s not like the GOAT was going to be running for touchdowns every single play, yet his production on the ground was comparable to his seasonal average.
Had nothing been said, no one on the planet had any way of knowing that Brady was injured at all, and the league would waste its time trying to get a report on every single player that has an injury that doesn’t keep them from playing.
Do we have to report hangnails now? Is the NFL going to make every player take their socks off before the game to make sure they don’t have turf toe? Absolutely not.
Tom Brady was not injured on the Buccaneers
We understand the desire to have information out in public, especially for media companies, but Brady missed nothing. The fact that he looked better than ever makes this a non-issue, especially when considering that you can still run on a torn MCL.
There is a stark difference between injured and hurt. Every athlete that has ever laced up has played through hurt before. Pain can be an all-too-common part of sports. An injury is a different story, and these almost always imply that a player can’t play through them.
If this were another player, perhaps it would be labeled an injury, but Brady is different. It is entirely fair to say that Brady played through the whole season hurt, but which players honestly aren’t in the game of football?
It is also entirely unfair that the Buccaneers and Brady are singled out as if they are the only team to start a player that wasn’t in pain. It seems oddly convenient that PFT didn’t make a huge deal about the reports that came out from Brittany Brees that her husband was far more hurt during the season than everyone thought.
We seemed to celebrate Drew Brees’ resilience, as we should, but we also have to show the exact same support to Tom Brady, but Bucs fans already know that this won’t happen.
Regardless, the Buccaneers still have the Lombardi, Tom Brady is at the top of his game and on a path that appears unstoppable (maybe this writer needs to get on TB12 as well), and Tampa is primed to prove everyone wrong in a push for a repeat Super Bowl victory.
Bucs fans, celebrate the moment. Most franchises only dream of a 2020 season like we just experienced, and now it will live in infamy forever.
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