For +MMs a Stiffie, For (-)MMs a Wetie ---> BRADY Article MUST READ

[RoadGrader]

this article below is the 1st Ron Borges Boston Herald article I actually opened since he was transitioned from his lifetime appointment w/ The Globe

the ONLY reason I clicked on the link was on account of the grabber header:

Free-wheeling Pats QB opens up on longevity, motivation, injuries and his love of the game

here is the entire article for those of you who don't want to give wRONg the satisfaction of knowing your satisfaction to be even slightly reinforced ny what a True Treasure TFB is to us that see him work

I will editorialize where I sense a +MM Stiffie moment by inserting a: and where I sense a (-)MM Wetie moment by inserting a:

Being Tom Brady

Free-wheeling Pats QB opens up on longevity, motivation, injuries and his love of the game

By Ron Borges | Friday, November 13, 2009 |




FOXBORO - Tom Brady knows where he wants to be 10 years from now. He wants to be where Brett Favre is today.
Not in Minnesota, if he can help it, but in a huddle in Foxboro with all eyes trained on him, everyone awaiting his call, a 40-year-old man still ready to lead in the most demanding team sport on earth.
It is what Brady has been doing all his life, or at least whenever people had the good sense to let him, which hasn’t always been the case. Despite all the winning, despite all the rings in his jewelry box, despite all the trophies on the wall and in his life, that is what he remembers.

It is what kept him going last year through the greatest trial of his athletic life and what pushes him into dark film rooms and early morning wakeups even now. Call it fear if you’d like because, in a way, that is what it is. Fear of failure is the emotion that forges greatness.

“I think I’ve always needed to prove it to myself,” Brady told the Herald this week. “I don’t think I ever believe I’ve got it figured out because I was never the best athlete. There were always guys picked ahead of me. No matter how much you win you don’t forget that.

“I don’t believe I’m very good. If I don’t put the work in there I don’t believe I’ll be very good. That’s how I’ve come to see it.
“Last week before the Miami game, Junior Seau told the team, ‘Make no mistake about it guys, this jersey you’re wearing is rented. It’s all about what you’re doing right now.’ He’s seen everything in this league. He was right. There’s nothing guaranteed.”

Brady includes his own performance in that even though he’s been the most consistent player and the most consistent winner in the NFL since he first replaced Drew Bledsoe 8 years ago. He has won three Super Bowls and appeared in four.

He has set records, both team and individual, that will not be approached for years. Sunday he will face his friend and nemesis, his Indianapolis alter-ego Peyton Manning, after a year’s absence, to renew a rivalry that goes back to the day they first shook hands when Manning introduced himself as if there might be a chance young Brady didn’t know who he was.

Yet nothing has changed for Brady internally. His life and his bank account are both much fuller, but inside, where athletes live, he feels the same. Every day is a fight to prove something. Every day you get better or worse but you do not stay the same.

So every day he climbs a mountain the rest of the world believes he long ago conquered. It is why he’s still atop it while others have found it impossible to reach or too difficult to stay on for long.

“I feel like it’s a privilege to play for Coach Belichick and Mr. Kraft but when the day comes they feel I can’t perform the way they think I should I’ll be sent packing,” Brady said. “That’s the way it is. That’s life. That’s everybody’s job. I don’t take it personally.

“Success should drive you to work harder. We haven’t done it now in five years. It’s like (Derek) Jeter said after the Yankees won the World Series this year. He forgot how much fun it is (to win) and he realized now how hard it is. When you’re young you don’t understand, but I would think we’d do anything within our power now to get back to the Super Bowl. Whatever Coach Belichick asks. Because that feeling you get when you win is worth every minute of the effort it takes.

“That’s what keeps me going. The competition in practice is just as competitive to me as the competition in a game. If we have a bad practice you lose sleep on those nights. I’m the leader of the offense. They’ll go as I go. If I got a crappy attitude they’ll have a crappy attitude. If it gets to the point where I’m thinking, ‘Hey, it’s Wednesday, I don’t care,’ I’ll shut it down because I’ll know it’s time to go.”

Injury brings perspective

Brady is far from that day. His lost year of 2008, which fell apart the moment his left knee did 10 minutes into the season opener, created a new set of parameters in which he had to function.
Gone was the daily routine of practice and preparation for this week’s opponent, replaced by a longer view. But when surgery to repair his torn ACL, MCL and other damage resulted in a staph infection that threatened to compromise the graft holding his knee together, speculation about his future went as wild-eyed as Ray Lewis.

Some of it he could ignore because he was often nearly 3,000 miles away in Los Angeles, but it is difficult to avoid constant audio, video and print speculation, as well as rumor mongering about your health and your attitude toward your job.

Faced with talk that his rehab was “behind schedule” (how could it not be after an unexpected infection invades the joint?), and that he might be facing more surgery and the possible loss of another season, Brady coped by realizing he knew more about his condition than anyone else.

But when the talk turned to the possibility of a dwindling motivation to come back to football because the rest of his life was everyone else’s dream, he could find only one word to describe his thoughts.

“Ridiculous!” Brady said. “I can’t imagine me not wanting to do this. I really don’t think I enjoy anything else to the same level. There’s nothing I love more than playing football. Everything else is a hobby.

“That’s not why I’m the quarterback of the New England Patriots. It’s not a hobby. I love my job. I love that I can get up every day and enjoy it. When I was younger and saw guys like Lawyer (Milloy) and Ty (Law) and Deion (Branch) leave I thought, ‘Why aren’t these guys playing for us?’ Now I realize Joe Montana was traded. Jerry Rice was released. Randy Moss was traded. Bill Belichick got fired. This is borrowed time for us. Enjoy the time you have because one day it’ll be you.

“After I got hurt the great thing for me was I was always the most informed. It’s hard to go out there and respond to everything that’s said. It takes a lot of energy to respond to all that. All I could do was focus on the rehab.

“What I look up to is a guy who doesn’t give in to the distraction. Even with the setback I never had a doubt. I was the one in control. I knew what I had to do. It was a pretty straight-forward situation.
“Yeah, it’s major surgery but they’ve got it down. It’s not like 20, 30 years ago. You know how long it will take. Then it’s about doing the work. You can’t half-ass the work.”

In a twisted way that only the athlete can fully appreciate, there was a sense that this chapter of his football life had to be written. Injury, like hard work, defeat and the constant need to prove you are who you say you are, come with the job. It was, pain and all, a part of the life he chose.

“That’s the way it is for all of us,” Brady said. “Now you’re hurt. What are you going to do? It’s like a golfer who starts off bogey-bogey, and he’s in the rough. What are you going to do?
“You’ve got to find ways to dig deep. You’re being challenged in a very different way. I don’t think I ever thought, ‘Poor me,’ except for maybe a day. Then it was how am I going to get back as fast as I can.”

Getting back on top

He didn’t get back as fast as some expected, even though at the season’s midway point he is on pace for statistically one of his best years. His team is 6-2, heading into what seems to be its annual showdown with Manning and the 8-0 Colts, who are seeking to tie Brady’s Patriots for the second most consecutive regular-season wins in history (18) and perhaps surpass their all-time record of 21.

To do so they will have to get by Brady, which seems fitting.
Yet for any of this to have happened, Brady first had to get through the season’s first few games, ones in which he struggled with his passing accuracy and communication with his receivers. This was predictable to anyone who took a moment to see how such a major injury and long absence from football affected other players, but Brady’s past performances led him to be judged by impossible standards.

Faced with this he did what he has always done. He looked inward. He looked at what he was doing rather than just at what the people around him were doing and made adjustments. What followed was what had preceded. Tom Brady was, soon enough, Tom Brady again.

“When I’m out there I feel great,” Brady said. “I feel like I’m seeing things. My mechanics have steadily improved since the start of the season.

“Over the course of the first two or three weeks I saw things I needed to change and I worked on that and it started to look better over time. It’s hard for any quarterback to win a game. It’s hard to complete passes. There’s nothing easy about it. I expected it to be hard.

“It was a little like Tiger Woods at a golf tournament. The first round he might just shoot even par, but there’s still a lot of tournament left to play.”

If it’s up to him - which he accepts it won’t totally be - Tom Brady’s tournament has another decade to run. It will be one of overcoming the difficult and trying to prove again and again that they all should have picked him sooner.

[midgar8784]

Pfft...diva

[RoadGrader]

Originally Posted by midgar8784

Pfft...diva

^^CasselKnobGobbler

add smilies to your posts or die, Infidel

[midgar8784]

Originally Posted by RoadGrader

^^CasselKnobGobbler

add smilies to your posts or die, Infidel

Just wanted to say it before someone else did. :peace:

[Costanza]

Momma likes.

Great post RG?

I mean, great find!

[shirtsleeve]

HEY!!!!

Where the fcuk are teh nekkered pics of Giselle??!!??

Or teh old nekerred pics of teh bridg-ette!!??

I DEMAND RESTITUTION!!!!

[RoadGrader]

I meant to write that the header grabber that MADE me open up the article was the TFB quote:

"I don’t believe I’m very good.

If I don’t put the work in there I don’t believe I’ll be very good.

That’s how I’ve come to see it."

but I haz been drinkin' you see :p

[taltos]

I would have thought that the section title of Getting Back on Top would have been a wettie moment.

[TipRoast]

RG - I stopped reading your post as soon as I saw the words "Ron Borges" in it.

I don't care what that guy writes, as far as I'm concerned, there's no room for him on this board - he's a low-life, plagiarizing, disabled-person-abuser, Belicheck-hating, scum-sucking puke that should just crawl off into the sewer and expire.

Have a nice day.