Suspended Disbelief

With all due respect to a genius coach and his gang of misfit parts, it was Tom Brady who led a come-from-way-too-farbehind victory that even some Patriots players didn’t imagine possible, sealing his status as the greatest quarterback ever.

- Greg Bishop

INSIDE THE Patriots’ locker room on Sunday night, Tom Brady sits down at his locker, at once surrounded and alone. He’s oblivious to the teammates who are passing around a bottle of whiskey, emptying its contents in deep gulps, while others spray champagne until bubbly drips from their beards.

It’s late at NRG Stadium in Houston as the quarterback unstraps the brace around his left knee, tugs off his sweat drenched championship T-shirt and pauses for 30 seconds that seem to last forever. This brief meditation suggests that he’s channeling some inner Zen to process what just happened: the first overtime and largest comeback in Super Bowl history, his fifth NFL championship, even the awkward congratulatory handshake with Roger Goodell, the commissioner who suspended him for the first four games of 2016 over a bunch of (possibly) under inflated game balls.

There’s only one problem. Brady cannot find his jersey—the standard white number 12 that in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl LI, against the Falcons, could have been a wizard’s cloak. Brady set championship game records for most passes (62), completions (43) and passing yards (466) in New England’s 34–28 triumph. He accepted the MVP award. And then—poof!—the jersey vanished like Atlanta’s second-half defense. “Someone f------ stole it,” he says, grabbing a patterned gray suit and wading through the crowd toward the showers.