ARMCHAIR QUARTERBACK

Tom Brady's second act, as a football commentator.

- BY VINSON CUNNINGHAM

A few months ago, when Tom Brady was beginning his career as an N.F.L. commentator for Fox Sports, a commercial aired. It begins with Brady, his face all angles, sitting at a desk in a nondescript room, looking at videos on two big monitors in front of him, laptops to his right and left, and a big TV affixed to a wall. Why he needs so much stimulation all at once isn't totally clear, but it's got something to do with extreme efficiency. Retired or not, the world's greatest quarterback does not have the luxury to indulge in sequential action—one thing at a time is for slowpokes and losers.

On the TV, pundits are yelling about the hubris of his career change. “I just don't get it,” one of them says. “Tom Brady, the broadcaster? Guy's got everything in the world. Why do it? Tommy, why?” Thus challenged, Brady is subjected to younger versions of himself—the University of Michigan everyman, the New England Patriots hero, the little kid dressed in the uniform of his favorite team, the San Francisco 49ers—reminding him of all his effort heretofore and teasing him about the temptations of post-career laxity. “Why don't you lay on a beach getting fat on piña coladas?” one of the Toms says. God forbid! Slim, chiselled Tom wakes from his stupor, newly determined to prove his haters wrong. “TOM BRADY IS BACK TO WORK,” the tagline reads.