Brady Breaks Down While Trying to Describe What Belichick Has Meant to Him and I'm an Emotional Wreck

Jerry Thornton6/30/2023 2:00 PM

George Bailey gets his wonderful life back.

A nearly blind Rocky Balboa finds Adrian in the crowded ring.

Apollo 13 comes out of radio silence, drifting safely back to Earth.

Red finds Andy Dufrense fixing a boat on the beach at Zihuatanejo.

The entire Kingdom of Gondor kneels in respect to four little Hobbits.

Herb Brooks cries in the tunnel after beating the Soviets.

Andy gives his toys away to a neighbor's young daughter and heads off to college.

There are those moments that reach down deep into the emotional core of your being, grab hold and don't let go. Until the only sane response of a rational person is a flood of tears. Now to be sure, most people might say that funerals or the loss of a beloved pet are what trigger an emotional reaction in them. And they're probably right in that. But speaking personally, the moments that play a power chord on my heartstrings are almost always on video. Real life just doesn't have the same resonance for me somehow.

And then there's this, which is at another level entirely. The true, raw emotions of real life, captured on video and preserved for eternity. Tom Brady, the GOAT of athletes, asked to express his thoughts on Bill Belichick, the GOAT of coaching, and getting hit all at once by a tsunami of feelings. And if you're not caught up in the same rising tide of emotion as he is, don't bother calling 911. You're already dead.

Imagine for one second to be in his Air Pods when asked a question like this. Trying to sum up in a few words 20 years of the most successful professional partnership ever. The GOAT of relationships. The many triumphs. The few heartbreaks. Other figures coming and going, while these two stood together in the middle of the storm, two against the world, constantly collaborating:

.. and steadfastly refusing to stop winning. For 20 - TWENTY - years. Of course all those memories are going to come cascading out through your ducts in a Niagara of tears. Anything else would mean you're not human.

Looking back, all the talk about how much they couldn't stand being around each other just gets more preposterous with each passing day. You can't fake that reaction. Daniel Day-Lewis isn't a good enough actor to come off as genuinely moved as Brady is here. Or as touched as he was a couple of years ago when Belichick talked about how he knew Brady was special as a rookie, and again with his first great test as a starter in his second season:

And I'm in tears again. I need to quit this or all the moisture will drain out of my body and I'll be reduced to a few pounds of chemicals. But still, the emotional outpouring is good for the soul. As they say in the Lord of the Rings movie I referenced earlier, "I will not say, 'Do not weep.' Not all tears are an evil." These two deserve nothing less.