Brady’s personal QB coach Martinez dies (AP)
2012
Tom Martinez, Tom Brady’s mentor, dead at 66
2012
Tom Martinez, the coach who mentored New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, died Tuesday after suffering a heart attack during dialysis. The man known as "The Quarterback Whisperer" was in need of a kidney transplant due to diabetes complications.
Martinez first came into Brady's life when the future MVP was just 13. He signed up for a quarterback clinic and then worked with Martinez for the rest of his career. Brady said he would never be the quarterback he is today without Martinez's help.
"He's a great friend of mine for a very long time and taught me how to throw a football at a very young age," Brady told ABC News in January. "He's been looking for a kidney for quite a while."
Brady used his platform in the Super Bowl to encourage organ donation.
People from around the NFL immediately reacted to Martinez's passing. Brady's teammate, Julian Edelman, tweeted, "RIP coach Tom Martinez. He was such a great mentor to many in the bay area. His legacy will always live on." Brady's father told CSN New England, "There are a lot of sad people in San Mateo County tonight."
Martinez's impact was felt beyond football. He coached football, women's basketball and softball at the College of San Mateo, where he won a combined 1,100 games. He was 66 years old.
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Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen are vacationing with Wes Welker, despite his inability to catch
2012
You may have been wondering how Wes Welker was going to get along with Gisele Bundchen after she pinned the Super Bowl loss on receivers who couldn't catch ‒ you probably weren't, but maybe. In case you were, put your mind at ease, because they're going to be fine.
Thanks to the Boston Herald and people at x17online.com who hide in bushes and take pictures of people, we know that Tom and Gisele are vacationing in Costa Rica with Welker and his lady, Anna Burns.
I say good for Wes Welker for not taking Gisele's slight personally. She was angry and trying to defend her man from some insensitive Giants fans. I'm sure it was nothing personal towards Welker, and it's not like Wes Welker isn't aware that he made a mistake, either.
It's probably hard to be angry at anyone while on a beach in Costa Rica, though.
The x17 people added this tidbit, too:
"Gisele and Tom invited friends for a beach bonfire Saturday, while locals delivered food and offered fresh coconut water to drink. As the sun went down, the group waved goodbye to the day and turned toward their fire for an evening drink and conversation."
Kind of reminds me of my Saturday. The sun was out for a good fifteen to twenty seconds, and one of the local children at the grocery store threw a small carton of milk at me. As the sun went down (at about 5:30, for some reason), I waved goodbye to the day and drank alone while watching Pitt and South Florida play uninspired basketball. So in that way, Tom Brady and I have a lot in common.
To see all the photos and watch the spy video taken of Tom, Gisele and Wes, go here.
Detroit Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford was one of three guys to throw for more than 5,000 yards this season, along with Drew Brees and Tom Brady. This makes Stafford one of four guys who have ever done it (the other being Dan Marino in 1984). Pretty impressive, right?
Not if you're Marshall Faulk. He's a little underwhelmed. The Hall of Fame running back and NFL Network analyst added an unfortunate flavor to Stafford's Cheerios over his 5,000-yard accomplishment.
"Throwing for 5,000 yards in the NFL right now is nothing," Faulk said. "I don't want to take anything away from it. As much as people throw the football now, you better have 5,000 (yards) if you have Calvin Johnson."
My favorite part is "I don't want to take anything away from it," squeezed between sentences where he does nothing but take away from it. It's like saying to someone, "Hey, I don't mean to punch you in the face" as you continually punch them in the face.
That doesn't mean Faulk's wrong, though. Have we gotten to a point where throwing for 5,000 yards doesn't mean much?
Nothing can answer but time. Obviously, the NFL is more of a passing league now than it was in 1984, and today's rules and how they're enforced are more conducive to big passing numbers. Still, we only got back to the 5,000-yard barrier in 2011. It didn't happen in 2010. It didn't happen in 2009.
As for the Calvin Johnson factor, I don't believe that Stafford should have 5,000 yards just because he has Megatron out wide. Larry Fitzgerald exists, too, but I don't see anyone in Arizona getting close to 5,000 yards. By that logic, Tom Brady should throw for 5,000-plus yards as long as he has Wes Welker and Rob Gronkowski.
If, by 2030, we've have 40 quarterbacks go over the 5,000-yard mark, then sure ‒ the number has been devalued. For now, I think it makes just as much sense to believe that this was a one-year thing as it would to believe that it's going to happen again and again and again.
Faulk's a good analyst and a smart guy. His opinion, of course, is valid, and there's some truth behind what he's saying. Saying that 5,000 yards is nothing, though? That's taking it a bit far. When Mark Sanchez and Joe Flacco are throwing for 5,000 yards, then it's nothing. Right now, it's still something.
Eli Manning's 38-yard pass to Mario Manningham on the New York Giants' game-winning drive late in the fourth quarter is rightly regarded as the play of the game in Super Bowl XLVI -- it was, quite simply, the single-greatest throw this writer has ever seen. But if there was a "1a" play for the Giants, it had to be Justin Tuck's sack of Tom Brady with 6:12 left in the third quarter.
Not only did the third-down takedown stop the Pats from driving when they were still up, 17-12, but Brady re-aggravated his left (non-throwing) shoulder on the play, and backup Brian Hoyer was seen throwing on the sideline during the Giants' corresponding drive.
Before that sack, Brady was on an absolute tear -- he broke Joe Montana's record for consecutive completions in a Super Bowl, and he was 20 of 24 for 201 yards and two touchdowns. After that sack? Try 7 of 17 for 75 yards and the pick by Giants linebacker Chase Blackburn on a deep attempt to tight end Rob Gronkowski.
How much did it affect him? Hard to say -- Brady made a few more errant throws after the play, but the receiver drops were also killers. The famed drop by Wes Welker was a great touch pass that was high but in Welker's hands, and two plays in which Deion Branch ran across the middle and couldn't come up with the ball were also adjustment errors by the receiver.
What happened to the Pats in the last 20 minutes of the game was just as much about the Giants' brilliant defensive adjustments. With full knowledge that New England had no deep threat (they played their safeties shallow through most of the game), the Giants did something they also did in Week 9 when they beat the Pats, 24-20 -- they kept linebackers in the middle of the defense as zone spies to counter Brady's seemingly endless slants, crosses and posts. On Branch's first drop, linebacker Michael Boley was waiting for him just off the middle to Brady's left, and Branch didn't slow up to find the pocket where Brady was throwing.
As our buddy Greg Cosell wrote on the NFL Films blog, Giants defensive coordinator Perry Fewell called this game about as well as any coach possibly could.
So, while it's not clear that correlation equaled causation on the Tuck sack, we do know one thing -- Brady's stats did a total 180 after that play. That's one reason I thought Tuck should have been named the Most Valuable Player of the game ... until Eli Manning uncorked the best throw I've ever seen.
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Brandon Jacobs knows nothing about the high road.
The New York Giants running back ripped Gisele Bundchen on Tuesday for comments the supermodel made defending her husband, Tom Brady, after Super Bowl XLVI.
"She just needs to continue to be cute and shut up," the victorious Jacobs told reporters at the Giants championship parade in Manhattan.
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Gisele was caught on video criticizing Patriots receivers after Sunday's title game. She was reponding to a heckler inside a Lucas Oil Stadium hallway who said Eli Manning owns Brady. "My husband cannot [expletive] throw the ball and catch the ball at the same time," she said. "I can't believe they dropped the ball so many times."
The comments were recorded by the gossip website, theinsider.com.
Jacobs' comments would be insulting enough if they came from somebody who played a big role in New York's victory. But he was so inconsequential in Super Bowl XLVI (nine carries, 37 yards) that nobody would have taken the time to heckle his wife.
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Osi Umenyiora was more understanding of Bundchen's comments.
"I mean she's supposed to stay out of things like that," said the Giants defensive end."But at the end of the day that's their relationship and she has the right to say whatever she wants to."
And that's what is lost in this whole thing. Yes, Gisele is a world-famous supermodel. And, yeah, she probably should have known better than to take a heckler's bait in front of video cameras. But forgetting about her swimsuit pictorials and Victoria's Secret commercials and hundreds of millions of dollars, she's still a wife defending her husband.
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The New York Giants fan who won $50,000 on the team's Super Bowl XLVI safety will donate his winnings to charity.
Jona Rechnitz placed a $1,000 wager that the first score of Sunday's game would be a Giants safety. When Tom Brady was called for intentional grounding on the New England Patriots' first possession, Rechnitz had the improbable 50-1 victory and the $50,000 in winnings it brought.
TMZ reports that Rechnitz plans to donate all the post-tax money to various charities, including one of Tom Brady's choice. He also hopes to donate $5,000 to a charity selected by Justin Tuck, the Giants defender whose pass rush forced Brady to make his illegal throw downfield.
Rechnitz owns a capital investment firm in Manhattan. He told the entertainment website that he only makes one Super Bowl bet per year.
The safety was only the sixth in Super Bowl history and the first to start a game in more than 40 years. In the Giants' first playoff victory of 2012, the team gave up a safety to the Atlanta Falcons. Those two points were all Atlanta would score in the game, marking the first time in NFL playoff history that a team finished a game with that total.
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The best story about post-Super Bowl heartache is this one: Dan Wetzel captures Tom Brady's pain immediately after losing again to the Giants. The second-best story about post-Super Bowl heartache is this one: Matt Light and Rob Gronkowski taking their shirts off and dancing their hearts out after the game.
The lesson here? When you are fiesta, you are always fiesta. Bigger pictures to follow.
According to Deadspin, these pictures were taken at the invite-only Patriots postgame party. LMFAO was there, as were Maroon 5, Steven Tyler and Earth, Wind & Fire. It actually doesn't look like a much different atmosphere than the one on the Giants team plane. It really is a fine line between winning and losing.
I can see some people getting bent out of shape over this, because some fans want the players to take the losses as hard as they do. But not everyone is this girl. Sadness and disappointment can find many different outlets.
I assure you, Matt Light, Rob Gronkowski and anyone else who danced at the Patriots party are competitors. They didn't give less effort than anyone else, and they are not less reliable in the future. They just chose to distract themselves from the sadness with a party and some shirtless gyrating. Matt Light might not get that opportunity very often.
Sometimes, dancing is the only way to get the pain out.
Many thanks, Deadspin.
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Hysterical Pats Fan Cries Over ‘Stupid’ Team
2012
We know from the hit Hootie & the Blowfish song "Only Wanna to be With You" that the Miami Dolphins make lead singer Darius Rucker cry. And several months ago a mother taped her son crying after a Jets loss. After the Super Bowl, we can now finally add Tom Brady to that list.
A stunned — and sobbing — New England Patriots fan was videotaped by whom we now presume to be her ex-boyfriend in the moments after her team's Super Bowl loss to the Giants. The fan, in her Tom Brady jersey, begins her sniffling tirade against the "stupid" Patriots in classic fashion as she realizes that the team "will never play together again."
The presumed boyfriend can only respond ever so cleverly with "I'm sorry baby." Then he continues to videotape.
"If we get there again they're going to beat us again because we're so bad at the Super Bowl and I don't know why because we're so good at every other game," the crying Brady fan said.
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Much of the audio is inaudible due to her sniveling into her sleeve - the hysterical ranting of a fan who probably doesn't know that the Patriots forever owe Mo Lewis for becoming a dynasty. But at one point as she lamented there not being any fellow New England fans around for her to commiserate with, the statement "I feel like an idiot" was clearly heard. Whew, at least we're not the only ones who feel that way.
The scathing analysis, perhaps just a notch below that which is offered on Showtime's "Inside the NFL," continued at the 1:33 mark.
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"Yeah I know, I saw what happened. Everyone was just playing so stupid and they gave us a chance to win all the time and Tom Brady was just so stupid," she said, getting more hysterical.
Then a moment of lucidity as she realizes that what surely must be classified as an overreaction was making her look, well, she put it best before, "stupid."
"Now my makeup all over my face and I look like a friggin' McGoon," she said.
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Perhaps we are blessed that eventually the cameraman says "OK" and turns off the camera because we just can't turn away. Then to quote Hootie once again, if we were him we'd just "Let Her Cry."
You may now continue with your life.
Follow Kristian R. Dyer on Twitter @KristianRDyer
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A Photoshopped image of Eli Manning dressed as one of those guys from "300," and the bottom of the shot littered with the fallen Patriots he vanquished. At least an inset of Bill Belichick looking sad or Tom Brady crying on Gisele's shoulder.
But no, the tabloids played it safe, both going with a picture of Eli Manning upwardly looking at the Vince Lombardi Trophy he was holding in his right hand and the headline "CHAMPS!" At least the Daily News had the decency to add "...AGAIN" to the bottom of its front page.
Though they played it straight on the front, in keeping with their usual tone, the back pages of both newspapers speculated about the job security of Tom Coughlin.
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