98 70
FEBRUARY 7, 2019 | The Jewish Home OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home
DO YOU REALLY THINK TOM BRADY IS HAPPY? By Noam Fixler
If
you answered, “He’s certainly not happy,” to the title question, you are right – and you should probably put down this article and turn the page. For the rest of you, I apologize for the title – it was just a way to get rid of that guy who shouldn’t be reading this. Mission accomplished. Regardless of whether Tom Brady is happy or not, I am happy that he won the Super Bowl last Sunday because it is the rare time that I can point to a sports superstar and highlight his qualities to my children. Now, just in case the guy from above snuck back in and is reading this, let me say: Of course, we have plenty of excellent role models within Yiddishkeit and there is absolutely no need to look outside of our ranks for role models. But the fact is that many of our children follow sports and know a lot about these
sports players’ lives and characters. The information they’re fed and the character traits they’re looking at are usually negative. So, it’s nice for a change to have a sports star who has certain positive character traits that we can highlight. Yes, my children have tens of books about gedolim, which is their primary reading material and what we hope they model their behavior after, but sometimes you can reach a child by coming from a different angle. I think Tom Brady is the perfect conduit. Just to be clear, I don’t know anything about Tom Brady’s personal life but what we can emulate involves how he goes about succeeding in his professional life.
Before
the NFL draft, pro-football scouts analyze and investigate every aspect of the prospective draft choices. The
p l a y ers are put through rigorous physical tests, and the game-film of every game they ever played from college to middle school is scrutinized. Tom Brady was picked late in the 6th round of the 2000 draft. That means that he was passed over 199 times before finally being chosen. Nineteen years later, he holds the record for most regular season wins by a starting quarterback (207), most division titles (16), most playoff wins (30), most Super Bowl appearances (9), most Super Bowl wins (6), and most Super Bowl MVPs (4). Additionally, at the age of 41, he is also the only player from the 2000 draft that is still playing in the NFL. It’s common for players who are selected high in the draft to not live up to their potential. But it’s un-
heard of for a player to go from the bottom of the heap to the top. And Brady went to the top of not only his class but is arguably the best or one of the best players to ever play the game. So how did the NFL scouts get it so wrong? The answer is that they didn’t. Brady just rose above his natural abilities. How he did that is what we can all learn from. SELF-BELIEF According to Brady’s roommate at Michigan, when Brady was a third string quarterback in college he would constantly say, “I’m going to be a starting quarterback in the NFL.” Brady’s roommate told ESPN that several years later, in 2001, Brady was a backup quarterback on the Patriots and they were together