He is the best quarterback in the NFL, he is married to a former Victoria’s Secret model, his handsome hair and smile grace magazine covers, and yet despite Tom Brady’s perfect career, family and face, he is one of the nation’s most hated men. Why? Because no one should be that perfect. Here are six reasons why everybody hates the New England Patriots’ quarterback now more than ever after he won Sunday night his fifth Super Bowl, an NFL record.
1. He isn’t as popular as other quarterbacks. Brady was ranked the least favorite NFL quarterback in a 2014 poll when pitted against Drew Brees, Robert Griffin III, Eli Manning, Cam Newton, Tim Tebow and other players.
2. Brady is too famous. Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Namath said Brady is simply annoying to his rivals because he is such a super star.
“I think he looks at his wife’s pictures in the magazines and holds her hands more than he reads his own press clips,” Namath said. “Opponents having to play against Brady have to be legitimately angry seeing his smile on the sideline after touchdowns. It’s kind of a compliment to be disliked by so many opponents. It comes from winning first.”
3. Brady is casually political. He wore a “Make America Great Again” hat before Election Day, but has refused to discuss with the press whether he voted for President Donald Trump. For progressive voters in New England and elsewhere in the U.S., this is a problem.
4. He wins too much. Trump calls him a “great, great champion; unbelievable winner.” But winnners beget haters. “As they say, it’s easy to hate a winner. And he will likely be the winningest winner ever,” a local TV station said of Brady recently.
5. He plays for New England. The team has now won five Super Bowl titles and have repeatedly been accused of cheating. “Bill Belichick has become the NFL’s very own Keyser Söze, with tales of mysterious radio malfunctions, locker room wire-tapping and overall trickery. Nothing is random; it’s all part of the master plan. I’d tell you more, but they might be listening,” wrote the New York Daily News.
6. He is fake. To be sure, we don’t know if his humility is real or not. Brady rarely brags and is often polite in media interviews. But again, no one likes someone who is too perfect, and Brady is often written off as the Taylor Swift of sports, as an entertainer who projects a perfect facade.
Here’s how one sports writer put it: “People hate Tom Brady. They hate his smile, his giggle, his chin dimple, his walk, his talk. They hate that he’s rich and successful. They hate that he’s tall and handsome. They hate that he’s married to a famous model. They hate that he dresses out of a J. Crew catalogue. They hate that, like a Ken doll, he’s gone through 124 hairstyles (Skater Tom Brady. Surfer Tom Brady. Preppy Tom Brady. Lumberjack Tom Brady). They hate that he has won four Super Bowls. They hate that his coach is a brooding rumpled sweatshirt and that the red cap in Brady’s locker reads (or did for a brief spell) MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. They consider him to be a cheater, a liar, a symbol of all that’s bad in professional football… In other words, people really, really, really, really, really, really, really hate Tom Brady.”
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