Winning the Super Bowl and hoisting the Lombardi trophy as confetti rains down has always been considered the stuff of dreams. It’s one of the most coveted championships in all of sports. It’s what children emulate when they organize backyard football games, and Tom Brady is doing his best to remind both Sam Darnold and Drake Maye of that ahead of their respective debuts at Super Bowl LX.
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Given the fact that he’s both won and lost more Super Bowls than most players will ever sniff throughout their careers, it’s safe to say that there’s no better person to humor before venturing into the gridiron’s grandest game than the former New England Patriot. Although it’s just as important to remember that, while confidence and encouragement are key, the hardcold truth is that not everybody can be Brady.
“The reality is that the best team, in a one-game series, doesn’t always win,” he noted to Colin Cowherd during his most recent interview. “In football, you really only have one chance to get it right. That’s the challenge. You could have an off day,” he added.
In highlighting the Los Angeles Rams’ botched punt against the Seattle Seahawks in the NFC Championship, Brady suggested that it doesn’t take much to give your opponent “all of the momentum,” and that those moments happen incredibly fast. “That’s how finicky the game is,” he suggested.
While it may be a bit funny to hear the most successful signal caller in NFL history refer to his former profession as being “finicky,” it’s also a testament to just how much the Super Bowl means to players. In other words, those being the ones of Brady’s former Super Bowl rival, the star tight end of the Kansas City Chiefs, Travis Kelce, “Losing a Super Bowl will never make you want to go back and win one.”
If anything, knowing that you only get one shot at cementing your name in the analogs of American sporting culture makes things that much harder. “That’s why I always think basketball, baseball, a seven-game series, does identify the best team, because you get seven chances to get it right,” Brady suggests.
Even if this eventually proves to be neither Darnold nor Maye’s last Super Bowl appearance, both men are well aware that they won’t get a second opportunity at winning their championship debut. Throw in the fact that both teams feature a top-five defense from a points allowed perspective, and it’s safe to say that both of these quarterbacks know that their margin for error on Sunday will be painfully slim.
Then again, that’s yet another one of the many things that make the Super Bowl the biggest game of the year, and we simply wouldn’t have it any other way.
