Farewell, Tom Brady the football player. Hello, Tom Brady the Image Builder.
This weekend, ESPN will debut “The Tuck Rule,” a “documentary” in the sense that it’s a series of real people discussing, dissecting and squabbling over a real historical event — the fateful play in a 2001 season AFC divisional round game between the New England Patriots and then-Oakland Raiders.
In a more accurate sense, though, “The Tuck Rule” is the first step in the construction of the post-NFL Tom Brady. Co-produced by 199 Productions — which just happens to be the production company of one Tom Brady — it’s a carefully curated version of the truth, one that just happens to break Brady’s way at every turn.
“The Tuck Rule” centers on a crucial play at the end of the Raiders-Patriots game. This was before Tom Brady became the GOAT, before the Patriots became the destroyers of worlds. The Patriots hadn’t even won the first of their six Super Bowls when the Raiders came to town, hellbent on knocking out these pretenders and their replacement QB.
Snow fell throughout the game, a thick, gentle carpet so beautiful even Bill Belichick of all people was moved to call it “romantic.” The snow lay so heavy on the field that neither team could manage much more than slow marches down it, and with a little under two minutes left in the fourth quarter, the Patriots trailed 13-10.
On a crucial third-and-long, Brady dropped back to pass and, seeing nothing, pulled the ball back toward his chest. But at that moment, Charles Woodson, the Heisman-winning former teammate of Brady’s at Michigan came swooping in from Brady’s right. At this point in their careers, Woodson was much better at his job than Brady was at his, and Woodson drove hard into the defenseless Brady, dislodging the ball. The Raiders fell on it, and the game appeared over.
Except …
Upon further review, the officials determined that Brady’s move fell under Rule 3, Section 22, Article 2 of the NFL rulebook — also known as the “tuck rule.” Under that rule, a quarterback who is pulling the ball back to their chest is permitted to continue the “tuck” motion until the ball hits the body — and if the ball is dislodged in the course of that motion, it’s an incomplete pass … even though it’s clear there was no intent to pass the ball at all.
“The Tuck Rule” aims to explain the tuck rule, and it does so through a conceit that’s honestly a little mean-spirited. Brady welcomes Woodson to his enormous Florida estate to relive, face to face, one of the worst moments of Woodson’s professional career. If Woodson hadn’t won a Super Bowl of his own with the Green Bay Packers in the 2010 season, it would’ve been downright cruel.
To his credit, Woodson not only agreed to break down the agony frame-by-frame, but he continues to argue his side of the story to this day. Without much success against Brady’s impenetrable wall of certainty and self-belief, but still.
The first few minutes of the Brady/Woodson viewing party are a look at what kind of awkward Manningcast knockoffs are headed our way soon. The conversation’s stilted, the jokes creaky. It’s only when Brady stops being stiff and stilted, and starts being his true trash-talking, analytical self that the documentary takes off.
Brady’s breakdown of what he didn’t know or see as a rookie is fascinating. So too are the behind-the-scenes anecdotes, like Raiders cornerback Eric Allen relaying how he hung out near the Patriots’ sideline and listened in to Brady’s discussions with coaches just prior to the tuck rule play; video of the moment shows Allen lurking directly behind Brady, out of the quarterback’s view. Raiders coach Jon Gruden, who doesn’t appear in the documentary, draws particular heat for his conservative play-calling.
Also worth watching: the way Woodson and Brady plead their cases, to the point of standing up in Brady’s airplane hangar of a living room and reliving the moment with a football. Woodson tries to argue logic, while Brady sticks with his the-rule-is-the-rule defense.
(One perfect moment of editing: players on both teams confess they had no idea what the tuck rule was … and then the camera cuts to Belichick, who says, “Oh yeah, the tuck rule,” like he was talking about something as obvious and well-known as his own team’s name. Five steps ahead of everyone, always.)
It’s become part of NFL conspiracy theory lore that the tuck rule was the first of two decades’ worth of favorable treatments of the Patriots. The doc doesn’t exactly refute that; referee Walt Coleman, who gave the ball back to the Patriots that fateful night, is clearly a friend and favorite of Belichick, Brady and Robert Kraft. But the Patriots still needed to score after the tuck rule, and then score again in overtime. (The Patriots won after winning the OT coin flip, though this was before the mandatory touchdown rule.)
Did the tuck rule kick off the Patriots dynasty? Maybe. The doc tries to argue that Brady would have gone back to the bench if he hadn’t gone on to win the Super Bowl. But that’s for sports radio from 2003; this far along, Brady’s greatness and achievements are so vast it’s impossible to imagine one play could have constrained them.
In a larger sense, “The Tuck Rule” is looking to tie off this particular strand of NFL history, by offering what purports to be the definitive word on a controversial play. (Left unasked: what was the rationale in the first place?)
It’s also a vehicle for continuing the image-building of Tom Brady as a football icon. The NFL has always pursued an unspoken strategy that no player would ever become larger than the Shield. Brady appears dead set on testing that theory, even if he’s got to tell the story himself to do it.