In many fans’ eyes, Tom Brady is the greatest of all time. There’s no debate about this. Brady is unquestionably the greatest quarterback of all time, given his career accolades. Moreover, Brady is probably the greatest football player in the history of the National Football League. Certainly, Brady’s football achievements place him head and shoulders above anyone else who has ever played the quarterback position. Brady, who retired in early 2023 after an illustrious 23-season NFL career, holds virtually every major individual record for a quarterback.

In addition, Brady has won seven Super Bowl titles, six with the New England Patriots and one with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and played in three additional Super Bowl games, each of which ended, to varying degrees, in heartbreaking fashion for Brady and the Patriots. Indeed, as a recounting of Brady’s unparalleled career achievements inevitably becomes repetitive, the defeats and struggles that Brady has endured, both personally and professionally, would certainly make for compelling drama within a biopic series.

The Immortal Underdog
Paramount Pictures

The bedrock of the Tom Brady legend is his now fabled status as an underdog who defied all expectations to become not only a successful NFL quarterback but the greatest quarterback who has ever played the position.

Brady’s ascendance to greatness and immortality is contrasted by the fact that Brady started his NFL career as a lowly sixth-round draft pick of the New England Patriots in the 2000 NFL Draft. Of course, this fateful draft selection became both the best decision that the Patriots ever made, as Brady predicted to Patriots owner Robert Kraft during Brady’s first training camp, and perhaps the biggest steal, so to speak, in sports history.

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After serving as a backup and an understudy to then-star Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe in Brady’s rookie season, circumstance and fate intervened, almost bizarrely so, to provide Brady with the unlikely opportunity with which to show the Patriots, and the world, what Brady was capable of. The rest, as they say, was history. After becoming a starter due to injury in September 2001, Brady subsequently led the Patriots to the franchise’s first Super Bowl victory.

Indeed, for the would-be biopic series, which is reportedly titled The Patriot Way, the specter of circumstance and fate regarding Brady’s career is especially compelling and poignant. Quite simply, in a parallel universe, the Tom Brady legend very likely wouldn’t exist.

The Agony of Defeat
NFL 

While Tom Brady’s seven Super Bowl victories certainly produced many iconic images and memories and indeed cemented Brady’s reputation as the greatest winner in football history, some of the most compelling scenes from Brady’s career came in Brady’s three Super Bowl defeats.

The most agonizing, and certainly the most consequential, Super Bowl defeat for Brady came in the 2007 Super Bowl, in which Brady’s New England Patriots were upset by the New York Giants 17-14.

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This loss thwarted a historic perfect season for Brady’s Patriots team, which entered the post-season with an undefeated regular season record. If the Patriots had beaten the Giants, as they were heavily favored to do, this Patriots team would have unquestionably gone down in history as the greatest team in National Football League history.

Regarding the prospective biopic series, perhaps the most striking image that accompanied this heartbreaking defeat didn’t feature Brady but rather veteran teammate Junior Seau, the hall-of-fame linebacker who joined the Patriots later in his career in the hopes of winning a Super Bowl. Seau, who was diagnosed after his death with CTE, committed suicide in 2012.

Brady’s second Super Bowl defeat, in the 2011 Super Bowl, also came against the New York Giants, and this loss essentially resulted from a crucial fourth-quarter dropped pass by Patriots receiver Wes Welker. However, while these losses, as well as the Super Bowl loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in the 2017 Super Bowl, were undoubtedly haunting and painful for Brady, they also displayed Brady’s character and toughness. Instead of crying over these defeats, at least publicly, Brady proved to be as gracious in defeat as he has always been in victory.

Tom Terrific
Paramount Pictures

As Tom Brady’s professional career is beyond reproach, one of the most appealing aspects of Brady’s persona is how accessibly fallible Brady has always been, especially in terms of Brady’s adventurous personal life, which is certainly ripe for exploration within a biopic series.

While Brady has undoubtedly always been an exemplary public figure, Brady certainly isn’t a saint and hasn’t pretended to be. Brady’s sterling public image was especially tested in May 2015, when the National Football League suspended Brady for four regular-season games over a scandal that became known as Deflategate.

Brady was accused of participating in a conspiracy regarding the deflation of footballs used in the previous season’s AFC championship game, in which Brady’s New England Patriots defeated the Indianapolis Colts to progress to the 2014 Super Bowl.

Regarding Brady’s personal life, in 2004, Brady started dating actress Bridget Moynahan, who gave birth to Brady’s first child, a son, in August 2007. In 2006, Brady began dating model Gisele Bundchen, whom Brady married in 2009. Brady had two children with Bundchen before they got divorced in 2022. Brady recently ended a relationship with model Irina Shayk.

However, while Brady’s career and life certainly haven’t been free of controversy and sensationalism, none of this has tarnished Brady’s public image, which is unlikely to be substantially altered, negatively or positively, by however Brady is portrayed within a biopic series.