Max Kellerman is well-known in the sports world for many opinions and hot takes — but, his theory of Tom Brady and the “cliff” took the limelight.
The ESPN analyst said Brady would abruptly fall off a cliff four years ago and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback is still pushing at the age of 43. Kellerman stuck with his argument and has refused to walk it back on numerous occasions. Though he still won’t admit he was wrong about the entire take, he did acknowledge he was wrong about two things.
“I should have never said bum and I apologized for that the next day because I was being glib, but I should have never have said bum, especially about someone like Tom Brady,” Kellerman said on WEEI’s “Ordway, Merloni & Fauria.” “But, I did believe in the cliff. OK, I was wrong in two ways. One, it was the year after my prediction. And two, it is much more of a ravine than a cliff. Peyton Manning, Brett Favre, those guys, ‘Oh, my God. They have better than they have ever been and then all of a sudden they couldn’t play anymore.’ I was expecting something like that where as Brady was better than he had ever been and then he took a deep fall, but he’s still — even then I said he could be average. He’s a little better than average still, but I don’t think much.”
He believes Bill Belichick saw what he did and that’s why Brady is no longer sporting a New England Patriots jersey.
“Let’s look at what happened, because it’s not like Belichick wasn’t seeing the same thing that I was seeing,” he said. “He wanted to get rid of Brady for (Jimmy) Garoppolo. Brady did an end-around Belichick, went to the owner, went to (Robert) Kraft and got Garoppolo shipped out of town. Garoppolo took a team that couldn’t win to save their lives, went 5-0, got hurt and again, couldn’t win to save their lives, he comes back and they don’t lose. They go to the Super Bowl and have a 10-point lead in the fourth quarter. Like, Belichick saw that and wanted to replace Brady with that guy. He couldn’t. Brady left the cupboard bare for him.
“In the meantime, Brady and the Patriots needed to beat Miami the last week of the season, that is a game they always win, but he didn’t. And then you need to win the playoff game and when you don’t have a bye in the first round in the worst division ever, it’s easy to advance. It was a little harder last year and he couldn’t do it because he’s getting old.”
Brady’s ability to play at a high level is extremely impressive and he could continue to prove Kellerman wrong this season and beyond. At the end of the day, Brady is out and Cam Newton is the new signal-caller for Josh McDaniels and Belichick.
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