In Brady’s Big Return to New England, Steve Belichick’s Tongue Stole the Show
It was Brady vs. Belichick on Sunday Night Football, but not the one you're probably thinking of.
All week long, you would swear there was only one football game being played in the NFL on Sunday. It was Tom Brady's first return to New England after winning a Super Bowl last season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Before leaving New England for the sunshine state in 2020, Brady spent 20 years at the center of a Patriots dynasty that delivered nine Super Bowl appearances, winning six of them. So, it would be an understatement to say that his first return to Foxborough would be a dramatic one.
Like I said earlier, the lead-up to the game felt more like a movie. Game previews on television were presented like trailers for an upcoming blockbuster release. To be fair, the storyline was an epic one given the history between Brady and Belichick, plus Tom was also slated to pass Drew Brees' passing record on the same night (with Drew in the building as a part of the Sunday Night Football crew.)
It's fair to say the NFL doesn't miss any opportunities with their game scheduling.
So, by the time Sunday night rolled around, the theatrics were at an all-time high. Fans cheered. Fans booed. Cris Collinsworth and Al Michaels drooled over Brady all night. Tom broke Drew's record (in a very anti-climatic fashion). In the end, the game was a LOT closer than anyone expected it to be and a last-minute missed field goal by the Patriots allowed Brady to sneak out of Gilette Stadium with an unimpressive win.
Cameras followed Brady as he embraced his former coaches and teammates, including a very abrupt embrace from Bill Belichick. But even with all of the attention focused on Tom and Bill as the two main characters in this epic saga, it was another Belichick that ended up stealing the show on social media.
Steve Belichick, Patriots defensive coordinator (and Bill's son), was an instant meme on Twitter due to his facial expressions that made for pure TV magic.
The tweets rolled in, and the jokes literally wrote themselves.
Even Brady got in the mix.
There were also a lot of references to the possibility of substances or sketchiness that may have played a part in Belichick's animated expressions.
In the end, the person that we will remember in the Brady Bowl (or at least a main character) will be the one and only Steve.