Brady Deserves Support, Not Criticism After Recent Revelations

In the modern age of press and media reporting, not least since the advent of social media and the additional anonymity that can be claimed, numerous sports around the world have found themselves subject to players being massively hyped and built up, and then all too often, torn down in vicious and often unfair fashion – often over spurious moments in time, that regularly cease to matter when the media move onto the next victim and most simply forget about it.

A Rough Patch

In days gone by, National Football League legend Tom Brady may well have fallen to this kind of treatment himself, but as social media arguably gets worse, there is a far greater acknowledgement and understanding of the damage that can be caused by mental health issues, and rightly, the 45 year old star Quarterback has received plenty of support and copious amounts of well wishes after reports came out this week that he suffered a quite severe bout of depression following his divorce with Gisele Bundchen.

The former New England Patriots star and seven time winning Super Bowl champion had previously gone on record himself as saying how much the divorce from the Brazilian top model had effected, and distracted him, during his 23rd NFL season with new franchise, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but if recent claims are to be believed, he hit him harder than any of his closest fans would have originally believed.

Outkick’s Jason Cole has a relationship of his own with several close friends of Brady, or whether or not NFL fans will agree it was his place to talk about Brady’s private life, he did that when recently discussing the emotional impact that the build up to the divorce, and the original separation, had had on the five time Super Bowl MVP – stating that it was only playing football itself that pulled his mental state back up to a better level.

“A Great Distraction”

“Friends say that Brady was so down about the loss of his marriage that he literally had trouble getting out of bed in the morning. He was hurt, he was upset because of what it meant to the kids. To be honest, football has been a great distraction just to get his mind off all the crap.”

Cole went further by suggesting that during that period of time, Brady actually lost around 27 pounds such was his funk and the understandable lack of motivation and energy he was feeling during that spell – namely the period where he entered the Bucs training cam given his eleven day special leave of absence which also included missing some of their pre season games.

With these claims made, many fans may well look differently on some of the events during the 2022 season given the much publicised breaking of in game tactical tablets, and then the visible outbursts with some of his team mates when things have not gone to play.

For anyone who has been unfortunate enough to taste spells of depression on a personal level, the speedier rise to anger during stressful moments that could, and would, ordinarily be contained, will be very familiar.

With a further New York Post report suggesting one of the underlying reasons for the divorce was a displeasure over his decision to return to the NFL, earlier reports of his pre season absence now make far more sense with talk of a ‘work life balance’ and ‘personal issues’ being cited.

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