Watch out for Brady

There was a time when I actually rooted for Tom Brady.

That was back in the day when he was the quarterback for the upstart New England Patriots. We're talking 20 years ago, friends. That was back in 2001, when Brady took the Patriots to a narrow 20-17 victory over the St. Louis Rams.

Yay. The new kid on the block did a pretty good job in that game, with a quarterback rating of 86.2. Plus, I'd lived three years in New England in my youth, so that was a nice touch, too. A connection.

I never thought then that Brady would never leave. Since then, he's appeared in eight more Super Bowls, winning an astonishing five of them.

Consequently, as he kept winning Super Bowls, I started pulling against him. I wanted to see somebody different take home the trophy. Furthermore, there was the added weight of the Spygate (2007) and Deflategate (2014) "scandals" that gave me even more reasons to dislike him. Cheater.

And yet, here he was, appearing in Super Bowls year after year as if they were part of the Patriots regular-season schedule. I kept thinking about some of the quality quarterbacks of the past, like Minnesota's Fran Tarkenton or Buffalo's Jim Kelly, who appeared in multiple Super Bowls and never won. Kelly, in fact, appeared in four consecutive Super Bowls and lost all four. Consecutively. I don't think I ever rooted as hard for a player to win a Super Bowl as I did for Kelly. Maybe I jinxed him. I have that power sometimes.

A ray of hope happened in the offseason when the Patriots traded Brady to Tampa Bay, a so-so franchise that last appeared in the Super Bowl in 2002. Maybe, just maybe, Brady would finally vanish.

Which brings us to today and Super Bowl LV. 

(What's with the Roman numerals anyway? I need my Roman numeral translator and I can't find it. It's like converting kilometers into miles or Celsius into Fahrenheit). I think in normal language, this is Super Bowl 55. Wait. That Arabic numeral actually doesn't look too regal, does it? Maybe Roman numerals work after all. Deal with it.

(Wait. I've seen 55 Super Bowls?).

Brady is 43 years old and would already be in the Football Hall of Fame if he had retired five years ago like a normal person. Somehow, he has the Bucs in the Super Bowl against the Kansas City Chiefs and their stellar quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, who is 25.

Mahomes could be Brady's son, age-wise, if you think about it.

Usually, it takes a quarterback a season or two to get to know his teammates – their strengths, their weaknesses, their idiosyncrasies. Not only that, how about simply learning the playbook?

None of that mattered to Brady. He's in his 10th Super Bowl. If he wins tonight, he will have won 70 percent of the Super Bowls he's appeared in. That's outrageously phenomenal. It's enough to make me, ummm, respect him. Maybe even pull for him, like I once did. There, I said it.

Mahomes is coming off last year's Super Bowl victory over San Francisco. He's a scrambler, with incredible vision of the field. He has a strong, accurate throwing arm and youthful quickness in his legs. He's in his athletic prime, he's the future of the game, and I like him a lot. Plus, he plays for coach Andy Reid, who once coached the Philadelphia Eagles, the team I've pulled for since 1964.

But back to Brady. He owns all kinds of NFL quarterback records, and almost all the Super Bowl quarterback records. Like him or not, we've been blessed in our lifetimes to see the greatest quarterback who has ever played the game. Period. No argument. It's like having been alive to see Babe Ruth play. Or Hank Aaron.

So who's going to win?

My brain says Kansas City. The Chiefs are clearly the best team, position by position – maybe even at quarterback.

But how can you bet against Brady? The history. The legacy. The experience. The karma.

I don't know. I'm going to say Chiefs 24-17. But my heart says watch out for Brady.