Following his four-week suspension, QB Tom Brady returns to the practice field in preparation for the Patriots' Week 5 game at Cleveland. Steven Senne/AP Photo According to Brady's former Michigan teammate Jay Feely, a longtime NFL kicker, the rocky road from Ann Arbor to Foxborough ended up benefiting his friend. "All the trials and tribulations and everything Tom had to do to prove himself to Lloyd Carr, to the world and to the NFL," Feely said, "that all led to the chip on his shoulder that exists today."
Deflategate turned that chip into a boulder. Brady hasn't done any talking this week at his team's facility, leaving his close friend, Shea, to do some talking for him. The former tight end remembered that Brady wouldn't play him one-on-one in basketball at Michigan (He knew Shea was the superior player), and that he'd only play him in the shooting game of P-I-G, a game Brady mastered by hitting the same near-impossible bank shot from the baseline over and over again.
"Beat me every time," Shea said, "and it drove me nuts." He knows how desperately Brady tries to avoid losing to a friend, a stranger, a defensive back, a defensive coordinator or an NFL commissioner. In 2007, the Patriots quarterback famously scorched and berated a Steelers safety who had guaranteed victory. In 1999, the Michigan quarterback less famously blasted a jeering intramural basketball opponent (the frat boy was razzing him about Henson) with a blind screen that Brady buddy Jay Flannelly described as: "a Charles Oakley-like pick. Tommy killed the guy, just blew him up, and the kid was on the ground for five minutes looking for his face."
All these years later, Brady doesn't have to hunt for his next opponent which he believes did him wrong. Asked if he thinks the godfather of his son wants to stick it to Goodell, Shea said: "One hundred percent. He'll never tell anyone that, but we're all human. You want to stick it to someone who stuck it to you. Deflategate was a witch hunt for Goodell and all the other owners who wanted to slow the Patriots down. And now everyone in the NFL knows Tom is back and fired up. If there's one guy in the history of sports who didn't need to cheat, it's Tommy Brady."
Shea said he'll be visiting with the visiting quarterback Saturday night. He said that he'll be wearing his Brady cap, and that his son Kinzy will be wearing his Brady jersey when they attend the Patriots-Browns game Sunday (1 p.m. ET, CBS).
Shea hasn't been to a Cleveland game since the organization let him go in 2014. He still has some friends working for the home team, and still has a desire to see the Browns someday exorcise the same legion of ghosts that LeBron James exorcised on the basketball side of town.
"My poor Browns just can't catch a break," Shea said. "It's just their luck that they didn't get the Patriots on the schedule in Week 3. But Tom is family, and I'll be pulling for him. I think he's going to light the Browns up, and I think the Browns know it's coming. And so does the rest of the NFL."
Comments At last: Vikings fan attending her first game just before 97th birthday 9:32 PM PT Ben Goessling ESPN Staff Writer Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email print comment MINNEAPOLIS -- The Minnesota Vikings have played 108 preseason, 421 regular-season and 21 postseason games in the state of Minnesota since they joined the NFL in 1961. Those 550 games have been played at six venues -- Metropolitan Stadium, Parade Stadium in Minneapolis, the University of Minnesota's Memorial Stadium, the Metrodome, TCF Bank Stadium and U.S. Bank Stadium -- and Anna Burge has not been in the building for a single one of them.
The native of Brownton, Minnesota, was content to watch her beloved Vikings at home, instead of making the 90-minute trip from her family's farm to the Twin Cities. The only NFL game she'd ever attended, in fact, was at the Astrodome on Dec. 27, 1992, when she and her late husband Art were visiting their son Alan in Houston for Christmas.
Anna Burge, 97, is attending her first Vikings game on Sunday. Courtesy of Colleen Wagner That will change Sunday, in Vikings home game No. 551. As the Vikings take the field against the Houston Texans, Burge will be in the building, 11 days before her 97th birthday.
She is attending Sunday's game with 11 family members coming from three different states (Minnesota, Texas and Washington) for the game. Burge took a tour of the Vikings' new stadium on Aug. 7, and two of her sons had been planning to get a group together for the game. The party of six doubled in size once her grandson Ryan found he'd able to get seats with wheelchair access for her, and others quickly joined in. When they told her she'd be going, she didn't believe them.
"I thought they were joking at first," she said. "I could hardly believe it. I said, 'You've got to be kidding,' [and they said], 'No, no -- not kidding.' I think the kids knew it a long time before I did, but when Ryan called me and told me ... I can't explain it. It's a dream come true."
Burge said she became a football fan while watching two of her sons play the game growing up, and that quickly morphed into a love for the Vikings during the team's early years. Burge said her favorite player was Hall of Fame quarterback Fran Tarkenton, and even now, as she resides in an assisted living facility in Hutchinson, Minnesota, the Vikings are a central part of her week.
She watches many of Minnesota's other professional teams, too, but the Vikings are her favorite. "There's nobody like the Vikings," she said.
As for that other NFL game she attended, some 24 years ago in Houston? It turned out to be a precursor to history. The Houston Oilers beat the Buffalo Bills 27-3 that day, costing the Bills an AFC East title and setting up a rematch between the teams in the AFC wild-card playoffs the next weekend in Buffalo, where Frank Reich directed the biggest comeback in NFL history.
Time will tell whether anything so significant happens on Sunday, but for Burge and her family, the experience is a long time coming.
"I can't believe, at my age, that I'm going to be there," she said. "It's all going to be new to me -- just a wonderful, wonderful thing to look forward to."