Was Brady’s emotionality a good thing? YEA: ‘Brady Gaga’ hit right note with teammates

Football is an emotional game, played by crazed athletes who send their bodies flying and crashing into each other with alarming force and – often – at alarming speeds.But amid such craziness, and in an arena reminiscent of the days of Roman gladiators, there is an aspect of football that involves concentration, focus and even precision. You may ask – and it’s a fair question – how anyone could ever combine two such extremes.But people do. That’s why they’re called world-class athletes.But sometimes both on a football field and in this world, people need a push. They take their eyes off the ball ? lose focus ? take a mental holiday ? use whatever term you want. And when they do, the results can be very bad. A missed block can result in a shattered knee; a missed deadline can result in a lost contract. The consequences vary, but the ethic is the same. If any endeavor is to be successful, all involved have to do their parts. No more, perhaps ? but absolutely no less.This brings us to Tom Brady this past Sunday in Pittsburgh. When it appeared the Patriots’ concentration was starting to wander toward the end of the first half, and passes were dropped, blocks missed, and the runners performing in a seemingly half-hearted manner, Brady went Medieval on his teammates.There was no misinterpreting Brady. He was angry at the mistakes and lack of focus. Lip readers probably had a wonderful time trying to figure out what he was saying, because the NBC cameras were riveted on him.I thought it was great. First, if you remember last year’s Patriots, they either blew big leads entirely or let them slip away to the point where games got way too interesting down the stretch. Brady was one of the many players who – by the end of the season – bemoaned their lack of leadership.What we saw in the second half Sunday was a Patriots team that responded to its leader. He chewed them out, and they came out with a purpose – and that was to keep the pressure on the Steelers and beat them senseless.Anybody who knows football knew the Steelers were going to launch a comeback. Good teams always do, and the Steelers are a good team. Ben Roethlisberger wasn’t going to be miserable for the entire game, because good quarterbacks rarely are.Last year, when the Patriots blew all those leads, a lot of the fault lay with the offense, because it got bogged down in the second half ? and that allowed the other team to come back.Brady’s message to his offense, then, was simple ? if a tad forceful: If YOU want to win the game, then YOU have to keep the pressure on.I’d say this was one time when the term “mission accomplished” would have been appropriate.Later, Brady said that it’s a lot easier to be that way when you’re playing well. He’s right about that. If he was playing like Big Ben, he’d have had no right to be yelling and screaming at his teammates. But he was playing – at the time – perhaps his best game since before he hurt his knee. And just from a personal point of view, I’m sure he was not at all interested in having a Picasso-like performance adversely affected by a bunch of linemen and receivers drawing stick figures in the sand.So three cheers for Tom Brady after his hair-raising emotional outburst last Sunday.Steve Krause is sports editor of The Item.