There’s a strong argument to be made for Tom Brady being the greatest football player to ever play the game. The now-retired quarterback won seven Super Bowl rings over the course of his 23-season career, but they certainly didn’t come easy. One episode of the docuseries The Dynasty: New England Patriots (available to stream with an Apple TV+ subscription) compared part his journey to that of another GOAT — Taylor Swift — using her hit “Look What You Made Me Do” in a segment about Brady’s “Deflategate” comeback.
As explored in the episode “Score to Settle” on The Dynasty: New England Patriots, Tom Brady was suspended for the first four games of the 2016 season for allegedly ordering footballs to be intentionally underinflated during the 2014 AFC Championship Game (aka "Deflategate"). Jimmy Garoppolo took over starting duties at the time, winning three of the four Brady-less games, and when No. 12 finally took the field again in Week 5, he definitely felt like he had something to prove. As Boston Globe reporter Nora Princiotti put it:
That season, it was like a song from Taylor Swift. He was like, ‘Look what you made me do.’
Taylor Swift can dismantle her foes in a single lyric, just as Tom Brady spent that season with the New England Patriots picking apart defenses en route to another Super Bowl victory. In that episode, “Look What You Made Me Do” played over a montage of the quarterback on his “revenge tour,” as the team won 11 of their 12 regular-season games after Brady’s return.
It was a pretty fitting song, as Taylor Swift released “Look What You Made Me Do” as the first single off of 2017’s Reputation — her first album after going into hiding for a year amidst drama with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian — a feud Swift seemingly still has issues with. Tom Brady can likely relate to some of the treatment Swift received from her critics, as the docuseries showed the quarterback taking the field again to boos from the crowd and people calling him a cheater. He was fueled by the skepticism, telling the documentary producers:
It was an ‘FEA’ year… Fuck ‘em all, baby. Said that for a long time. They’re not pulling for us anyway.
Reputation really does feel like Taylor Swift’s version of an “FEA” year, doesn’t it? In both cases the celebrities were forced away from their livelihoods and then not exactly welcomed back with open arms. With the Patriots winning games without Tom Brady, many wondered if Jimmy Garoppolo was New England’s quarterback of the future. Swift similarly felt like everything she’d worked so hard for was slipping from her grasp, as she told Time magazine in December, “Make no mistake — my career was taken away from me.”
But look what they did, indeed. Tom Brady won the Super Bowl that season and claimed two more championships before retiring, while Taylor Swift continues to take the world by storm with her Eras Tour and all of her upcoming projects. And speaking of “Look What You Made Me Do,” Swifties continue to hold their collective breaths for an announcement regarding the Reputation (Taylor’s Version) release date. In the meantime, you can stream The Dynasty: New England Patriots on Apple TV+ and see what other premieres are coming soon with our 2024 TV schedule.
