Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times. Mark Leibovich

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СКАЧАТЬ up, and a loud and distinctively accented female voice echoed up from his phone.

      GISELE!

      Brady addressed her as “G.” “Where are you?” I heard her ask. G sounded annoyed. Brady adopted that clipped “I’m with someone, Hon, can’t really talk” voice familiar to spouses everywhere. Brady said he’d be finished shortly and would see her at home (“Love ya, Babe”). She appeared to end the call without saying ­good-­bye.

      I told Brady I wanted to follow him during the season as he tried to defy the NFL actuarial tables. He was trying to “make history,” I suggested, or some such bullshit I threw out in an effort to communicate that I totally got his elevated purpose. Brady said he would try to carve out pockets of time to get together over the coming months. He allowed, however, that once the season began, he would be on “Belichick Time.” In other words, he would be absorbed into the scheduling equivalent of a black hole.

      A few minutes later, Brady’s ­then-­five-­year-­old son, Benjamin, and ­then-­two-­year-­old daughter, Vivian, were released into the room. They served as pediatric ­two-­minute warnings. They both jumped on Brady, and Brady said something to “Benny” in Portuguese while little towheaded Vivian toddled over and looked sternly into my face. “­Bye-­bye,” she said. I took this as a sign it was time to leave.

      This was as close as I would get to my new best friend for a while. Brady kept putting me off, by way of Yee. Soon after we met in New York, the quarterback embarked with his family on a ­pre–­training camp vacation in the Bahamas. The trip represented a rare separation between Brady and Guerrero, whose control over Brady’s day-to-day regimen was far more powerful than seemingly everything else except possibly “Belichick Time.” “Guerrero Time” was more like a New Age lockdown.

      The “body coach” label understates Guerrero’s reach into Brady’s life. Guerrero is his spiritual guide, counselor, pal, nutrition adviser, trainer, massage therapist, business partner, and ­quasi–­family member. He is the godfather of Brady’s younger son, Ben. Guerrero works on Brady seven days a week, usually twice a day during the season. These sessions focus on Brady’s legs, thighs, and right arm, the one he throws with, which he calls “the moneymaker.”

      Guerrero also works with Brady’s personal chef to put together ­seasonal diets emphasizing certain foods in winter (lean meats and chicken), raw foods in summer, and a general food intake that is 80 percent alkaline and 20 percent acidic. This has something to do with balancing Brady’s metabolic system for reasons I can’t even begin to understand, much less explain, or (if I’m being honest) care about. Guerrero also gives Brady special cognitive exercises that help “de-stimulate” his mind so he can fall asleep every night by nine p.m. while wearing the $99.99 biodynamic sleepwear made by Under Armour that Brady would endorse. “If my opponents aren’t wearing what I wear, I’m getting the edge on them even while I’m sleeping,” Brady wrote in a TB12 manifesto published a few years later. If Brady is the Beatles, Guerrero is his ­maharishi—­although he’s also been compared with Yoko, suggesting a potential for disruption, or worse. “Everyone thinks I’m a kook and a charlatan,” Guerrero told me, referring to how some traditional trainers view him. He has been called by less flattering names (“scam artist,” “snake oil salesman”) as well as cited by the FTC for marketing that ­concussion-­prevention drink. And there was another potion that he claimed could cure cancer and heart disease and arthritis, among other things. And the trail of false claims, lawsuits, and broken partnerships in what turned out to be quite a checkered past. A 2015 exposé in Boston magazine described sketchy TV infomercials in which a guy calling himself “Dr. Alejandro Guerrero” boasted of having run “clinical studies” in which he helped two hundred patients overcome terminal illnesses through a nutritional supplement called “Supreme Greens.”

      Guerrero, in various court documents, denied many of the allegations. Brady said he was aware of “most” of Guerrero’s troubles, which occurred before they ever met. He chalks it up to a learning experience for his best friend. “That’s part of growing up and understanding there are certain things that happen in life that you wish you didn’t do,” Brady said in a weekly interview he does during the season on one of Boston’s sports radio channels, WEEI.

      Brady and Guerrero’s TB12 center is housed in the shopping center behind the stadium. As with most New England businesses, it’s a few doors down from a Dunkin’ Donuts. It is difficult to describe what exactly TB12 ­is—­not a gym, not a group practice of personal trainers, not a nutrition or ­massage-­therapy center. Whenever I asked Brady and Guerrero to define TB12, they would speak of “reeducating muscles” and “prehab” (preventing injuries, rather than dealing with them after they happen). To the uninitiated, Guerrero’s “bodywork” resembles massage, but Brady told me he does not like the term “massage.” He believes that sells short the awesomeness of his body coach’s “technique.” “It’s like giving a chef some flour and eggs and saying, ‘Okay, we’ll make biscuits,’ ” Brady says. “Well, sure, everyone is going to make them different. But Alex is perfect at it.” Inevitably, Brady and Guerrero would come around to the word “lifestyle.” Inevitably, I would still be confused about whatever TB12 is. But Brady’s conviction appeared sincere, and the results he could point to from his own career made him a winning infomercial.

      Brady is always talking about the importance of “muscle pliability.” After Brady mentioned it for the seven thousandth time, I asked him to elaborate on what “pliability” meant. While traditional football training emphasizes muscle strength, he explained, Brady wants his muscles to achieve maximum sponginess and ­elasticity—­or pliability.

      “So how do you keep your muscles soft?” Brady said. “Like when you’re a kid, when you squeeze their little butt, and they’re soft, and you grab their little cheeks, they don’t get hurt. When they fall, they don’t get hurt.” As a person ages, you lose that. “You lose your collagen. You lose your growth hormone. You lose testosterone, and all of a sudden your muscles become tight and tight muscles start pulling on tendons and ligaments, which create joint issues.”

      Every morning in the Bahamas, following his pliability workouts, Brady joined his family for a late breakfast that for him consisted mainly of a protein shake that was also high in electrolytes and included greens like kale and collards. “Sometimes we’ll go over to Tom and Gisele’s house for dinner,” Brady’s father, also named Tom, told me. “And then I’ll say afterward, ‘Where are we going for dinner?’ ”

      I MET THE ELDER BRADY IN CALIFORNIA A FEW DAYS AFTER THE family returned from the Bahamas. He could become quite animated on the topic of how disgusting T and G’s diets were. “Not only can I not eat that stuff, I can’t even look at it,” he told me. I instantly loved Tom Senior, who refers to himself as “the Original Tom Brady.” He was as emotional as his son was cool, which made him a much easier read. A self-employed insurance salesman specializing in high-net-worth clients, Tom Senior spent seven years in a Catholic seminary before deciding the priesthood was not for ­him. He and his wife of nearly fifty years, Galynn, still live in the same house in San Mateo where his son grew up. The Bradys had three daughters, who would all become star athletes. “It was a crazy girl environment,” Mr. Brady recalled to me. “We’d have periods going on every single week.” Tommy came along last, and father and son would become unusually close.

      “Tommy was my best friend,” said Mr. Brady, who started taking his son on golf outings at the age of three. When Brady chose to go far away for college, to Michigan, his father was devastated. “I had to go into counseling,” he said. After a few days, father and son convened in the living room for a tête-à-tête. They held hands. “I was crying like a baby and said, ‘Tommy, this is going to change our relationship,’ ” he recalled. “And he said: ‘Dad, I know. It has to.’ ”

      Tom the son also sought professional help СКАЧАТЬ