That guy again

 Look, I get it. You hate Tom Brady. There's a support group and a secret handshake and everything for it now.

If you live in New England, you hate Tom Brady because he acted with exactly the cold-blooded pragmatism you celebrate as the Patriot Way when Belichick ruthlessly cuts loose a loyal soldier once the returns diminish. And now he's in Tampa and it's all warm and WHAT THE HELL HE'S GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL WITHOUT US.

And if you live everywhere else?

You hate Tom Brady because he's smug and he's married to a supermodel and he lives in a freaking castle, and he looks better at 43 than you did at 23. And he still plays football better than 99 percent of the quarterbacks in the NFL.

Also, Deflategate. Also, now you've gotta watch him in the Super Bowl again, for the 10TH FREAKING TIME.

If that doesn't spoil the clam dip and loaded nachos, nothing will. You might as well drink your beer as warm as they do in weirdo England.

Still, attention must be paid this morning. It surely must.

It must be paid because 50 years ago a man named George Blanda had to fill in at quarterback for the Oakland Raiders, and he did all sorts of wondrous things. Threw touchdown passes and kicked field goals and led the Raiders to come-from-behind wins, and even played in the AFC title game -- where the Raiders lost to the Colts, but Blanda completed 17-of-32 passes for 217 yards and two touchdowns, and also kicked a 48-yard field goal.

Like Tom Brady, he was 43 at the time.

Unlike Tom Brady, he looked 43, or maybe even 53. Which prompted a lot of walker jokes and rocking chair jokes and retirement home jokes.

Brady, on the other hand, doesn't look like he's aged a day in the last 10 years. And he still plays like he did 10 years ago. It's as if he made a pact with the Devil in the womb, and now will play on and on, never visibly aging or slowing down.

Everyone who hates Tom Brady would find the latter easy to believe.

The rest of us ... well, come on. We know it's not the Devil that keeps him so eerily ageless, but all those kale/avocado shakes and energy bars made from the essence of a Brazilian rainforest or whatever.

In any case, it's time to appreciate him. He's the undisputed GOAT, and what he's managed to do this year at 43 cements it for good.

First, he didn't get the Bastard Plague. Second, he took a team that hadn't won more than nine games in a season for a decade and got them to the Super Bowl by being Tom Brady, and also by inducing Gronk and Antonio Brown and Leonard Fournette to join the party.

In Green Bay yesterday, he threw for 280 yards and three scores to give the Buccaneers the cushion they needed to hold off Aaron Rodgers and the Packers. He also threw three picks, which will happen when you're 43 years old and presumably human. 

But the main thing is, he won. Again. 

And is going to the Super Bowl. Again.

Hate that with every fiber of your being if you must. But marvel at it, too.