Which Team's Starting QB is Tom Brady Calling 'That Muthafucka' Because They Stuck with Him Instead of Signing Brady?

YouTube - The Shop: Uninterrupted returns Friday, June 25 at 9:30 PM on HBOMax. Joining Maverick Carter are Tom Brady, Kid Cudi, Chelsea Handler, Draymond Green, and Paul Rivera.

I'm not predisposed to do promotional material for Lebron James productions. But since he's not in this upcoming episode and Tom Brady is terminating some unnamed opposing quarterback with extreme prejudice, it's my duty to post this clip. 

Holy moly. Where's the Tom Brady we used to know? The guy who lived by The Four Agreements-style positivity inspired by ancient Toltec wisdom, mixed with Belichickian philosophy of saying nothing negative that can be used against you is no longer with us. That seventh ring is the final Infinity Stone and he's gone full Thanos. Mixed with Samuel L. Jackson. (The real one; Nick Fury doesn't drop M-bombs, as much as he'd like to.) And like a clean comic who suddenly decides to work blue, his sentence enhancers have a lot more impact than someone who drops F-bombs all the time. 

Which begs the question: Which starter is he referring to? Who does he have so much contempt for that he's still bothered about it like he just got drafted behind Giovanni Carmozzi? To the point he's using language he didn't even direct at Roger Goodell at the Super Bowl LI MVP presentation in the Year of the Deflategate Suspension? 

Without any way of knowing for sure, it would be irresponsible of me to sit here and speculate. But like Nietzsche's Superman, I live a consequence free environment where I am not held accountable for my actions, no matter how reckless. So here's some irresponsible speculation. 

We're looking at a pool of 30 teams. For starters, we can eliminate anyone who ended up finishing near the top of the league in passing yards, any high draft pick under the age of say, 25, such as a Drew Lock, and any truly entrenched starter even if they seem like they were approaching the end of the line, like a Ben Roethlisberger or Drew Brees. We can eliminate Philip Rivers because the Colts signed him the day after Brady made it official with Tampa. So who could that leave us with? 

--Mitchell Trubisky, Bears. Trubisky was coming off a 2019 where he made 15 starts, threw a total of 17 TDs to 10 picks and a passer rating of 83.0. Which was "good" for 28th in the league, one spot behind even Jameis Winston. I imagine being the GOAT and finding yourself being passed over for someone with his resume make someone with the vocabulary of Ned Flanders have to feed the Swear Jar.

--Ryan Fitzpatrick, Dolphins. This feels a little less likely. But by no means impossible. My first reaction is that Brady would've wanted no part of staying in the AFC East. But after further review, I can't come up with a solid reason why he wouldn't. The guy who's sitting there in a pretend barbershop casually MFing a mystery QB for the crime of sucking would not have hesitated to go play for Brian Flores and try to exact his vengeance on Bill Belichick twice a year. And while we all default to the great moments of Fitzmagic, those get further in our rearview all the time. There have been five full seasons since he won 10 games with the Jets or had a 2:1 TD to INTs ratio. And in March of 2020 (so long before Miami drafted Tua Tagovailoa), you can see Brady looking at Fitz' 12-23 record and wondering what the appeal was. 

--Derek Carr, Raiders. I happen to think Carr is a top half of the league passer, if not even borderline Top 10. But then again, I'm not the greatest to ever do it. If I'd gotten rejected for a guy with six years of experience and not a single playoff appearance to show for it, I'd be grinding all sorts of axes for Jon Gruden and Mike Mayock too. 

--Gardner Minshew II, Jaguars. Like most decent, law abiding Americans, I love Minshew's story and his very existence. But with Brady's wife telling him she wants to do the New England thing and snowbird down to Florida for a nice early retirement, it's hard to imagine Brady's agent not dialing up Jacksonville to at least gauge their interest, at the very least. Assuming a 6th round QB whose lapped the field on the all time wins list got passed over for a 6th round QB with 12 starts, then "motherfucker" would be the politest thing you could expect to hear. 

--Jimmy Garoppolo, 49ers. I'm the last guy to buy into the narrative of there being a tsunami of bad blood between Brady and Jimmy G. The reports that he felt threatened by his backup, went over Belichick's head to get him traded, and took away his access to TB12 Fitness is not supported by any of the facts, but are refuted by a lot of them. Still, Garoppolo was his backup. San Francisco was supposedly one of the places Brady most wanted to land, for all the obvious geographical and familial reasons. But the Niners would coming off a Super Bowl year while Brady was a frustrated one & done in the playoffs. If I'm going to believe he resented being passed over for anyone more than anyone else, I'm going with this. Just because it has the most history and feels like the classic thing the GOAT would focus on to convince himself the world is out to get him. 

Either way, when Brady is so fired up that he's pulling out the 12-letter words, everybody wins.