... grizzled veteran. He was also, not so long ago, a glittering golden boy. After 12 months of setbacks and false starts, Brady is finally set to return from reconstructive knee surgery—which would be better news if he were still the invincible kid of yesteryear.

Youth means believing you have nowhere to go but up.

Adulthood, on the other hand, means knowing you have nowhere to arrive but down.

It’s not that I doubt Brady’s resilience. His resumé is beyond reproach, and he has a knack for beating the odds. But let’s be clear about the scope of the challenge here. In a league where physical health is the coin of the realm, it’s hard to bet on a quarterback who owes his leg to modern science.

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