Tom Brady’s Helmets: A Retrospective

With all the fluff out there about drafting quarterbacks, bad draft choices and discontent between Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, it’s time to drop some hard-hitting journalism here on the blog. Let’s get serious and talk about how this is sadly the last year Tom Brady can wear his helmet of choice.

One of the things that instantly made me like Brady was that he just had the perfect quarterback look. Yes, 12 is the number for signal-callers, but it was Brady’s low-rising helmet that put him on another level. At that point, Peyton Manning had already set the NFL world on fire, but if it came down to simple looks on the field, I was already taking Brady before he had even started a game.

But it wasn’t like Brady jumped right into the perfected look that he’s now known for and he even experimented with other helmets for a few games in 2011 and 2012.

Let’s take an important and possibly ground-breaking look back at Brady’s helmet-look over the course of his career and figure out what he might switch to in 2019.

Out of the gate in 2000, Brady stuck with what he wore in college, with that extra upper bar. Not a bad look, but definitely too college. But by his second year, when he was thrust onto the scene and won his first Super Bowl, Brady had lost that top bar and finally had a really good NFL QB look, yet there was one remnant from that college helmet — the extra-big chin guard.

If anything was holding Brady back by the time he won Super Bowl 38, it was that chin guard. Not unforgivable like the Peyton Manning helmet-facemask disaster, but just a minor thing in need of fixing. Still, pretty badass.

But by the time he got to Super Bowl 39, he had the chin guard sitch figured out and had fully ascended to a flawless QB look (with three Super Bowls to boot!). Show ’em, Tom:

 

For the next six seasons, Brady rocked this look, the one he’s best known for. Sometimes his hair got a little longer and he had to add a knee brace to the ensemble after 2008, but otherwise, he became the legendary Tom Brady just like Belichick was rocking the gray cutoff hoodie and becoming a legend in his own right.

But in 2011, at the opener in Miami, Brady was suddenly rocking a new helmet. The facemask and chin guard remained the same, but the helmet looked bigger. It looked wrong.

He’d wear the new dome again in Week 2 against the Chargers before going back to old faithful in Week 3 and never turning back. But the following season in 2012 he gave another new one a try, the Riddell Speed helmet. Here’s Brady in Seattle, as well as the last time the Pats got to wear throwbacks:

Okay, I didn’t totally hate this look, it wasn’t perfect but the proportions and low-rise are still pretty intact. It almost looked like Brady 2.0 for a season. But once again he abandoned the new helmet experiment and went back to his usual, which he’s worn ever since.

Now, with one year left with his helmet soulmate, the Brady 1.0 helmet look will have a final farewell season where it will undoubtedly be honored at every road game the Patriots play. If I had to choose, I’d be okay with a return to the Riddell speed helmet he tried in 2012. The newest ones look even more modern so we’d be in a bit of uncharted territory.

Unfortunately, we just have no choice. Brady will spend his final seasons in a 2.0 helmet look, making elite helmet Brady of the 2000’s only to our memory.