In advance of his golf match with Aaron Rodgers, Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen next week, Tom Brady shared a video of himself sinking a long-distance shot via his social media channels that may have been meant to intimidate his opponents.
In the video, which must have had a fairly large camera crew because there are about 10 people standing near the 44-year-old quarterback, Brady swings away and his subsequent shot is then followed by a drone camera before it finds its way into the hole.
After the clip began trending, Brady, always on the lookout to help his fellow golfers, tweeted out the link to where the Brady-branded outfit he was wearing in the viral video could be purchased for a grand total of $170 (plus tax and shipping).
Not only was Brady’s trick shot video essentially a glorified commercial for his polo and pants, it was also a fake. Brady essentially admitted as much by tagging the video editing team he often uses — Shadow Lion — in his post. Ari Fararooy, a videographer Brady has worked with before who has been responsible for visual effects, was also tagged. (See a previous phony collab between the two below.)
CBS Boston also points out a number of clues that the video isn’t on the level: “Why is he hitting from some random tee markers in the middle of a fairway? Why does the ball look faker than the ones in the video where he pretended to drain a bunch of putts in rapid succession? Why are there obvious edits — the sound of the swing, the sound of the ball falling into the cup, etc. — in a video that’s supposed to be real? Why’d that person walk directly in front of the camera at the 4-second mark?”
Those aren’t the sort of questions that need to be asked of @BigBadBrad14, the handle that quarterback-turned-TikTok-trick-shot-artist Brad Johnson uses when he posts his content online.
Johnson, who helped guide Tampa Bay to the franchise’s Super Bowl about two decades before Brady was able to do the same, retired from the NFL following the 2008 season but still spends plenty of time with a football in his hands making magic. An all-state high school hoops player in North Carolina, Johnson also horses around with basketballs these days while recording videos of himself draining tricks shots and performing other feats.
Johnson, who began making his videos as a hobby during the pandemic but quickly saw producing content morph into an obsession, will often have a ball rolling in the background to show his followers he’s not relying on trick photography and that his stunts are legit.
“It’s almost like, not therapy, but it’s my goal, my quest,” Johnson told the Los Angeles Times. “Can I actually get this thing done? Sometimes it’s first try, first take. Sometimes it takes hours and hours. Sometimes, you’ve got to come back the next day and try it again. And sometimes it just doesn’t happen.”
Just like Brady’s lucky shot on the links.
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