EPSN journalist Seth Wickersham has spent more than two decades uncovering the most interesting and thought-provoking stories in sports.
In his new book Be on That Hill: Stories from the Summits of Sport, which take the reader on a journey mirroring Wickersham’s own – and indeed numerous successful athletes – the New York Times bestselling author shares some of his best work over the past 20 years.
Speaking to Heavy in an exclusive interview, Wickersham gave further insight into how he sees the parallels between Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes; the greatest quarterbacks of their respective generations, who are in two distinct phases of their career.
But first, Wickersham clarified what is inarguably the most important issue in the entire book: why does Sean Payton compulsively pours Mexican colas into a glass, but rarely actually drinks them?
“Football coaches are all about rituals, and his is to have the coldest possible coke in front of him at almost waking hours. I think the key is that it’s cold.”
“During the season, he barely eats out, you know, he obviously doesn’t drink alcohol, but like sugary drinks are kind of his vice.”
The sodas may indeed have contributed – amongst other factors – to a small but visible shake in the Super Bowl-winning head coach’s hand that abruptly stops the moment the Denver Broncos head coach starts watching tape.
“It was like his entire body hit some sort of meditative, relaxed state where [the shake] dissipated.”
The Curious Case of Tom Brady: A Case Study
This ability to temporarily transcend into a meditative-like state is not something unique to Payton alone. Perhaps the best examples of such work comes from the league’s best signal callers, Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes.
And Brady – according to Wickersham – attributes his success right to the beginning: his parents.
“You ask Tom Brady how he became what he became and the first thing he’ll do is talk about his parents.”
But despite this, Brady himself knows he was never the parent to his children that his were to him, with Wickersham noting in the book that he went so far as to break down crying and admitting as such back in 2022’s filming of ESPN Films’ Man in the Arena: Tom Brady.
“Brady’s own competitive drive and competitive stamina, you know, was in such elite rarefied company that, you know, you wonder, what else was there room for? His wife [billionaire super model Gisele Bunchen] at one point said his true love is football, and she said it in a joking way – but I don’t think she was joking.”
Wickersham considers Brady to be amongst the rare athletes; and perhaps even unique amongst those who retire well into their 40s, whose “body outlasted his will”.
“He didn’t retire because he was physically diminished.” Wickersham explained. “He retired because the life that he had created was just too much to account for the rigours and the commitment of a football season. But let’s be honest, I think he wanted to keep going.”
Indeed, with more than a small note of sincerity, Wickersham argues that one of the reasons ownership – and indeed announcing – appealed to Brady was that it could be one of the few legitimate barriers that would stop him returning to the field as a player further on into his 40s, and maybe longer.
The old adage with Brady is that what sets him apart from other physically more gifted, smarter or more instinctive quarterbacks is the desire to win; the desire to be great.
Wickersham compares him – as no doubt many others have in the past – to Michael Jordan, who said to Wickersham’s best friend and fellow sports journalist Wright Thompson back in 2020 that he would trade his whole legacy: six NBA championships and finals MVPs apiece, 5 MVPs and 14 All-Star nods; for a chance to go back and just play the game again.
And for Brady, the same appears to be true. There is no doubt that the GOAT is proud of his accomplishments in the NFL that amount to 7 Super Bowl rings – the only accolade that really matters to top quarterbacks.
But the fire and the drive inside him is not only single-minded and focused, but insatiable. The desire to be successful that “no amount of accolades or money or celebration or achievement can ever extinguish.”
Wickersham also poses a secondary theory in the form of an anecdote from a prior conversation with a well-known stand-up comedian.
“How do you find the will to keep writing jokes even though you’re so successful?”
“It’s not will; will is not eating the piece of cake at dinner: It’s love.”
Are Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady Mirror Images or Polar Opposites?
It’s easy to draw a comparison between the two men who many regard as the greatest signal callers of the 2000s; if not of all time; in Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady. Both had stunning postseason success early on and won exactly three championships before problems set in; injury, offensive regression, etc.
As Wickersham would put it, Mahomes is in the midst of the “pleateau” stage of his career, similar to how Brady was a decade in. And whilst there are clear parallels between their respective careers, the pair are very different people beyond the basic-but-essential traits of competitiveness, work-ethic and leadership.
“I was sitting with Mahomes and I asked him about how when he was in high school, he didn’t qualify for the regional Elite 11 quarterback competition. But really what it is is an arm strength contest. So you think of all people on this Earth, Patrick Mahomes would qualify for it.
“I asked him if that motivated him that was like his version of the scars that Brady has from his time at Michigan and nearly going undrafted. Is that the cliche ‘chip on the shoulder’ for him?”
“He shrugged and said, ‘Nah, our area of Texas is really known for producing quarterbacks – I didn’t really think much of it.’ And I did realize there was something fundamentally different from him and Brady, in that Brady had these scars, and as his career went on he collected them and looked for slights – sometimes invented them; he needed reasons to go to the dark side.”
“And I don’t think Mahomes needs that. I think his competitiveness, whilst similar to Brady’s, comes from a different place.”
Both Mahomes and Brady had polar opposite college experiences that unquestionably shape their attitude towards competition and their own personal motivations. Whilst Brady had to jockey for every bit of playing time he saw at Michigan, Mahomes was treated as quarterback royalty he proved to be as a pro, under Texas Tech head coach and oft-styled quarterback guru Kliff Kingsbury.
An excerpt from one of Wickersham’s pieces from 2018 in the book, ‘Most quarterbacks go to college to learn how to play in the NFL. Mahomes went to learn how to throw left-handed’, sums up the three-time Super Bowl champion’s university experience about as well any, for a quarterback that puts ketchup on steak.
On the subject of throwing left-handed, something Mahomes did back in Week 4 against the Denver Broncos back in his star-making, breakout season in 2018, Wickersham was a bit more muted on the idea of ambidextrous quarterbacks being the next league trend at the position.
“I don’t being a quarterback will have to be ambidextrous because I think that, like, quarterbacks are throwing better on the run than they ever have. I mean, what made John Elway and Steve Young so special, you know, is that they could throw on the run as well as they could throw from the pocket. And now, you know, that’s kind of a requirement.”
“I think that, like, the interesting thing will be, you know, what’s the next physical evolution of a quarterback? Does a guy who looks like Wemby [NBA Center Victor Wembanyama] end up playing quarterback? Does someone who looks like Shaq[uille O’Neal] end up playing quarterback.
“I think that the chances are greater that we’ll have some sort of unforeseen physical specimen than playing the quarterback position, rather than an ambidextrous quarterback.”
Indeed, perhaps the NFL could see an ambidextrous, seven-foot quarterback take the field at some point in the future.
“Hopefully I’m retired by then and I don’t have to try to make sense of that.”
Seth Wickersham’s new book, Be on That Hill: Stories from the Summits of Sport is available now.
Exclusive: Seth Wickersham Discusses Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady, Sean Payton’s Unusual Ritual, Ambidextrous QBs