About

Sad Tom Brady refers to an image of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady seated on a bench with his head down, which was widely circulated online prior to his team's comeback victory during Super Bowl 51 held in early February 2017.

Origin

During Super Bowl 51 on February 5th, 2017, Brady was filmed with his head down on a bench while his team was down 20-0 against the Atlanta Falcons during a FOX broadcast of the event. Immediately after, the Sports Illustrated Twitter feed immediately posted the clip of Brady with the caption "Tom Brady is sad" (shown below). Within 24 hours, the tweet gained over 3,700 likes and 1,900 retweets.

Spread

Shortly after, other Twitter users began reposting the photo and mocking Brady's defeated-looking posture, many of which referenced the DeflateGate controversy (shown below).

Meanwhile, Redditor Shadowfacts985 submitted a post to /r/memeeconomy^[2] speculating that "Sad Tom Brady memes are gonna be yuge." That evening, several news sites published articles about the Brady image, including BuzzFeed,^[5] Refinery 29^[6] and Hollywood Life.^[1] In a startling upset, the Patriots rallied back to win the game after being behind 25-points, leading Twitter user @DJWinek^[3] to tweet the Brady image with the caption "Shortest-Lived Meme / In Meme History" (shown below).

Search Interest

External References