By Sophie Weller
Source masslive.com
]After clinching his seventh Super Bowl victory, but first with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Tom Brady took to the water in celebration. The team piled on boats, with the five-time Super Bowl MVP hoisting the Lombardi trophy on his own $2 million, 53-foot yacht.
But, where did the trophy end up after the parade?
A video of Brady throwing the Lombardi Trophy across the water to tight end Cameron Brate on another boat went viral, as did videos of him after the celebration, showing a stumbling but smiling quarterback.
Tampa Police Officer Chris Audet was driving the boat behind Brady’s during the parade and had a range of emotions while watching the trophy spin in midair over the water. Talking to The Athletic, Audet said it was an exciting thing to watch, but also a bit concerning. If the trophy ended up in the water, it would be his job to dive in after it.
“My first thought was, ‘That is absolutely epic. That is the most amazing thing,’” Audet said to The Athletic. “Simultaneously, I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, if this thing goes in the water, it’s going to be absolute chaos.’ It’d be the coolest thing in the world for me as a diver to go down and get it and come up with the Lombardi Trophy.”
After the incident, Brady claimed that the water around the Tampa Convention Center, where the parade was being held, went as far down as 80 feet. However, Audet explained that the depth of the river at that spot is only about 12-15 feet. However, the depth wasn’t the problem.
While a few yards might not seem too deep to retrieve the most famous trophy in the football world if needed, Audet did emphasize that visibility can be an issue.
“It’s brackish, it’s pitch black,” Audet said. “The bottom of the basin is all silted, so the trophy would have gone straight down and plugged. It wouldn’t have moved around. But the average swimmer, especially if you’ve been drinking, when it’s completely pitch black, is not going to have any sense of bearing. The concept of everybody jumping in, with boats and propellers, God knows where you come up at.”
Yet, Brady still went through with it. There was even video of his daughter yelling, “Dad, no!”
Buccaneers director of production Stephen Lynch had a front-row seat to the incident. He was the one who got the best view of the throw. Lynch told The Athletic that he thought Brady was joking around at first. But then he realized that the six-time Super Bowl champion was going through with it.
It turns out that Brady is cool under pressure, even while partying.
“If there’s anybody that you’re going to expect to understand the ergonomics of a Super Bowl trophy and the weight distribution and everything, of course it’s going to be the guy who’s held it the most,” Lynch to The Athletic. “After the fact, our boat is chuckling and I look at him, and I’m like, ‘You’re a madman, bro,’ and he’s like, ‘Ah, not really. Two things happen. Either Cam catches it, or you’ve got 10 drunk guys diving to the bottom of the river trying to get a trophy.’”
While the Lombardi Trophy made it out unscathed in this incident, former New England Patriots stars have had issues taking care of championship trophies. That was proven to be true when tight end Rob Gronkowski dented the team’s Super Bowl LIII trophy while using it as a bat during the team’s visit to Fenway Park.
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