Over the course of his illustrious 23-season Hall of Fame career, Tom Brady was sacked a whopping 565 times. However, some of the hardest hits he’s ever faced actually came 3,000 miles from the Foxborough gridiron last night in California.
As part of the ongoing Netflix Is a Joke Fest in Los Angeles, a sold-out crowd filled Inglewood’s Kia Forum on Sunday (May 5) for a brand new dose of some “showtime”-level intensity in the form of The Greatest Roast of All-Time, or the G.R.O.A.T, which took Pro Bowl-worthy aim at the iconic Patriots quarterback. The roast aired live and unedited on Netflix last night before hitting the streaming platform for repeated viewing.
Led by host Kevin Hart, one side of the three-hour, star-studded bludgeoning’s dais featured a seemingly neverending freight train of untethered jabs from a slew of Brady’s former teammates and contemporaries — including Drew Bledsoe, Randy Moss, Rob Gronkowski, Julian Edelman, and Peyton Manning — as well as two massive visits paid by former Patriots head coach Bill Belichick and longtime owner Robert Kraft.
The other side of the stage was occupied by some of the hardest-hitting names in comedy, as Jeff Ross, Nikki Glaser, Tony Hinchcliffe, Andrew Schulz, Bert Kreischer and Tom Segura all took their own expertly-crafted liberties with the three-time NFL MVP. Picking apart every aspect of his public and personal life, from his recent divorce with Gisele Bündchen and his relationships with Kraft, Belichick and his trainer Alex Guerrero, to the TB12 brand and his Super Bowl losses to Eli Manning, nearly every single topic under the sun was fair game — or at least we thought, until Ross made a quip about Kraft and his highly publicized massage parlor visits, which Brady snuffed out with the quickness by warning Ross “don’t say that shit again.”
Aside from that singular tense moment, playful dirt was flung from all directions all night, starting with Bledsoe as he relentlessly chided Brady and Belichick for replacing him in 2001 as he sipped on a glass of wine, and continuing through the dais, with major highlights coming from Glaser, Hinchcliffe, Will Ferrell as Ron Burgundy, Sam Jay, and Edelman standing out among the rest before Brady did the most “Brady” thing ever, and fended off his brutal assailants with a last-minute scorching set of his own to close the night out. There was some real “28 to 3” energy brewing all night, even through Dana White, Ben Affleck, and Kim Kardashian throwing their two cents in, and although his expressions varied as each increasingly intoxicated roaster made their way to the podium, Brady seemed to handle it like the seven-time champion he is by showing everyone that he too has some gasp-worthy jokes about Aaron Hernandez at the ready.
Perhaps it wasn’t the Patriots “Mount Rushmore” kind of reunion we’d imagined would take place after all these years, especially after the premiere of The Dynasty on Apple TV, and judging by the look on his face most of the night, it may not have been what Brady expected either. But even as lifelong defenders of the GOAT, you have to admit it was pretty great watching him squirm a bit amongst the dick jokes and shattered shit glasses.