Tom Brady sure gave me a Christmas present by making this week’s TB Times pretty straightforward, because I have to be at my cousins’ house for Christmas Eve dinner in about 15 minutes. This week’s Instagram is reminiscent of last year and the simpler days of Brady content, when the Prince of Foxborough used to just slap up a joke related to the team the Patriots beat and call it a dang day.
Merry Christmas, I got you a new, weird social media post from Tom Brady’s fake newspaper
Croc doesn’t seem to be anywhere, but upon closer inspection, I think he’s in plain sight.
The Dec. 24 edition that Brady (and his Social Media Guy and the Cartoon Artist Simply Known As D.K.) graced us with is appropriately Christmas-y. And that’s really all this single panel is, besides being a real departure from the narrative of Brady’s multi-framed comics.
Check it out:
If you’re new to this journey, you’re a) probably confused, b) more sane than I am, and c) need to know that Croc (or Krock, if the HTML of Tom Brady’s fake newspaper’s website refers to him) is a mysterious crocodile that has appeared in various disguises in each TB Times post up until now.
If you have been tumbling down this bizarre rabbit hole with me for the past few months, your first question is probably: WHERE IS CROC?
I was initially as confused as you are. I first checked to see if he was peeking out from behind either of the reindeer, who look both terrified and terrifying, but he isn’t. He also isn’t anywhere near the bucking buffalo (Buffalo Bills, get it?) that’s dressed up as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and that Brady seems to be urging Santa to strangle.
For a minute, I thought maybe Croc was depicted on the side of the sleigh, but that’s just some boughs of holly. I also looked in the formations of the falling flakes, because in the comic after the Pats beat the Broncos, Croc was hidden in a snowdrift.
And then it hit me, and I zoomed in on the moon. And there he is:
At least I think he is. There’s a good chance I’m delusional and these shadowy lines are not meant to represent a crocodile. At this point, I don’t even know what’s happening anymore. What I do know is that none of the other TB Times cast of characters is present. I can’t find Bill Hader, Billy Crystal, the dolphin that leads a fidget-spinning smuggling business, Gronk, the narwhal, Chuck Norris, or Bill Belichick anywhere. The one thing I do think we can take away from this picture is that it fits the space theme, if Croc really is in the moon. Some of the comics have taken place outside of earth’s atmosphere, and that’s the one connective thread I can pull at.
And, honestly? Besides the fact that the animals look like they’re about to die, I’m mostly cool with the simplicity. My only gripe is that there was a really great opportunity to make Santa Bill Belichick, and it’s a bit upsetting they didn’t take it. I’d love to have seen Bill in a Santa suit with the sleeves cut off, wearing a headset as he barks at the reindeer about what routes to take. The TB12 team also could’ve made Santa Rex Ryan, as a sort of throw back to the Bills’ 2016 season. But hey, I’m not a doctor.
A few readers emailed me after last week’s deep dive with some spectacular theories about how the narrative of these comics might not necessarily be in chronological order. One guy in particular had a really dynamite guess as to what’s going on, but I’m going to save it for the next time our story picks up, because I want to see what they throw at us next before I put any more hypotheses out there. And also because I’m now late for dinner.
In closing, let me just say that I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas, if you celebrate it, and a wonderful random Monday, if you don’t. Here’s hoping that the next edition of the TB Times leaves us way more clues than this one.
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