#I had a bunch of ideas for winter/cold themed posters but I also thought they were similar to one another. mostly cuddles and shit

[junker-town]

Tom Brady’s social media might not be as masterminded as I once thought

Some internet sleuthing leads to some interesting discoveries.

Happy New Year! Let’s start things off right in 2018: With a far-too-in-depth analysis of the latest edition of Tom Brady’s fake newspaper.

The Patriots beat the Jets yesterday in one of the more stupid games of football I’ve ever watched. The Jets were hopeless, the Patriots were definitely in the playoffs already (though they did clinch the No. 1 seed with yesterday’s win), it was approximately zero degrees in Foxboro, and the ground was as frozen as Bill Belichick’s heart when he trades away a beloved player.

Speaking of Belichick, I must interrupt myself for a moment to talk about how New England’s head coach had thermometers put up in the away team’s tunnel so the Jets would know exactly how cold it was as they waited to run out onto the field. Talk about psyching out your opponent: That is some Jedi Mind Trick stuff (am I using that phrase right? I haven’t seen Star Wars lol)! Belichick also casually strolled out onto the field before the game wearing only shorts and a tee-shirt, because when ice already runs through your veins, you can’t get frostbite.

Perhaps it’s because I’m a Patriots fan, but seeing those photos got me so amped up I wanted to go kick down a door. My ultimate pump-up song, it turns out, is less a song and more an image of a 65-year-old man being extremely foolish.

But back to the matter at hand: Brady’s latest cartoon. Here it is:

A post shared by Tom Brady (@tombrady) on Dec 31, 2017 at 1:15pm PST

On Christmas Eve, the TB Times gave us a straight-forward, Santa-themed image, and the New Year’s Eve cartoon is similarly simple. Each picture is only one panel as opposed to a comic strip, and both pertain to the holiday at hand. Here, you can see Brady near a “Happy New Year” banner in Patriots’ colors as he pins a 2018 calendar to the wall. He says, “Well I guess I’ll...see ya next year!” (which is a good dad joke, and also exactly what I said at 10:30 on New Year’s Eve before I went home and climbed into bed, because I am washed).

However, things get slightly more confusing when you look to Brady’s left (our right) and see a sad-looking man in a green shirt sitting at a table near a bunch of Jets paraphernalia. At first, I thought this guy might be a character from Office Space, because someone tweeted a picture of Bill Lumbergh at me and suggested that Brady is supposed to be Lumbergh:

It’s a good idea, especially since all the movies the TB Times has referenced feature actors named Bill (from the Patriots’ win against Buffalo) or are from the mid 2000s — the formative years of people now in their twenties who maybe work in sports social media.

But the reports that Lumbergh always asked for were of the TPS variety, not performance, as the whiteboard in this image says. And Brady is not wearing suspenders or a tie in the TB Times, nor is he holding a mug. Also, I’m not sure Lumbergh is someone you want to compare Tom Brady to.

However, where the Office Space theory really falls apart is when you look more closely at the Sad Jets Fan. He doesn’t bear resemblance to any of the actors in the movie.

This is because he isn’t one.

Yes, folks, through some serious internet sleuthing, I discovered that this Sad Jets Fan is a 20-something guy named Jeff who seems to know the people making these TB Times images. In an Instagram direct message, Jeff confirmed that it was him. When I asked why he was featured here, he simply said, “I guess because I’m a sad Jets fan who works in an office?” I then said, “That is a very legit reason ... is that the most you’re going to tell me?” And he stopped answering me.

Other sources close to the matter would neither confirm nor deny that including Jeff in this picture is a shout-out to someone they know. But more creeping around the internet leaves me pretty confident that it is.

With the Sad Jets Fan figured out, the second thing I wanted to know was, per usual: Where is Croc? Croc is the recurring reptile of many disguises who appears in every TB Times, even when you think he doesn’t. He was hidden in the snow in the the post after the Denver game, and in the moon (I think) in the Christmas image.

At first, I once again couldn’t find Croc anywhere in this one: I looked at the inspirational “teamwork” poster on the wall. No Croc. I zoomed in on the paperwork near Jeff. No Croc. I checked the calendar, the ceiling tiles, the water bubbler. No Croc.

And then my friend Jenny Vrentas, a writer at Sports Illustrated, told me she zoomed in on Tom Brady’s face and thought Croc might be depicted in his eyebrow hairs. I immediately followed suit.

Lo-and-behold, I think Jenny is right:

Jenny, thank you. I’m so glad the greater sportswriting community is becoming as invested in solving this mystery as I am. Your support means the world.

Last week, I told you that the narrative seems to have stalled out. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to have continued yet. We once again don’t have any recurring characters — such as the hot tub salesman from the first Jets cartoon — or many threads to pull at. I don’t know whether this was supposed to throw us off the trail, or give D.K. (the artist) and S.M.G. (Social Media Guy) a break from crafting intricate scenes over the holidays. Once we get back into the groove I’ll go into more depth as to the theory that perhaps the images haven’t been in chronological order. Until we get the next chapter I can’t be sure.

Honestly, though, at this point I can’t be sure of anything. This week’s inclusion of Jeff bummed me out, because it hinted that the creators of these comics are willing to use their social media and artistic power to put people they know in prominent positions in the images. Casually dropping someone you know into a TB Times image makes me wonder how considered this unfolding story really is. Perhaps the TB12 team really is just messing with all of us (read: me, mostly) and sending us (again: me, mostly) down rabbit holes we think lead somewhere when we (yup: me, mostly) are, in fact, just chasing our tails.

There has also, for what it’s worth, been no update to the website tbtimes.org, so I’m a little worried maybe they don’t know what they’re doing there, either.

If I were a betting woman, I’d put money on the theory that the TB Times will only come to a satisfying conclusion if the Pats win the Super Bowl. I’m starting to think the search for the architectural plans of a giant laser in a safe under the sea might end up leading to the Lombardi Trophy. That seems like something outrageously confident enough for Brady — or his social media team — to do.

In other news, you know how Instagram has an algorithm for the order in which it shows you people who look at your stories? The app knows to list followers you’ve been creeping on — or who you suspect have been creeping on you — in the order it thinks you care about them. This is because the robots are storing up valuable information to one day rise up and kill us all. I’m confident that the end will begin with an Instagram comment that simply says, “I am not a robot lol hahahaha yes I am BUCKLE UP YOU WEAK HUMAN NERDS!!!”

I’m telling you this because I check Tom Brady’s Instagram so often that when I hit the search tab, he pops up before I even type anything. He is my No. 1 most-viewed account. I’m pretty sure that if he ever looked at my Instagram story, my phone would implode in on itself out of Instagram excitement normally reserved for the most serious of crushes.

Anyway, here’s hoping the next TB Times post gives us more clues as to what’s going on here and who Croc could possibly be. Fingers crossed that we’re careening towards a story that makes sense. If we aren’t, and all of this turns out to mean absolutely nothing, I will march out onto the field at Gillette in a cut-off sweatshirt and cut-off sweatpants in the middle of winter to scream, “JIMMY GAROPPOLO’S FAKE NEWSPAPER’S CARTOONS WOULD’VE BEEN CONCLUSIVE!”