Brushing up on the QB? Not Pierre-Paul
Jason Pierre-Paul has never watched a Super Bowl and isn't concerned with Tom Brady's success in the game. (Dec. 18, 2011) Credit: David Pokress
If he wasn't playing against him in the Super Bowl in a little more than a week, there's a good chance that Jason Pierre-Paul would be the one person in America who never heard of Tom Brady.
Pierre-Paul has never watched a Super Bowl, hardly ever set eyes on a football game of any kind while growing up. He therefore has no point of reference for a quarterback who is revered by most of the rest of the NFL and one day will settle onto a comfy pedestal in Canton.
"Everybody likes Brady, he's a great quarterback," Pierre-Paul said Thursday, summing up the extent of his familiarity, which might as well have come from a Wikipedia page. "He's done many things in this league. He went to the Super Bowl a couple times."
Yeah, a couple.
If ignorance is bliss, Pierre-Paul will be the happiest guy on the field in Super Bowl XLVI. It's not that he's not bright; he's just not interested in football as a cultural or sports cornerstone. He knows only what his coaches put in front of him on the tape that he studies and the plays that are called.
Against three-time Super Bowl champion Brady, perhaps that's an advantage. While nearly everyone in America knows Brady's story -- sixth-round pick, overlooked out of Michigan, supermodel wife, trio of rings -- Pierre-Paul does not concern himself with any of it.
"I don't really look into all of that," he said of Brady's lofty place in football lore. "When it's time for me to play, I play. I show up. Me not being a football fan, I don't think that's got anything to do with it. Me not knowing anything about my opponents is a great thing. I just play."
That doesn't mean he's without opinions. He played against the Patriots in the regular season, so he has some thoughts on their offensive line.
"As I look at them on film now, they're a great offensive line, but every offensive line can be beat," he said. "We're just gonna get after them."
And Brady?
"A quarterback is a quarterback," he said. "They might have speed, they might be great at throwing the ball and all of that, but at the end of the day, it's going to start up front with the D-line and the offensive linemen."
Pierre-Paul's distance from football has been well documented. He started playing the sport only when he was nearly dragged onto the field by his high school coach. After two years in junior college, he played only a handful of games during one season at South Florida before becoming the Giants' first-round pick in the 2010 draft.
This season he was named to the Pro Bowl, an honor that he blithely accepted by saying: "I don't really understand the whole Pro Bowl thing, but it means a lot. It means I'm doing good."
Pierre-Paul does understand the whole Super Bowl thing. A little.
"All I know is it's going to be a great Super Bowl,'' he said, "and only one team can win."
Really, what else is there?
