Brady justifies big cheers with razor-sharp performance

FOXBOROUGH — From the start, there was no question as to who the star of the show was at training camp Thursday morning.

As soon as quarterback Tom Brady hit the top step, there were big cheers. The crowd gave him a standing ovation. Every connection with a receiver brought more cheers, and chants of “BRA-DY! BRA-DY! BRA-DY!”

“Every single year it gets louder and louder,” said teammate Rob Gronkowski, when asked about the welcome the crowd gave the quarterback. “It’s Tom. If I was in the stands, too, I’d be up on my feet cheering for him.

“What he’s done for this organization, for all the fans, all the football he keeps playing, it’s just unbelievable. I think every time he gets out on the field, he deserves a standing ovation. I would be one of them in the crowd doing it too.”

At one point, Brady completed 14 straight passes in the closest thing to real action that you’ll see at this stage of the summer. He zipped them to Gronkowski, Julian Edelman, Malcolm Mitchell and Brandin Cooks.

The veteran was feeling so good that midway through practice, after completing a deep passing drill with many of the guys who will form the foundation of the New England passing game, he ran up to Mitchell and the two hopped into each other, bumping shoulders and celebrating the razor-sharp level of execution. For the soon-to-be 40-year-old, it was just the latest sign he was feeling fresh as lettuce at the start of another camp.

Maybe it was just the opportunity to get back to football. Maybe it’s the excitement about the chance to work with a group that has a chance to be the best and most well-rounded group of pass-catchers he’s had since 2007. And maybe it was because the uncertainty of last summer is a thing of the past: This time last year, the Patriots were forced to have to get two quarterbacks ready for the regular season because of You Know What. Now, Brady is back to being the default leader.

“Last year, we were in a different situation, so that was what it was,” explained Bill Belichick when asked about prepping Brady to play all 16 regular-season games this year as opposed to last summer. “This year, we’re not in that situation.”

Regardless, it was undeniable that there was an extra spring in his step Thursday morning as he returned to the playing field. The session, which ran for just over two hours, was the first of the summer for the veteran and the defending champions, who will continue to ramp things up over the next few days. The first padded practice of the summer comes Saturday, and shortly after that, the Jaguars will come to town for joint practices in advance of their preseason opener on Aug. 10.

“It’s a short training camp relative to — not last year, but relative to other years in my career,” Belichick said, when asked about the difference in dividing quarterback reps this year as opposed to last year. “We only have a handful of practices before we go up against Jacksonville and then Houston and then Detroit, and then we’re pretty much into the regular season.

“So, honestly, there’s probably not enough reps for the quarterbacks,” he added. “We could give them more, but we only have what we have, so we use the ones that we have the best that we can. I think it will be a challenge to get all three of them as ready as we’d like them to be — or they’d like to be — but we’ll do the best we can.”

It’s important to take all of this with a grain of salt: Yes, backup Jimmy Garoppolo took plenty of snaps. Yes, it was the first day of practice. And yes, the pads don’t go on until the weekend.

But on Thursday morning, the star of the show ended up justifying the standing ovation with a rousing opening act, one that will undoubtedly set the stage for another compelling 2017 season in New England.