November 14th, 2004. Scientists claim to discover the location of Atlantis. Mean Girls is over six months old. And the New England Patriots crush the Buffalo Bills 29-6 in Week 10 of the regular season. But just as New England was gearing up for their third Super Bowl appearance in four years, something else was afoot.
Today we chronicle how Tom Brady evolved from a “Smooth Criminal” to a “Goofy Goober”.
See, three years before, at a little known event known as the “Bubble Bowl", SpongeBob SquarePants achieved universal acclaim with the smash hit song “Sweet Victory". Just weeks after the performance did a Mr. Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr. take over as starting quarterback for the New England Patriots and lead the team to its first Super Bowl.
Fast forward to November 14th, 2004: SpongeBob was back. This time bigger than ever with the release of the SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. In short, it’s a film about SpongeBob defeating Plankton and saving Bikini Bottom through the power of rock ‘n roll. The most iconic scene in the film featured SpongeBob performing the anthem “Goofy Goober Rock Song” (A spoof of Twisted Sister’s “I Wanna Rock”) as he beamed off Plankton’s mind control devices from the heads of Bikini Bottom’s captive residents — while slaying an epic guitar solo.
And like SpongeBob, 2004 became the year that Tom Brady cemented his status as a Goofy Goober. During the 2004–05 season, Brady threw for career highs at that point in yards per attempt (7.6), Rating (92.6), and topped the season with a Super Bowl victory against the Philadelphia Eagles.
In fact, seventeen years later Nickelodeon put Tom Brady’s status as a Goofy Goober on a pedestal with their own presentation of his dominating performance in Super Bowl 55.
As Patrick Mahomes commented after the game (or was it Plankton?):
His chops are too righteous. The helmets can’t handle this level of rock and roll!
