# Touchdown Tom > Touchdown Tom is a 2013 running joke by SB Nation's Jon Bois celebrating NFL quarterback Tom Brady's improbable comebacks, built on never counting him out—a theme that reached peak absurdity during Super Bowl LI. "Touchdown Tom" is a nickname and running joke for NFL quarterback Tom Brady, coined by SB Nation writer Jon Bois in November 2013. Built around two simple ideas (Brady's nickname should be "Touchdown Tom" and you should never count out Touchdown Tom), the bit took on a life of its own when Brady kept staging improbable comebacks every time Bois tweeted about it. The joke became the backbone of three legendary "Breaking Madden" episodes and reached peak absurdity during Super Bowl LI in 2017, when even Bois himself briefly counted Tom out before the most famous comeback in NFL history proved the meme right one last time. ## Origin SB Nation sports blogger Jon Bois started calling Tom Brady "Touchdown Tom" on Twitter in late November 2013, when the New England Patriots sat at 7-3 and Brady was posting the worst passer rating of his career at 83.6[1]. Bois later admitted he had no real explanation for why he picked that moment or that player. "I didn't really like him any more or less than the next player," he wrote[1]. The earliest known usage appeared on November 4, 2013[4]. Bois pushed two specific messages on Twitter: that Brady's nickname should be "Touchdown Tom," and that you should never count him out[1]. The nickname was intentionally banal. As Bois later explained, "it's alliterative" and "it's a title so generic that even American pop culture wouldn't give him that nickname, because it's too obnoxious and stupid"[3]. - **Platform:** Twitter (coinage), SB Nation (spread via Breaking Madden series) - **Creator:** Jon Bois (SB Nation writer, coined the nickname and built the meme) - **Date:** 2013 ## Overview Touchdown Tom is a deliberately generic, aggressively alliterative nickname for Tom Brady that became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The core joke is simple: whenever Brady's team is losing, you declare that you should "never count out Touchdown Tom," and then Brady wins anyway. The humor comes from the nickname's extreme blandness (it describes literally nothing special about Brady that doesn't apply to every other quarterback who throws touchdowns) combined with the eerie, almost supernatural way that real NFL games kept vindicating the bit. The meme exists in two forms. On Twitter, it was a running gag where fans would invoke the phrase during Patriots games, especially when the team trailed. On SB Nation, it became the narrative engine for a trilogy of "Breaking Madden" episodes where Jon Bois filled entire NFL rosters with cloned Tom Bradys and staged impossibly rigged scenarios in the Madden video game. ## How It Spread The joke gained traction almost immediately because reality kept cooperating. The week Bois started tweeting the nickname, the Patriots faced the Denver Broncos and fell behind 24-0 by halftime. Bois kept tweeting that you couldn't count out Touchdown Tom. Brady led a second-half comeback, and New England won in overtime[1]. The following week, Brady engineered another come-from-behind victory against the Houston Texans[1]. The week after that, the Cleveland Browns held a win probability above 99 percent near the end of the game before Brady threw two touchdowns in the final 61 seconds, aided by the Patriots' first successful onside kick in nearly 20 years[1]. On January 9, 2014, Bois published the first Touchdown Tom episode of his "Breaking Madden" series on SB Nation. He created 21 identical copies of Tom Brady in *Madden NFL 25*, replacing every offensive player on the Patriots roster. Brady threw to himself, handed off to himself, and blocked for himself[1]. The scenario was rigged for a dramatic comeback: the opposing Indianapolis Colts defense had maxed-out ratings in the first half, then Bois quit the game at halftime and dragged all their ratings to zero[1]. The article framed the entire experiment around the "never count out Touchdown Tom" narrative. The second installment, "Edge of Tom-orrow" (a riff on the Tom Cruise film), arrived on October 16, 2014. This time, Bois placed Brady at his own 1-yard line and attempted a quarterback sneak against the strongest possible defense, repeating the play hundreds of times until Brady scored a 99-yard touchdown[2]. The trilogy concluded on January 15, 2015, with Brady's clone army facing a Colts defense made up of 7-foot-tall, 400-pound superhuman players whose football awareness ratings were set to zero[3]. Bois recruited the defensive players from Twitter followers who shared stories of spectacular personal failures[3]. Every play ran without human input; Bois simply called the recommended play and put the controller down[3]. Three days later, on January 18, 2015, SB Nation writer Ryan Van Bibber referenced the nickname in his "Gen. Andrew Luck" series, writing dispatches in the voice of a Civil War general. After the Colts lost to the Patriots in the AFC Divisional round, Van Bibber's fictional Luck described Brady: "My counterpart, a wily veteran called Touchdown Tom by his men, was magnificent. He commands a formation with the will of Zeus"[6]. The meme's defining moment came on February 5, 2017, during Super Bowl LI. With the Atlanta Falcons leading 28-3, Jon Bois did the unthinkable: he officially counted out Touchdown Tom[4]. The Patriots then mounted the largest comeback in Super Bowl history, winning 34-28 in overtime. Bois was forced to rescind his doubts[4]. The game gave the meme its ultimate punchline. Even its creator couldn't resist counting Tom out, and he was wrong. ## How to Use The Touchdown Tom format is loose and mostly text-based. The standard usage goes like this: 1. The Patriots (or later, the Buccaneers) are losing a game, ideally by a large margin. 2. You post some variation of "Never count out Touchdown Tom" on social media. 3. Brady comes back and wins. 4. You nod knowingly. ## Cultural Impact Touchdown Tom rode the larger wave of Jon Bois' influence as one of the most distinctive sports writers on the internet. The Breaking Madden series drew massive readership to SB Nation, and the Touchdown Tom trilogy was its emotional center[3]. Bois described it as "the most annoying Twitter meme in history," which was both self-deprecating and accurate[1]. The meme fed into a broader sports media conversation about Brady's comeback ability. By Brady's own standards, his career statistics were staggering: seven Super Bowl victories, six with New England and one with Tampa Bay, along with records for career passing yards, completions, and touchdown passes[5]. The Touchdown Tom joke gave casual fans a framework for that legacy that was funnier and more accessible than any stat line. The Super Bowl LI incident in 2017 became the meme's canonical moment. Bois counting out his own creation, only to watch the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history unfold, gave the bit a narrative arc that most internet jokes never achieve[4]. It turned a deliberately stupid Twitter gag into something approaching sports mythology. ## Fun Facts - Bois recruited real Twitter followers to play the opposing team's defenders in every Breaking Madden episode. For the trilogy finale, he asked people to share stories of times they "really, really fucked up" as their application[3]. - In the first Touchdown Tom episode, Bois noted that Brady's Madden kicking power rating was so bad that his clone army had essentially no chance of making field goals[1]. - Before becoming the greatest quarterback in NFL history, Brady was drafted 199th overall in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL Draft, making him one of the biggest draft steals ever[5]. - The Montreal Expos drafted Brady as a baseball catcher in the 18th round of the 1995 MLB draft, projecting him as a potential All-Star[5]. - In the Breaking Madden trilogy conclusion, Bois set everything to autopilot. "At no moment in these GIFs did I actually take control of any player. I just called whichever play Madden recommended, put the controller down, and watched it happen"[3]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Touchdown Tom? Touchdown Tom is an intentionally generic nickname for NFL quarterback Tom Brady, coined by SB Nation writer Jon Bois on Twitter in November 2013. It became a running joke centered on the idea that you should "never count out Touchdown Tom"[1]. ### Where did Touchdown Tom come from? Jon Bois started using the nickname on Twitter in late November 2013, with the earliest known instance dating to November 4, 2013. He later featured it prominently in his Breaking Madden series on SB Nation starting January 9, 2014[4][1]. ### What does Touchdown Tom mean? The nickname is used to invoke Tom Brady's pattern of staging improbable comebacks. Saying "never count out Touchdown Tom" became a mock-prophetic declaration that Brady's team would inevitably rally from behind to win[3]. ### How do you use Touchdown Tom? During a game where Brady's team is losing (the bigger the deficit, the better), post "never count out Touchdown Tom" on social media. If he wins, you claim credit. If he loses, you were being ironic[1]. ### Is Touchdown Tom still popular? Brady retired after the 2022 NFL season[5], so the meme no longer gets live-game usage. It lives on as a classic piece of sports internet history, primarily through the Breaking Madden archives[3]. ### Who created the Touchdown Tom nickname? Jon Bois, a sports writer and video creator at SB Nation, coined the nickname and admitted he couldn't fully explain why. "I didn't really like him any more or less than the next player," he wrote[1]. ### What was the Breaking Madden Touchdown Tom trilogy? Three episodes of Bois' Breaking Madden series featured Brady clone armies: the first replaced the entire Patriots offense with Brady copies, the second had Brady attempt 99-yard QB sneaks from the 1-yard line, and the third pitted Brady clones against 7-foot, 400-pound superhuman defenders[1][2][3]. ### What happened with Touchdown Tom during Super Bowl LI? On February 5, 2017, with the Falcons leading 28-3, Jon Bois officially counted out Touchdown Tom for the first and only time. The Patriots completed the largest Super Bowl comeback in history, winning in overtime, and Bois had to take it back[4]. ### Why is the nickname "Touchdown Tom" funny? The humor lies in how aggressively bland it is. As Bois explained, "it's a title so generic that even American pop culture wouldn't give him that nickname, because it's too obnoxious and stupid"[3]. ### How did real NFL games validate the Touchdown Tom meme? In the weeks after Bois coined the nickname, Brady led comebacks against the Broncos (from 24-0 down, won in OT), the Texans, and the Browns (two touchdowns in the final 61 seconds with a successful onside kick)[1]. ## References 1. [Breaking Madden: Never count out ‘Touchdown’ Tom Brady | SB Nation]() 2. [Breaking Madden: Edge of Tom-orrow | SB Nation]() 3. [Breaking Madden: The Touchdown Tom Trilogy concludes | SB Nation]() 4. [Touchdown Tom - Know Your Meme]() 5. [6-7 meme]() 6. [Tom Brady]() 7. [Gen. Andrew Luck’s final dispatch following the campaign in New England | SB Nation]() 8. [Breaking Madden: The Touchdown Tom Trilogy concludes | SB Nation]() 9. [Gen. Andrew Luck’s final dispatch following the campaign in New England | SB Nation]() 10. [Breaking Madden: Edge of Tom-orrow | SB Nation]() 11. [Breaking Madden: Never count out ‘Touchdown’ Tom Brady | SB Nation]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/touchdown-tom Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library