The Biggest Misconception in Football (ft. Tom Brady)

This is Tom Brady. He's the greatest American football quarterback of all time. Holy sh Can you hear it go by you? Yeah.

Scary. He's won seven Super Bowls and has thrown the most touchdown passes in history. Oh, that one hurt the chest. I heard that right in the chest.

I'm like glad I'm not catching those. Every quarterback takes pride in their ability to throw a tight spiral. The tighter the spiral you throw means the more control you have of the football. We analyzed his throw in detail.

Have people shot you in really slow motion for the release and everything? Never. And discovered something surprising. Even Tom Brady can't throw a perfect spiral.

Just look said on his deep passes. No matter how hard he tries to spin the ball cleanly around its long axis, if you look closely enough, you'll notice this little wobble. Not only that, there's a slight drift to the ball, which means even Tom Brady can't throw straight. Virtually all his long passes curve to the right.

But these aren't mistakes. They're actually fundamental to the physics of throwing a football accurately. To find out why, we ran a full computational fluid dynamics analysis, tested spinning balls in a wind tunnel, and even embedded sensors in real footballs. That's crazy.

Now, admittedly, who are we to tell Tom Brady anything about football? I've never really played much football. I grew up in Canada. I'd be much happier to be playing hockey.

Like, why can't I throw at all? That is so rough. Okay. Well, he'll walk you through it.

I'm not going to bother doing it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Try to do this. Overexaggerate the tilt. So, instead of standing straight up, lean forward.

Lean like you're almost like a short stop, right? Yeah. And like you're falling over and then you're just here like that. Good catch.

So lean over a little bit. I'm like not ready for it. So get down like a short stop. Even more.

Even more. Yeah. Now throw it sidearm. I feel like this is weird.

There you go. That was a better throw. That is a better throw. It was really good.

What's the key to throwing like a really tight spiral? The key to me is first of all, you got to have very light grip pressure on the football. I learned ...