Mike Celizic

He smiles so easily and has that aw-shucks thing down so well you want to take a core sample of his brain to see what’s really going on inside the remarkable head of Tom Brady.

“I throw a football, and happen to do it good enough to get here,” Brady says, trying to explain to the biggest media mob he, or anyone has ever seen. He gives the impression that three Super Bowl rings in three tries aren’t a big deal — and maybe by his standards they’re not.

He says it in a way that makes it clear he understands that he was born with this skill, the same way some people are born with a skill for cabinet making or teaching. He wants you to think it doesn’t make him a special person or a paragon of virtue, and he’s right about all of it. The trouble is, we happen to be obsessed about the skill he has, and so we want to know everything about him, as if that will somehow make his singular talent understandable.

It could be annoying, and is to many stars, no matter what their chosen line of work is. And Brady admits that there are things he can’t do and places he can’t go because of all the attention he draws.

But he doesn’t complain about it, not even a tiny little bit. “We’re all blessed to have the opportunity to live out childhood dreams,” he says. “To expect that I can walk downtown and hang out on Newbury Street won’t happen, so I accept it. You’ve gotta accept what comes along with all the great stuff.”

We all know what the great stuff is — the supermodel girlfriend, the adulation, the money, the friendship of movers and shakers, going through life without ever finding a door that’s locked for you.

He’s as unflappable in public as he is on the football field, his eyes focused on what’s in front of him, his mind finding the right answer with no apparent effort. He is a man who is comfortable in his own skin the way Michael Jordan always was, the way Derek Jeter is, the way Tiger Woods is, the way so many of the great ones are.

The only time he goes on the defensive is when people start telling him that he’s going straight to the Hall of Fame and asking him about those who say he’s the best to ever play quarterback in the National Football League.

He rattles off a list of great quarterbacks — Joe Montana, Steve Young, John Elway, Terry Bradshaw, Dan Marino, Brett Favre — and says, “They’re in a league of their own.”

He’s just 30 years old and in only his eighth year in the league and seventh as a starter. “I got a long way to go,” he says. “I got a lot of playing left. I’m not done.”

And do we want to know what’s the greatest thing his accomplishments have done for him? It’s the opportunities they’ve given him to meet his heroes and talk shop as equals with the game’s pantheon of passers.

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He’s also, he says, not as good as he can be. “Hopefully, my skills will continue to improve,” he says, a statement that has to send shivers down the spines of defensive coordinators from New York to Seattle. He’s just come off the most prolific season in the history of the game, and he says he’s still learning the game?

That is really his secret, his own conviction that he can still get better and his willingness to work his tail off to do it. He’s a voracious student of game films, and, after seven years playing the same system under the same head coach, he knows it inside and out. On the field, no one understands what the defense is going to do better than he.

What opposing defenders find remarkable about him is that he’s not swift of foot, yet he has an uncanny ability to slide away from pressure in the pocket and create the little bit of extra time he needs to complete his passes. He’s proof that you don’t have to be fast to be elusive.

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You won’t find anyone who’ll say a bad word about him — except maybe his former girlfriend, actress Bridget Moynahan, who he split up with after she got pregnant and had his child. Some, like New York Giant defensive end Michael Strahan, who’s got a pretty good life himself, comes right out and says it: “I want to be Tom Brady.”

One reporter asked him, “how do you feel about being the stud of the NFL?”

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He repeats the question, screwing up his face. “I don’t think of myself like that,” he finally replies.

Brady is the first to admit he’s not perfect, and he doesn’t argue with the tabloid stories that try to sensationalize his life. He attributes his attitude to his parents, Tom and Galynn Brady, who taught him that he has to accept the negative things in life along with all the positives.

“I just love playing football, and whatever comes along with that is okay. I wouldn’t trade places with too many people,” he concludes. “I like what I’m doing.”

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