This week, Tom Brady made his ̶c̶o̶u̶r̶t̶-̶o̶r̶d̶e̶r̶e̶d̶ contractually-obligated call-in to Boston radio station WEEI for his scheduled appearance on the show Kirk & Callahan.

Kirk Minihane, one of the show’s hosts, brought up the rumors that Brady’s personal trainer Alex Guerrero had once again been travelling with the Patriots after being barred from team travel last season.

Brady confirmed that it was in fact true that Guerrero had been flying with the team.

“Yeah, we was with me this past week. Yeah,” Brady said.

Being an inquisitive radio host and trying to dig for the truth, Minihane followed up by asking a couple of questions including why the situation had changed from last season to now, as well as whether or not Guerrero was on the sideline in the Patriots’ preseason game against the Carolina Panthers.

“Yeah. All right, guys. Have a great day. I’ll talk to you later,” Brady responded.

And then he hung up.

Essentially, Brady pulled the adult version of turning off the Xbox when you’re losing, taking your ball and going home, or sticking his fingers in his ears and yelling, “I can’t hear you!”

And of course, it’s not the first time Brady has cut his press time short when asked some questions he didn’t want to answer regarding Alex Guerrero.

There was that one time earlier in camp when he said “I have no comment. It’s just ridiculous. I’m out” and exited his dais atop the Boston media after receiving one Guerrero question.

All the secrecy, all the evasion, and of all the shadiness begs the question: What are you hiding, Tom Brady?

It’s been well documented that Guerrero is nothing more than a snake oil salesman, profiting off of Brady’s name and the ridiculous claims and complete fabrications like that tomatoes are bad for you, contradicting human knowledge dating back to the year 700 A.D.

Here’s what we know about Alex Guerrero, who has known Brady since the torn ACL in 2008, and his qualifications: He’s 52 years old and he has a degree in traditional Chinese medicine from Samra University of Oriental Medicine in Los Angeles.

Let’s go ahead and check up on the ol’ alma mater.

Right, so in taking one quick trip to their website you’ll see that it’s not actually a university anymore. Not a great sign.

I looked at the California Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education’s website to see why Samra was denied accreditation. The reasons listed for denial were as follows:

“Organization and Management/Administration, Education Quality, Financial Stability, and Qualified Faculty.”

And, sure enough, out in the real world, Guerrero has been sued twice for fraud. Which as you might know, is kind of a serious charge in the medical community.

Here’s what Boston Magazine wrote in 2015 about Guerrero’s serious legal entanglements with the Federal Trade Commission:

“As we revealed last week, Guerrero had two run-ins with the FTC. The agency sued Guerrero for making false claims about a nutritional supplement called Supreme Greens; investigators found that an informercial about Supreme Greens— in which Guerrero was consistently referred to as a doctor— falsely claimed Guerrero had conducted a 200-patient study, and had misled consumers into thinking that the product could cure ailments such as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. As a result, the FTC fined Guerrero $65,000 and barred him from ever claiming that he was a doctor or from making unsubstantiated medical claims regarding any food, drug, or dietary supplement. The FTC also required Guerrero, for a period of five years starting in July 2005, to disclose the agency’s enforcement decree to any future business partners in ventures for which Guerrero was a majority stake holder.”

The FTC also got on Guerrero’s tail after Brady and former Pats wide receiver Wes Welker gave statements supporting one of Guerrero’s products called NeuroSafe, which was marketed as being able to prevent and expedite recovery from concussions.

“NeuroSafe makes me feel comfortable that if I get a concussion I can recover faster and more fully. There is no other solution on the market today that can do what NeuroSafe does. It’s that extra level of protection that gives me comfort when I’m out on the field,” Brady said about the product in 2011.

Sure enough, the FTC investigated NeuroSafe and forced Guerrero via settlement to stop marketing the product and issue refunds to anyone who had purchased it.

This is really just a long way of saying that Guerrero, a quack, learned a quack curriculum from other board-certified quacks who were unfit for academia. And this is the mastermind behind the TB12 Method, which in book form quickly shot its way up to number one spot on Amazon.

Some of the tips from the TB12 method are pretty intuitive — don’t eat fast food, blah blah blah, eat lean proteins and plants, don’t drink alcohol, whatever. But some of the tips are real head-scratchers.

Such as:

Drink “at least one-half of your body weight in ounces of water every day.”

Don’t do that. That could create a sodium deficiency in your blood and actually kill you!

Don’t eat tomatoes, peppers, or eggplants because they cause inflammation.

Wrong, they’re actually anti-inflammatory.

Don’t eat fruits.

Yeah, no. Fruits consumed as a whole and not in juice are good for you.

Only eat Himalayan pink salt.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. NaCl is NaCl regardless of what color it is.

Don’t drink coffee.

Brady himself said he’s never even tried coffee. Fucking weird if nothing else.

That’s how the story goes. Brady and Guerrero either tell you what everyone already knows or they make up some bullshit claims based on pseudo-science and justify it with “Well, Brady is 41 and he’s still playing football so it must be true!”

No! It’s not! That’s bullshit!

I’ll tell you why Brady is 41 and still playing. It’s not exactly a secret if you just watch the games. It’s because he’s had a great offensive line combined with an offensive system that prioritizes short throws which ensure the quarterback is rarely hit. That’s why. It’s not because he doesn’t eat peppers or drink coffee.

And yes, he does stay in very good shape. But so can you — without the help of the TB12 Method.

Finally, there’s the question of what these guys are doing that doesn’t make it into the book.

Pats wide receiver Julian Edelman, who also sought the treatment of confirmed fake doctor Alex Guerrero, was suspended for the first four games of the 2018 season after testing positive for a banned substance.

Via Tom Curran of NBC Sports Boston, Guerrero issued a statement saying:

“I’ve known Julian since his rookie year and he is a phenomenal athlete who takes his training seriously — it’s disappointing to hear today’s news,’’ Guerrero said in the statement. “Elite athletes sometimes work with multiple coaches and health professionals as part of their training.

“Here at our facility, we take a natural, holistic, appropriate and, above all, legal approach to training and recovery for all of our clients. And anyone who would suggest otherwise is irresponsible, and just plain wrong.”

Edelman was rehabbing from a torn ACL suffered in the 2017 preseason, the same injury that initiated contact between Brady and Guerrero in 2008.

All of this preempted the aforementioned July press conference when Brady skirted a question regarding the link between Edelman’s suspension and Guerrero’s treatment with the simple “I’m out.”

And then again, when he hung up on WEEI.

It all points to something. We may not know now, and we may not know as long as Brady is still playing, but there’s something to all of this that’s greater than the parts we’ve already discovered.

Patriots fans and apologists will go on and on about the media’s mission to bring down Brady and the Patriots out of jealousy, as if nothing has been rooted in substance.

To this point, it’s all substance, unlike anything Alex Guerrero and Tom Brady have been championing for the past decade.

I’ll ask again, and I’ll keep asking until there’s an answer. What is Tom Brady hiding?