At the annual conference of the Professional Baseball Athletic Trainers Society late last week in Glendale, Ariz., KT Tape’s brand marketing manager, Jacki Cassady, was working a convention booth when she was approached by a doctor with some questions on how the company’s kinesiology tape might help a very specific abrasion in a very particular area of the hand near the thumb.
Cassady does not recall the doctor’s name, nor did the mystery doctor reveal that of his patient, except to say he worked with trainers of a few NFL teams, including the New England Patriots. Cassady demonstrated an application of the company’s mobility-providing supportive tape while the doctor’s assistant took photographs.
As he left the booth, the doctor said to Cassady, “Watch the games on Sunday, and see if you see your product.”
Sure enough, unmistakably on Sunday afternoon, the base of the suddenly infamous thumb of football’s most famous quarterback — Patriots superstar Tom Brady — bore the specific design of KT Tape covering up the reported 12 stitches he received after a fluke accident at practice last Wednesday. (The tape has a helix design on the back, and certain shots of the underside of Brady’s right hand show the company’s KT logo.)
Tom Brady had 12 stitches in his throwing hand, per @AdamSchefter. pic.twitter.com/QtgGh9tc9s
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) January 22, 2018
With the tape adorning his hand, Brady threw for 290 yards and two touchdowns while leading his team on a 10-point fourth-quarter comeback for his record eighth Super Bowl appearance. Cassady said she recognized “that very specific use of the tape on Tom Brady because that’s not a normal application.” The Patriots have not discussed specifics of Brady’s treatment (and a team spokesman did not immediately reply to a request for comment), but KT Tape said the product would be designed to cover the stitches to keep them in place while helping the thumb joint from hyperextending.
Brady said in his weekly WEEI interview on Monday that he wasn’t immediately sure after the injury (occurring during an otherwise benign handoff) whether he’d be able to play, noting that he was lucky not to tear a ligament or break a bone. After the game, he said, “I never had anything like it. I’ve had a couple of crazy injuries, but this was pretty crazy. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do.”
Close-up view of #Patriots quarterback #TomBrady tape- covered right hand before the #AFCchampionship. #JAXveNE pic.twitter.com/IntYb7hX7v
— WCVB-TV Boston (@WCVB) January 21, 2018
This was all set in motion by a an unusual sequence of events, beginning of all places in Glendale — site of notorious (in New England) Super Bowl XLII, where the Patriots’ undefeated 18-0 season ended with a loss to the New York Giants.
When Cassady spoke with the doctor last week, she shared the business card of KT Tape’s vice president of sales, Ed Terris, who received the name of an athletic trainer and a shipping address: 1 Patriot Place. As if the Glendale connection weren’t enough, Terris was in Philadelphia of all places — home to the Eagles, the Patriots’ Super Bowl opponent in two weeks — at a soccer coaches convention, so he returned to his hotel room and overnighted the black KT Tape Pro Extreme to Foxborough, Mass., last Friday for delivery on Saturday. No one at KT Tape was completely sure of its intended use, if at all, until Brady appeared on camera Sunday afternoon.
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While kinesiology tape was first invented in Japan in the 1970s, the product didn’t reach the mainstream until the 2008 Summer Olympics when U.S. beach volleyball player Kerri Walsh, among other Olympians, wore tape. At the time, most kinesiology tape required application from medical professionals, prompting the team that would found KT Tape to ask, “Why not have a product that is consumer-facing?” Marketing VP Taylor West now says KT Tape owns 80 percent of the retail market share.
Normal athletic tape is stiff, West said, “If you were to put that on your hand, you would have restricted mobility whereas this tape is elastic and moves with the body but still provides — because of the elasticity and the sticking power — some support.”
Terris sent two products to Gillette Stadium, both the tape and also a blister treatment that’s like a bandage that can cover a wound (or a stitch) before the tape is applied. It’s unclear if Brady wore that as well because only the tape is visible.
And, for now, it remains unclear who the doctor was that turned the baseball conference demonstration into an aid for Brady some 2,700 miles and only a few days away.
“We’ll get to the bottom of it,” Cassady said, before adding with a laugh. “We just don’t have his name right now.”