There's something about Tom Brady that's a little annoying. He's talented and good-looking and all, but not all the parts come together to make a whole. In a recent Globe piece, Wesley Morris pinned down the problem with Brady by comparing him to his archrival, Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning.

Morris writes, "As Brady has racked up championships and magazine covers, Manning seems to have won something that eludes Brady: The rest of the country. A Southern friend who recently moved here put it to me rather heartlessly: 'You guys build your shrine to Tom Brady. But America loves Peyton Manning.'"

It's a pretty bold statement to argue that the heartland loves Manning and has forgotten that Manning is essentially the child of a classic stage parent (former football hero Archie Manning). But Morris is right in that Brady possesses an impenetrable glossiness, a Ken-Doll aura that people can't latch on to unless they're watching him on the gridiron.

Bostonist might have a solution to ice-king Brady's problem--why don't he and Manning get it over with and star in a commercial together? Brady gets humanized, Manning gets classed up, sponsors make piles of cash, and everybody's happy.

Brady and Manning bobblehead images from Amazon. Bostonist is into bobbleheads lately.