It will not be easy for Josh Gordon to win the trust of Tom Brady

When Josh Gordon passes his physique and officially becomes a patriot, I'm sure he'll go into the locker room and take a firm handshake with direct eye contact with Tom Brady. It will be sincere.

That's all he can expect.

After that, Josh Gordon will be in the same boat as Corey Coleman, Chad Hansen and Bennie Fowler last week. The same boat as Cordarelle Patterson continues to bounce back. The same small canoe that dozens of receivers have received and dropped overboard since 2001.

It's the S.S. Prove It.

While we all sit here and use the name Josh Gordon and Randy Moss in the same sentence, Brady will not do it.

To manipulate one of the political debates of all time, Tom Brady served with Randy Moss. He knew Randy Moss. Randy Moss was one of his friends. Josh, you're not Randy Moss.

Gordon surrendered to the Browns on the eve of the training camp. He arrived late and bailed out with a thigh injury before the second game of the season!

Josh Gordon is Earl "The Goat" Manigault. Randy Moss is Dr. J.

Unlike the goat, Gordon still has a chance. Next to a last day G.O.A.T.

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Listening to Brady last night when he spoke to Jim Gray about Westwood One, you can hear that the jury is not yet on Gordon at this point. Gordon did not even begin to wonder whether or not he should throw footballs by Brady.

"Whatever the receiver is there. . . you tell them to run a certain route and they do it as you talked about, the balloon is thrown, it's caught, it's a positive game and you start again, "said Brady. "If it's the other side of the coin and 50-50, sometimes it's good, sometimes it's wrong, I mean nobody can really count on that.

"Coaches do not want to see that, players do not want to see that," Brady explained. "You want to know that the guys you're lining up next to them understand. They have taken their responsibilities in charge and this frees you to think about your responsibilities.

Gordon has a dozen little things to do right before he can trust the Patriots attack. To present oneself in time, to pay attention and to understand what he has asked him to do are three. By demonstrating on the practice field, he can repeatedly do what he asked to change the defenses, so that Brady believes in him.

If you're third and six and the Patriots are in desperate need of a first run on Sunday night, do you think that by pushing back, he'll feel more confident turning his head towards Phillip Dorsett or Gordon?

And next week? Or the week after?

"If you're worried about that guy or that guy. . . it just takes away what you need to focus on as an individual, "said Brady (he was talking about receivers in general, not Gordon). "Everyone wants good teammates who can focus, as an individual, on what they have to do to help the team."

Gordon can help the team. He can help it in an unexpected way. But, unlike his stay in Cleveland, where he was treated as a pseudo-savior, I think he will have to win some help. And no one will notice it stronger than the quarterback.