The Biggest Misconception in Football (ft. Tom Brady)

Even the GOAT Tom Brady can’t throw a perfect spiral. Here’s why. 🌏 Get exclusive NordVPN deal here ➵ https://NordVPN.com/veritasium It’s risk free with Nord’s 30 day money-back guarantee!✌ If you’re looking for a molecular modelling kit, try Snatoms, a kit I invented where the atoms snap together magnetically - https://ve42.co/SnatomsV Sign up to the Veritasium newsletter for weekly science updates - https://ve42.co/Newsletter ▀▀▀ Thank you so much to everyone who voted for this video to win the people's voice awards for best creator-to-creator collaboration at the 2026 Webby Awards. We couldn't have done it without you. Thank you again for all your support! A huge thank you to Tom Brady for coming and throwing some footballs with us and letting us analyse his throw. You can check out his channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@tombrady Also thank you to Kevin Bonner and the team at Shadow Lion for helping make this happen! A big thanks to Daniel Hare and Wilson for all their help collecting and analyzing the data. A massive thank you to Prof. Philip Ansell, David Attig, Matt Brotnow, Sam Hince and Derrick Wiberg at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for all their work testing out footballs in their wind tunnel (more of that to come in our second video). We’d also like to shout out Stewart Bible, Ryan Sayko and the rest of the team at Resolved Analytics for all their work on the CFD models - https://www.resolvedanalytics.com/ Thank you to Mike Lopez and Tom Bliss from the Football Data and Analytics at the NFL for sharing data and insights from across NFL history. We’re incredibly grateful to Prof. Richard Price and Major Brett Gibbons for their invaluable contributions to this video. Thank you to Prof. Chad Orzel, Prof. John Eric Goff, Dr Ainissa Ramirez, Prof. Tony Schmitz & Jonathan Ferguson for all their help on the project. Also thanks to Chris Anstis for his help as a stand-in QB! ▀▀▀ 0:00 How Tom Brady Throws a Football 2:51 Wh