The article below originally appeared on MercuryNews.com and is being reprinted with permission.

Copy photos provided by Tom Martinez, a longtime friend and former coach of Patriots QB Tom Brady. This is from December 2009: left to right: Tom Brady Senior, Tom Brady, Tom Martinez. (Karen T. Borchers/Mercury News)

They call Tom Martinez a mechanic, which is funny because he knows nothing about engines. He knows quarterbacks.

And when a panicked Tom Brady summoned him last month, Martinez was aghast at what he found. “Boy, he was a car that wasn’t running well,” he said.

It is a pattern that spans two decades: Tom Brady frets, Tom Martinez fixes.

The bond stretches to 1992, when Brady was a junior varsity quarterback at Serra High in San Mateo. It has only strengthened during the quarterback’s four trips to the Super Bowl, 12 Hall of Fame caliber seasons and one unprecedented hot streak heading into Sunday’s game between Brady’s New England Patriots and the Raiders.

But Martinez’s failing health may keep him from the O.co Coliseum sidelines in Oakland this weekend. And the mentor and his protege fear they are running out of ways to stop the clock.

In June, doctors gave Martinez a week to live. Complications from diabetes and a failing kidney threatened to take down the 66-year-old coach. He was told he needed a heart transplant, as well. The situation was so dire that Martinez dictated a farewell letter to his family and friends. His daughter, Linda, posted the letter on Facebook, which read in part:

I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to teach and coach you all and I ask that you take one or two of my life lessons and pass them on to your family and friends. That will keep me alive forever.

Tributes flowed in by the hundreds. One former player said he would donate his liver and his heart, if he could. The support did not surprise Brady.

“Words really don’t do justice to the kind of man that he is, to the kind of father and friend that he is,” Brady said by phone from Boston last week. “And I’ve been lucky enough to have him as my coach for 20 years. … I love him. I have so much respect for him and his toughness.”

‘I can never say no’

The outpouring also had a practical effect: Someone suggested Martinez seek more aggressive treatment at UCLA. So began a comeback from a fourth-quarter deficit. Doctors adjusted his pacemaker. His body shed 57 pounds. His health stabilized.

His phone rang.

“Come to Boston,” Brady said. “I need you. I have no control.”

Martinez resisted. Brady begged. The discussion always ends the same. “I can never say no to Tommy,” Martinez said, laughing.

Three months after being given a week to live, Martinez and his wife, Olivia, flew to Boston to remind a three-time Super Bowl winner how to throw. They headed east on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend. “And it’s a good thing I went,” Martinez said. “He was all screwed up.”

Sometimes the problem is Brady’s stride (too long), sometimes it’s his follow-through (he stops short) and sometimes it’s his release point (the angle is off). Whatever it is Martinez isn’t going to tell you. The quarterback whisperer doesn’t shout his secrets. “That’s between me and Tommy,” he said.

In Boston, Martinez and Brady sat and watched film until they figured out the problem. “He was so off center I thought we were going to have to stay for four days,” Martinez said.

Brady would go on to throw for 517 yards in the Patriots’ season opener. He threw for 423 in his next game and 387 in the one after that. That puts him on a pace for 7,077 yards this season. Only two quarterbacks, Dan Marino and Drew Brees, have ever topped 5,000 in a season.

For years, Brady carried in his wallet a crinkled page of notes from Martinez. Now, the quarterback keeps an entire file in his BlackBerry. He scrolls though the list before games.

Throw it down the hall.

Keep your hips closed.

Keep your elbow high.

“I do that all the time,” Brady said. “I have his reminders handy. It’s amazing. Every time he and I work together, I’ll take more from it and I’ll keep adding. I have notes from the last 20 years.”

Quarterback guru

Though Brady is his most famous pupil, Martinez’s students range in the thousands. He won more than 1,400 games at the College of San Mateo, coaching football, women’s basketball and softball (he has honed the skills of Brady’s three talented sisters). Last month, Martinez was inducted into the school’s inaugural Hall of Fame class.

Still, Martinez is best known as a quarterback guru. Even as his health fails, he continues to work as a personal QB coach and conduct youth clinics in the Bay Area. His proteges range from greats like Brady and John Elway to the latest crop of budding local high school stars.

Whenever Martinez is done tutoring a kid, he’ll press a quarter into his palm as a symbolic gesture. “Call me if you need help,” he’ll tell them. “But I’m not going to call you.”

He never hears from some players again — former Raiders flameout JaMarcus Russell, to name one. But Brady never stopped dialing the hot line.

The first rescue mission took place late in summer 1992, when Brady was 15. He came home on the eve of his first start for the JV team so nervous that he told his dad he had forgotten how to throw a football.

Tom Sr., sensing that the kid wasn’t joking, whisked Tommy to see Martinez, who was in the middle of a meeting as the offensive coordinator at the College of San Mateo.

Martinez finished the meeting, asked Brady to make a few throws and — within minutes — had the kid rifling spirals around the practice field.

Back on track

Six Pro Bowl appearances later, the only thing that’s changed is the definition of a crisis. When Martinez saw him in the summer, Brady was horrified that, on one passing route, he would aim for the face mask only to have the ball drift to the player’s shoulder pad.

For the famously precise Brady, this constituted a wild streak.

“Throwing is very delicate,” the quarterback explained. “If one little thing’s off, it leads to compensation in different parts of your technique. And, ultimately, throwing the football to me is all technical.

“Whenever things don’t feel right out there — sometimes you get in little funks — I’ll talk to coach Martinez. Usually, we’ll figure out pretty quickly the one or two keys that can get me back on the right track.”

New England has its own coaches, of course. Bill O’Brien, the team’s offensive coordinator and quarterback coach, is a respected member of head coach Bill Belichick’s staff. But the Patriots recognize the special nature of the Brady-Martinez bond. Belichick has even welcomed Martinez inside the Patriots’ fortress in Foxborough, Mass., much to the shock of those who know the uber-secretive coach.

“He is here at least once a year,” Belichick said last week. “He’ll come to training camp, bye week, or early part of the season. He comes on a regular basis. … I think he’s had a big impact (on Brady).”

Fight of his life

Brady is under no illusions about his mentor’s long-term prognosis. He knows that someday he will have to make these corrections on his own.

“Obviously my fingers are always crossed that he continues to get better and he gets great medical care,” Brady said. “He’s a very special and important person in my life. And I’m forever grateful for everything that he’s ever done for me and for my family. He’s just a great man.”

Brady invited Martinez to be a sideline guest at the Raiders game this weekend. But Martinez is unsure he’ll be feeling up for a visit. Having overcome his week-to-live diagnosis, he knows he’s already in overtime.

He was supposed to get a liver transplant at UCLA this month, but doctors rejected him. “They told me I was too far gone,” Martinez said.

His next step is a visit to Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, where he will consult with an expert who specializes in rejected patients.

“If this one fails,” Martinez said, fighting back his emotion. “I’m going to have to suck it up.”

His voice caught, and it was several seconds before he pushed on. When he did, his voice had just enough momentum to outrun the tears.

“There might not be another trip to Boston. There might not be another email,” Martinez said. “That’s why I’m trying to appreciate every minute and respond to as much of the outpouring as I can.

“You can’t sit around and feel for sorry for yourself. Tommy and the others, they give me life.”