For twenty seasons, Tom Brady knew only one way – the “Patriot Way” – but it took him only one season to realize that it wasn’t the only way to achieve success.
“If you’ve been in one place for 20 years, you think that’s the only way,” Brady told ABC’s “Good Morning America” in an interview aired Wednesday. And I think when you go to another place, you realize, “Wow. There is a different way people do things. “”
He later added, “I was the new man for the first time, you know. And that was a very different experience.”
Those new experiences resulted in a familiar result, as Brady won another Super Bowl championship – his seventh overall – in his first season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He signed with the Bucs as a free agent last off-season, leaving behind the legacy he’d built up with the New England Patriots.
“I think that’s a big part of football,” Brady told GMA. ‘It’s not really about what you did last year. It’s kind of what you’re going to do this year. So for me it was what I was going to do for the Bucs last year. I still feel that way. “
“That’s a big part of what I understood last year: things will be different. I try to work within what’s happening right now, but still try to do my best. It was all really great – obviously with the way the season is going. ended – so it was a great year. “
It was also the first season he’d played for a head coach other than New England’s Bill Belichick.
[Bruce Arians] is a great motivator, ”said Brady of the Bucs coach. He has a great feel for the team … a great heartbeat for what’s going on in a locker room, a great intuition, a great evaluation of talent. “
And at the age of 43, Brady relied on motivation to keep his competitive fire going on the way to winning his fifth Super Bowl MVP award.
“I was always kind of motivated by people saying, ‘You can’t do it,’ Brady said. ‘You know,’ you’re not good enough, you’re not fast enough, not big enough, not good enough poor. ‘ have been working for a while and … you quickly forget.
That oeuvre is not finished. Brady has been linked with the Bucs for the 2022 season after agreeing to an extension to this low season that saved $ 19 million from the 2021 salary cap. And with that money, the Bucs kept the tie together, with all 22 starters in offense and defense returned to the team to defend its title.
“I don’t think it’s the motivation for me to prove it,” Brady told GMA. ‘I still want to play. I kinda got a disease in me that just wants to throw a frickin ‘spiral, you know what I mean?
Once you stop, you can’t go back to do it. I still have some football [left in me]I mean, not much – and I know it. But what I have left, I will give everything I have. “