Holding a cellphone in his hands and a smile on his face, Tom Brady snapped a quick picture as he sat down for the modified NFL Super Bowl Opening Night. He’d never seen anything quite like it before. Instead of a room full of reporters, Brady stared at a virtual meeting room.
“How come I don’t get to see them all? How come they only get to see me?” Brady asked. “It’s a crazy media day. I’m sitting here in an empty room. This is very different than the other nine experiences.”
Brady won six championships in nine appearances with the New England Patriots before kicking off his 10th Super Bowl week Monday as quarterback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. They will host the reigning champion Kansas City Chiefs and quarterback Patrick Mahomes for the 6:30 p.m. game Sunday at Raymond James Stadium. But Super Bowl 55 will be unique in many ways — other than the obvious jersey change — for Brady.
Most of the major differences this year are related to the pandemic and the host team playing in the Super Bowl for the first time in NFL history, two things Brady said made preparing for the game easier.
“It’s a home game; that’s been very different. You don’t have to eat hotel food for a week; that’s very different. The stadium will be, I don’t know, 25,000 people. That’ll be different. So a lot of the non-football stuff, I’d say, is entirely different,” Brady said, adding that his family is out of town until Saturday, allowing him to be singularly focused. “It’s all very unique to this year only. I’m happy I’m in my own bed. I’m happy I’m eating good stuff at home. I’m happy I’ve had extra time to prepare and I don’t have to travel, don’t have to pack my clothes, ya know, pack up all my other crap. … So in the end, I think there’s some real positives to take from it.”
A more relaxed, more focused Brady with more time to prepare? What could that look like Sunday for a veteran already praised by contemporaries for his mindset and preparation?
“Some people have fast-twitch reactionary brains. Peyton [Manning] — all the great quarterbacks have it, because if you don’t have it you can’t be a great quarterback. You’re running all over the place, you can’t make those split decisions that are the right decisions. And he’s always had that,” Bucs head coach Bruce Arians said of Brady. “He has sharpened that tool to the highest degree. He’s an intense worker, unbelievable preparation. He is a very, very smart quarterback on Sunday because of his preparation.”
Mahomes, who is 18 years younger than Brady, said he will continue to watch tape of Brady playing throughout his career because “he’s doing it the right way and you can tell based on how many Super Bowl championships he has, and the rings that are on his fingers.”
Mahomes got his first ring last year at 24, the same age Brady was when he won his first 19 years ago after unexpectedly leading New England to the 2001 season’s Super Bowl.
“You have to just run the clock out. You have to just play for overtime now,” legendary coach and announcer John Madden said during the final drive of that game against the St. Louis Rams.
The score was tied at 17 with 1 minute, 21 seconds on the clock and the Patriots had horrible field position and no timeouts.
Madden minutes later: “What Tom Brady just did gives me goose bumps.”
What he did then was what he’s now done for nearly two decades — win. Brady marched his team into field-goal position and Adam Vinatieri kicked the game-winner to begin a career under center many consider the greatest of all time.
“I mean, I could never imagine it would be like this, and I don’t think anybody could’ve,” Brady said when asked whether that Super Bowl first-timer all those years ago ever envisioned the career that followed. “The only reason you can look at my career and get to the point where I’ve gotten is because of the people that I’ve had in my life — my coaches, teammates, family, friends — all the people who supported me. It’s been an incredible team effort throughout my life, on the field and off the field, and I try to represent everybody in the best possible way, try to go play my ass off every week and now I’m still trying to do it.”
Brady always said he’d like to play until he is 45 but said Monday he’d definitely consider playing beyond that age. He’s still unsure of when he’ll retire but thinks he’ll just know when it’s time and “understand that I gave everything I could give to this game.”
“Sport for me has never been about, ya know, ‘Hey, success is passing yards or touchdowns or Super Bowls.’ It was always, again, trying to maximize my potential and the best I could be,” Brady said. “And when I showed up as a freshman in high school, didn’t know how to put pads in my pants, I was just hoping to play high school football because I wanted to be like Joe Montana and Steve Young.
“And then when I got a chance to play in college, I just wanted to play at Michigan. And then when I got drafted to the Patriots, I just wanted to play or I just wanted to start. And it’s just been a series of steps like that: try to be a little better every year, try to learn a little bit more every year, try to grow and evolve in different areas.”
Now that he’s at the pinnacle once again, what advice would he give to that young QB just about to play in his first Super Bowl back in 2002?
“Win or lose, you just gotta lay it all on the line,” Brady said. “It’s a tough game to lose, let me just say that. I’ve had some really tough losses in this game. Those stick with you for a long time. I’d much rather be in the game than not in the game, that’s for sure, because the only way to win it is to be in it. But it’s pretty tough if you lose it, so you gotta do anything you can to prepare yourself for what you’re going to face.
“My life has taken certainly a lot of different directions. I’m obviously older now, I’ve got a family and a lot of incredible blessings in my life, and ya know, fast-forward 21 years, sitting in Tampa trying to go out and play a Super Bowl, win a Super Bowl, in our own home stadium, which would be pretty sweet.”
