For twenty seasons, Tom Brady knew only one path: the “Patriot Way,” but it only took an extra season to realize that it wasn’t the only way to succeed.
“When 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 a different place, you realize,‘ Wow. There is another way of doing things. “
He later added, “I was the new guy for the first time, you know. And it was a really different experience.”
These new experiences led to a familiar result, as Brady won another Super Bowl championship, the seventh overall, in his first season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He signed with the Bucs as a free agent last season, leaving behind the legacy he built 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 are going to be different. I’m trying to work within what’s going on right now, but I’m trying to do the best I could. Everything was really amazing, obviously with how it ended. the season, so it was a great year. “
It was also the first season he had played for a coach who was not Bill Belichick of New England.
“[Bruce Arians] “He’s a great motivator,” Brady said of the Bucs coach. “He has a great feeling for the team … a great pulse for what happens in the locker room, a great intuition, a great evaluation of talent.”
And at 43, Brady relied on the motivation to keep his competitive focus on winning his fifth Super Bowl MVP award.
“I was always motivated by people saying, ‘You can’t do this,'” Brady said. work for a period of time and … you quickly forget about it “.
This work is not finished. Brady is tied with the Bucs during the 2022 season after agreeing an extension this offseason that saved $ 19 million against the salary cap for 2021. And with that money, the Bucs kept the band together, with 22 offensive and defensive starters returning to the team to defend their title.
“I don’t think proving it is motivating for me,” Brady told GMA. “I still want to play. I have like a bit of a disease that just wants to throw a little spiral, you know what I mean?
“Once you stop, you can’t go back and do it. I have a little more football [left in me]. I mean, not much, and I know it. But whatever I have left, I will give everything I have. “