For 20 seasons, Tom Brady knew only 1 way — the”Patriot Way” — but it took a single additional season to realize that it was not the only means to accomplish success.
“If you’re in one location for 20 decades, you think that is the only way,” Brady told ABC’s”Good Morning America” in an interview that aired Wednesday. “And I think when you visit another location, you understand,’Wow, there’s another way that people do things.'”
He later added:”I was the new guy for the first time, you understand. And that was a really different experience.”
Those new experiences caused a familiar outcome, as Brady won a second 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 offseason, leaving behind the legacy he constructed with the New England Patriots
“I feel that is a great part about 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 season. So, for me personally, it was exactly what I had been going to perform for the Bucs last year. I still feel like that.”
“That is a major part of that which I knew last year: Things are gonna differ. I attempt to work within what is currently happening, but nevertheless try to do the best I could do. All of it was really, really fantastic — clearly with the way the season ended — it was a fantastic year.”
It was also the first season that he had played for a head coach other than New England’s Bill Belichick.
“He has a great feel for the group… a fantastic pulse for what’s happening in a locker room, great intuition, great evaluation of gift.”
“I was always sort of inspired by people that say,’You can’t do it,'” Brady said. “You know,’You’re not good enough, you’re not fast enough, not big enough, but not good enough arm.’ I have had a body of work over a period of time and… fast you forget.”
That body of work is not finished. Brady is tied into the Bucs throughout the 2022 year after consenting to an expansion this offseason that saved $19 million from the salary cap for 2021. With that money, the Bucs kept the band together, with all 22 starters on offense and defense returning to the team to defend its name.
“I really don’t think proving it, for me, is your motivation,” Brady told GMA. “I want to playwith. I got like a bit sickness in me that just wants to throw some frickin’ spiral, you know what I mean?
“Once you quit, you can not go back and do it. I got some more football [left in me]. I meannot a lot — and I know that. However, what I got left, I’m gonna go and give all I got.”