Tom Brady Opens up - 7th Ring Motivation MJ or Belichick | Enemies | Style of Leadership
Patrick Bet-David interviews the legendary Tom Brady in an interview like you've never seen before. Hosted at the 2023 VAULT conference, Brady opens up about the trials and tribulations during his college football years, the fiery competitiveness that shaped his NFL journey, his enemies, his style of leadership, and the driving forces behind his unparalleled success. As he embarks on a new chapter post-retirement, get a rare glimpse into how the G.O.A.T. feels about moving on to the next chapter of life. Dive deep into the mind of a champion.
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Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller Your Next Five Moves (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
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Even when I watch sports today, I see these guys on the range.
They're all buddies and their caddies are friends and that's not the killer instinct.
You know, I always said we played for the name on the front of our jersey, was the Patriots or the Bucs or and I played for the name on the back of the jersey, which is my family and the people that encouraged me.
I think you've chosen the enemies wise.
Man, I'm going to play 10 more years.
It takes so many people to get to where we get in our life.
I learned about work ethic.
I learned about resilience.
I learned about gaining the trust and the respect of my teammates and coaches to name me captain.
Just like in your business, every year is different.
Fame didn't motivate me.
about any of it.
So first of all, I can't wait for you to watch this interview with Tom Brady.
By the way, from the moment he walked in, he was in charge, comfortable, respectful, loose.
And you'll sense it the moment you watch it.
He walked in.
Dylan's like, hey, Tom, I want to throw the ball with you.
He's like, well, then let's go.
They go to the back of the hotel, but there's a wide open place at the diplomat.
And they start throwing the ball.
And then he's running routes with Dylan.
And then he's running routes with my oldest son, Patrick.
And then he says, so dad, you're going to run or what?
Like, he's almost like pushing you, challenging you.
You could feel his leadership from the second he got there.
And then when he hits the stage, super comfortable, super loose.
I even asked him, why are you so comfortable and loose right now?
Like, what caused you to be this?
Well, you'll sense that.
And then there was a couple things we talked about.
I asked him about, you know, winning seven championships.
Was it more important for him to win seven because having one more than Belichick or one more than Michael?
And you'll be the judge of which one mattered most.
I give my assumption on which one I thought it was, but his focus, how he drove his people, how different it was with everybody else.
All in all, this is by far one of the most unique interviews I've ever done and timely.
The fact that this is after his career being done, so he was a little bit more comfortable to talk versus a Tom Brady that's typically like, well, we had a game today.
I take responsibility as a quarterback.
We have to come back and watch a tape.
That's not the time.
You're going to see a complete different time in this interview with him.
So with that being said, here's Tom Brady.
Tom Brady, when we pulled up records, there's so many of them.
Let me just read some of them here for you.
Most games won by player, 251.
Most games played by a non-kicker, 335.
Most games started 333.
Division titles, most career passing yards, 89,214.
Most career pass completions, 7,700.
Attempts, touchdowns, most career passing yards with one team.
I mean, I can go over and he's beaten every single team in the NFL, one of only four people to do it.
It was so wild.
In our family, everybody was required to watch Man in the Arena.
Everybody.
All my kids that are in the back catching the ball with them, they're enamored by him because they've watched Man in the Arena over and over and over again.
My daughter watched it.
My wife watched it.
Tico watched it.
Dylan watched it.
We rented out Foxborough Stadium.
We brought Ben, his manager, one of his best friends, a couple of the guys that played with him.
We're in there watching Man in the Arena again to kind of feel the emotion of what it was like playing with a guy like this, being a teammate with a guy like this, maybe coaching somebody like this.
And, you know, as a guy that's a fan of the sport, I've never played organized sports, okay?
I didn't play in high school.
I didn't do any of that stuff, but I'm a fan.
I'm coming purely from a fan.
There are certain players that we have to ask, can anyone ever do this again?
So for example, Will Chamberlain, 100 points.
I don't know.
Home run, 74 in a season.
I don't know.
Is somebody going to go out there and do this or beat Gretzky's record or beat that?
I don't know if there's going to be another player to play for as long as he did and win seven Super Bowls and break all the records.
That may not happen in our lifetime.
Now, we all believe in doing the impossible, but he made it so hard for somebody else to want to replicate.
It's almost like he emotionally got everybody else that's behind him trying to catch up to him.
Say, dude, there's everybody else I can compete with them.
There's Tom.
Set Tom aside.
I'm going to go after this guy.
There's no way I'm going to be Tom.
So this is a one-of-a-kind of a one-of-a-gun type of a person.
You'll see the painting at the end when we give him as a gift.
There's some special messages in there.
We'll give him.
I consider this guy the goat of goats.
Please stand up and give it up to the one and only Tom Brady.
Nice to be with you guys.
Are we fired up or what?
That's a little better.
Tom, are you next?
Especially when I go into the stadium to get all fired up.
So this is kind of cool to be with you guys.
Thank you very much, Patrick, for allowing me to be here.
And this is now kind of my hometown.
I've been bounced around to a lot of different places over the years.
Grew up in California, went to school in the Midwest, played in Boston for 20 years and then in Tampa.
So I've traveled around a little bit and I feel like I've gotten to know a lot of people over the years.
And obviously I love being in front of groups of people, sharing some of the amazing insights that I've had over a lot of years in competitive sports and teamwork and discipline and success and probably a lot of things that you guys are looking to achieve in your career.
it's a pleasure to be with you guys I know what day is this out of the four days that you've this is the second to the last Tomorrow's the last day.
Okay, so one last day tomorrow.
So hope you guys are doing the work and listening and paying attention.
Hopefully I can provide you guys with a couple of little nuggets to take with you on your own personal journeys.
So first of all, it's great to have you here.
Okay, I know you're humble about it, but we're honored to have you here.
Are you always this fired up?
Like even back when you were leading everybody back there.
Like you're telling me what to do.
You're telling Dylan what to do.
Are you always like that?
I think if you roll a football out there, man, I know what to do.
I got you.
And your son brought one around the corner, and there's only one thing you know.
It's like when you're a kid, I always think you're pretty lucky in life if you learn as a kid to like bounce a ball or dribble a ball.
And you don't have to be, obviously, be a professional at it, but some things in life can be pretty simple if you like, you know, bouncing a ball or hitting a ball or kicking a ball.
And I think that's very much the way that I was.
A lot like your sons are back there.
And everyone finds their own interests.
I was so fortunate to find a real love for sports.
And it wasn't just, you know, hitting the ball, throwing the ball.
It was the camaraderie of teammates.
And there's so many things that I've learned over the years, being a part of a team setting and being involved in sports and dealing with people and relationships.
And yeah, it's about getting the ball in the end zone, but that's the final step in the process.
There's so many other things that lead to the camaraderie and the ability to do that more often than most other teams.
So that's really where the work is.
Yeah, I mean, I was watching you back there.
You're telling Dylan, so Dylan, what are you going to do?
Let's warm up.
You're throwing the ball.
Okay, what route are you going to run?
Boom, hut, hike.
No, step back.
That's yards.
We got this.
Okay, Dick, why don't you play defense on him?
Hey, dad, are you going to go?
You're putting everybody to work.
It was interesting watching you do that.
But what was that first moment for you?
For these kids, they're going to be 40 years old one day saying, I freaking caught Brady's pass at nine years old.
Life-changing for these guys.
What was that moment for you when you were a kid?
Yeah, that's a little bit about inspiration.
And for me, I grew up in very fortunate.
I grew up in San Mateo, California, which was just south of San Francisco.
Yeah, at a time when the San Francisco 49ers were the team in the NFL.
And I grew up in a very sports-centric family.
I had three older sisters who I always say were all better athletes than I ever was.
And I was just like their punky brat little brother that would follow them to their softball games at night, to their basketball games, and always cheered them on.
And my dad loved sports.
My mom loved sports, and it was just very much a part of our family.
So so many of the memories that I had as a kid were growing up on sports fields, going to the batting cage at night with my dad.
I was the youngest of four.
So we would always sneak off to the golf course when we wanted to have some boy time.
And I learned just so many lessons, I think, from those early ages being in my own family and being with sisters that were supportive of me, my mom.
And then ultimately, I grew up on a street where there were, you know, it was just a normal street in the Bay Area.
There was 60, 70 kids on the street.
This is when we used to play in the street.
You know, a lot of people in here probably played in the street too.
But this was go down and make a ride at the fire hydrant and, you know, go right at the white car.
Oh, don't get hit by the truck coming down, you know, and the car would come and everyone would back off.
So it was just a normal way to grow up.
And I think that that was just such a great way for me to grow up in the Bay Area with a love for football and a love for sports in general.
But to grow up on a street where that's what we did.
We played football, two-hand touch.
And in the street, we didn't have much of a front yard.
You know, we played, and if you hit the curb, that was out of bounds.
So growing up, it was just so normal for me.
And I really, in a way, still feel my life is like that.
I don't feel like I've changed much over the years in terms of what my values were or what my priorities were.
I just had those inspirational moments, I'd say, from growing up in the Bay Area and idolizing Joe Montana and Steve Young, who are my sports idols.
And in baseball, Barry Bonds went to my high school.
He's one of the greatest baseball players of all time.
So there was these sports idols I had that really inspired me to dig deeper with myself.
And I found a lot of people over the way over 46 years to support me in this journey.
Tom, was there a moment where, like, did you have a moment like that with Montana threw a pass at you or Steve Young threw a pass at you?
And if yes, how old were you?
And outside of that, when you first met him, were you in your mind at all sizing him up or you were just enamored?
I cannot believe I'm catching a ball from a guy like this.
Yeah, well, I never caught any passes from anyone.
But what I did do was I was a bat boy, an honorary bat boy at a San Francisco Giants baseball game.
And I was sitting in the dugout and there was a great left-handed hitter who was one of my favorite players, Will Clark.
His name was Will the Grill.
And he was my, you know, at that time, the Giants, he was my favorite player.
And he came out of the, I was sitting in the dugout just scared shitless, you know, not saying a word, looking straight ahead.
And he came out from the tunnel of the clubhouse and came up and he was saying something in like a squeaky voice.
Where's another helmet or something like that?
And I just sunk back in my seat.
And my dad was like, say something, say something.
I was like, I'm not saying anything.
And then finally I stood up and I said, you know, Mr. Clark, I'm Tom.
Nice to meet you.
And I said, Tommy, this is Tommy.
Nice to meet you.
And he said, nice to have you, kid.
And, you know, it was one of those moments where it was kind of really eye-opening for me.
And, you know, I had this opportunity when I was young to play.
I was actually a pretty good baseball player when I was a kid.
And I was just surrounded by all those sports.
And I picked a high school where it was very, it was right down the street from my house, but it was very baseball type school.
And California, where I grew up, wasn't really focused on football.
There wasn't a ton of that.
It was more baseball focused.
But either way, there was a lot of sports.
And, you know, sports in all of our communities were pretty impactful and influential in the ways that, you know, we grew up and we socialized.
And, you know, again, I was fortunate to grow up at a great time in football sports in the Bay Area.
Did you always, like if I was in high school with you, 13, 14, 15 years old, did you always have an absolute killer instinct where I'm going to show you, I'm going to prove the way you see what I'm going to do.
I'm going to kill this guy when we face him.
Was it always like that when you were in high school, or did that kind of develop later on?
Yeah, I think it developed over a period of time.
And I think there was a work ethic that was in me.
I think most people probably know a few things about me, but I was never, I would say, like a prodigy.
You know, I wasn't like the kid where you see Tiger Woods swinging on the Johnny Carson show at two or three years old.
And, you know, his swing looks as good as it did at three years old as it did, you know, as he grew older.
Or, you know, certain players that had this unbelievable prodigy aspect to themselves.
I saw myself as someone who probably had some other traits that maybe were hard to identify, but that were really sustainable over time, which was, I would say, work ethic and discipline.
And that was instilled in me by, I think, my parents.
I mean, there was part of it that they gave me, but also just behaviorally growing up in an environment where my dad was out to work every morning, you know, trying to go make a living for our family.
And my mom woke up every day trying to figure out how to make sure the home was comfortable for us and, you know, to support the kids.
So there was this discipline that I had that even as 13, 14, 15 years old, where all these other boys were, I went to an all-boy school in the Bay Area.
And I remember showing up my first day as freshman year.
I didn't have much, you know, hair under my arms or anything like that.
I was like, and these other kids came in shaving.
I'm like, what the hell is this?
I didn't know how to put the pads on in my pants when I tried out for freshman football.
I mean, I had never played until that point, except in the streets.
So these kids came out there.
They had helmets and shoulder pads that they had worn for four years through Pop Warner.
And I went on the field and I was like, I'm going to get killed out here.
And my freshman year, I didn't even play.
I was the backup quarterback on a team that went 0-8.
That says a lot.
I couldn't get on the field.
And we never won a game anyway.
I mean, it's one thing to be the starting quarterback and to lose.
If they don't even think you're good enough to be a starting quarterback on a team that's 0-8, you must really suck.
And the reason why I played my second year was because that quarterback quit because he's like, I'm not playing football anymore.
We suck.
I'm going to focus on basketball.
So naturally, I was like, oh, cool, I'll continue to, you know, work on my skill because I actually had a halfway decent arm.
But a lot of it was even going into my second year in high school.
There were workouts in the morning at 6 a.m. before school.
And I was like, okay, I can get up at 6 a.m. and I can go do these rope drills where you'd run through the rope.
See a lot of people do.
There were these hills that we would run up.
And there was probably less than 10 people there, but I was probably one of the three that were there almost every single day to try to continue to push myself to grow in these maybe physical areas that I was really behind a lot of other people at.
Because naturally, no one's good at everything.
I mean, that's just not the way life works.
We're all talented at certain things, but we can really continue to improve our weaknesses if we're humble enough to identify them.
And we can build on our strengths.
And I think we're all trying to find a more well-rounded aspect to ourselves.
But a lot of that has to come with this understanding about yourself that what you know is very limited and what you don't know is limitless.
And you have an opportunity every day to surround yourself with people to help you grow.
And that could be, in my case, it very much was my parents early on.
And then as I learned to love the sport of football, yeah, I was watching kind of on the periphery of pro athletes, but there was a high school, there was a junior college football coach that I wanted to become a better passer because I had a good arm.
And he was a three-sport coach at a junior college.
His name was Tom Martinez, one of my great mentors.
And he coached women's softball, which is how really I knew him, women's basketball, and men's football.
And I would go up there and I would go up there to his camp to learn to throw the ball better when I was in 14 years old, 15 years old.
And it just became this, like I said, life was pretty simple when you could kick a ball or throw it.
And for me, it was throwing it, and I wanted to throw a ball better.
So who better than to find this guy who was probably ahead of his time as a coach?
And he taught me how to throw the ball with some good fundamentals.
And I really saw that as like, wow, I can go see someone who has more knowledge than me, and I can learn from him, and I can take them back to my school.
And everyone's going to go, wow, Tom, you made some improvements.
And I think that was a good learning experience for me, even at a young age.
So it wasn't the, you know, because there's a couple different ways that it happens, right?
Like in business world, you kind of do the business, you get into real estate insurance technology, whatever it is, and then all of a sudden you're like, let me see if I can make money with this thing.
Then it's kind of like, oh, my God, this is actually great.
And then you kind of size yourself up against other people and are like, wow, I think I can actually beat that guy.
And who is the guy that does it this?
Well, let me go to that guy.
Oh, wow, I didn't know about this.
So kind of like we were telling the story about Hernandez.
But when was it?
Like, when was it where you said, no, I think I can play against everybody?
Because even in college, if you think about the two Drews in your life, right?
Yeah.
You're in Michigan.
You got what?
Brian Greasy, I believe, right?
And then Drew Evloo.
And then you got Drew Henson, who becomes a, like you, he was also a baseball player too.
He ended up, I think, getting drafted by the Yankees by Drew Henson.
And it was an interesting structure the coach had.
One quarter, one quarter, you know, two quarters, two quarters, first half, second half, which is kind of tough to create momentum.
I think you guys went 21 and five or 20 and five or something like that with the record you had.
And then, so, but you were like a backup to Drew, and then comes Drew Bledsoe, back up to Drew again.
So there's a backup.
Are you in your mind saying where the market, kind of like the movie Sea Biscuit, yeah, you're just a horse to help the other guy get better.
You're not the horse that's supposed to be the number one horse.
So you always train to kind of be here to build a confident in the other guy that's going.
At what point did you say, these guys have no freaking clue who the hell I am?
I'm a number one guy.
Did that ever click in your mind where you were number two saying, I belong being number one?
Well, I think there was naturally a very competitive part of me.
And I love that.
And can I go back a little bit?
Of course.
Give you a little context too.
So my freshman year in football, I didn't even play.
Literally didn't play.
Maybe two or three passes.
The coach from the sideline screamed at me one time my freshman year, Brady, you're moving in slow motion.
And I was.
Man, I was slow as shit.
Still am.
So going into my second year, like I said, the guy quit ahead of me.
So I became the junior varsity quarterback.
There were three teams in my high school.
And I had a coach named Bob Vanal, Perry Carter, Joe Hessian at Sarah High School.
And they were there for the football experience.
They were having as much fun as the kids were.
They didn't see it as varsity football.
They were there to embrace the love of the game and for the kids that weren't good enough to play on varsity.
And they really took me under their wing.
And we had so much fun that second year.
I love my football experience, one of the great years of my entire life.
I really started working hard with Tom Martinez to throw the ball better.
My third year, I won the starting job in my high school.
And I loved this sport so much that I stopped playing basketball and I just played baseball and football.
But in the summers, I would go and my dad, who was very available to me, with the greatest mentor, the greatest dad I could ever imagine, was so right there by my side to say, hey, dad, I want to be a better football player.
Great.
Let's take you to the University of Arizona camp.
Let's take you to the Cal Berkeley camp.
Let's take you to the Stanford camp.
You know, this is when you just sign up and there's a thousand other kids and you're just in a group.
And, you know, that's just the way it was.
But my dad was there to say, go for it, son.
And if there was a blessing in my life that I would say, you know, some of the things I blessed with hard work discipline, you know what I was also blessed with?
Being very naive.
I had no idea how hard it was.
But I believed because I was like, I don't know, like, I'm going to get better and I'm going to be better.
Well, going into my fourth year in high school, I was recruited, but not like a lot of the top kids.
There was, look, I was big.
I was the size I am now, tall.
I had a good arm.
But there were a lot of other physical deficiencies that they saw.
So I wasn't a high recruit.
So there was, and it was a different era where, look, we're in the digital age now.
That's not the way things worked back in 1994.
We had to make VCR tapes with my dad in his office when I said, dad, we got to like put together the most clips that I have.
And this is when my dad would film the games.
I mean, now it's like Channel 5 broadcasts every high school game in the area.
Like this was my dad with a camcorder.
And every time the ball was thrown, he'd be focused on me, right?
And the ball would go this way.
And he'd stand up.
And the camera would go to the left.
And he'd be watching.
And he'd start jumping out.
Go!
So, of course, we missed like every important throw that I had in high school.
So we pieced together enough clips to like go, hey, man, Tommy, where do you think you want to go to college?
And I was like, I don't know, like University of Illinois.
And I was looking at a lot of like maybe not top tier college programs.
And in the end, I was like, well, yeah, just let's send one to USC.
Let's send one to Michigan.
And I was like, do you think we should send one to Michigan, Dad?
And he's like, yeah, may as well.
You know, you think you like it.
Of course, I'm from California.
You know, I didn't Michigan.
That's a long way from California.
So I send these tapes out and there's a little bit of buzz about me.
And I start getting recruited.
And I get these letters.
And of course, I'm like, wow, every day I'm getting these different letters from school saying, oh, you know, we consider you a prospect.
Continue to keep up the good work.
And I would file them all, you know, in a file folder.
And my high school counselor came up to me and he's like, Tom, we got to start applying to colleges.
And I'm like, dude, I'm getting a scholarship.
What are you talking about?
And he's like, yeah, no, we're going to apply to all these colleges.
And funny story, I never applied to any college.
But I actually got halfway decent through my fourth year in college that the momentum picked up.
And I wanted to go, I got offered a scholarship to UCLA.
And then they turned me away at the last minute because another kid signed before me.
And I really wanted to go to USC.
That was probably my first choice.
But they didn't want me either.
They signed another kid who was one of the top recruits on the West Coast.
So I never forget these stories, by the way.
These are like hardcore ingrained.
So then I went to Michigan.
I show up.
They walk me into the big house.
And it's called the big house for a reason.
There's 102,000 people in there on a college football Saturday.
Now it's expanded like 112,000.
It's incredible.
And I walked through the tunnel at midfield and they go, from Sarah High School and San Mateo, Tom Brady.
And I looked up and I was like, I want to go to f ⁇ ing school here.
So I'm there for two days.
I don't talk to my parents the whole time.
You know, we didn't have cell phones.
And I get to the airport in Detroit, and I call my dad, Collect, and I go, Dad, I think I know where I want to go to college.
And like, he started breaking down, and he's like, what?
You know, leaving to go all the way back to Michigan.
And he said, are you sure you want to go?
And I said, Dad, if I want to be the best, I got to beat the best.
And this is where the best are.
So I showed up on campus as a freshman in spring in the fall of 1995.
I was the seventh quarterback on the depth chart.
There were six other guys ahead of me.
And Michigan is a great college.
There's, you know, it competes for national championships.
And I wanted to be a great football player.
If I was going to be a great football player, I wanted to compete against these other guys.
And they were all better than me.
Like, like I said, just like in high school, I was deficient.
Well, I was, we had another athlete who was in my freshman class at Michigan, Charles Woodson.
And Charles showed up on campus.
He had a goatee.
He looked like a Greek god.
And I was like, how am I in the same locker room as this guy?
This guy looks like a physical freak, which he was.
And he won the Heisman in his third year.
And he went on to be a Hall of Famer in the NFL.
And he's one of my great friends.
But we laughed because, man, that freshman locker room, I'm looking over there at like Charles Woodson as the seventh quarterback.
And Charles out there starting on opening day as a true freshman.
And I was, you know, worked really hard because I developed this work ethic in high school.
And I realized, man, if I want to be good, I got to wake up in the morning.
I got to do the extra work.
And I got to show up when other guys aren't.
And I've got to learn.
I've got to continue to be open to learning.
And my freshman year, I redshirted, never played, barely practiced, but I learned a lot.
My second year, I had improved a lot physically through that work.
And I started to compete in a way that would, the coaches would notice me a little bit.
And my second year, it was a few little crazy stories of how it got to be the way that it did, but I ended up becoming the third quarterback in my second year.
And it rotated a little bit there my second year, but I went from third in my second year to now my third year, I was competing to be a starter.
And because I had learned to compete in high school and I learned to compete my first two years in college, in fact, I almost thought about leaving Michigan.
And in my second year, I got a call from Steve Mariuchi at Cal.
And he said, Tom, if you come here, you can start for us.
And you're going into your third year.
If you leave Michigan, you can come here and you can start for us.
And of course, Cal was one of my great choices.
I thought, shit, I could go home and be a starter.
And I walked into Coach Carr's office, the head coach at Michigan at the time.
And I said, Coach, like, I, you know, what's my situation like?
And he said, Brady, I want you to stop worrying about what all the other players on our team are doing.
All you do is you focus on the starter, the second guy.
You don't worry about what you're focused on.
You came here to be the best.
I want you at this program.
And if you're going to be the best, you got to beat out the best.
And he goes, you got to start working with this guy named Greg Harden, who was another mentor in my life.
Greg just came out with the book a few days ago.
And Greg had been a sports psychologist at Michigan.
And like, you know, we got to start building this knowledge and we got to create a strategy and a plan.
And he would say, you know, I would complain all the time that the guys ahead of me were getting more opportunity than I was.
There was a certain amount of repetitions in practice.
The starter would get 20, the backup would get 10, and I would get two.
And I'd go in and I'd say, well, how can I ever get better?
All these guys get all the reps and I only get two.
And he said, just go in there and focus with the two that you got and make them as perfect as you possibly can.
So I said, okay, so that's what I did.
They'd put me in for those two.
Man, I'd sprint in there like it was Super Bowl 49.
Let's go, boys.
Here we go.
What play we got?
And I did really well with those two because I brought enthusiasm, I brought some energy, and I had a little more confidence in myself.
And it went from two reps to getting four reps because those two were pretty good.
Then I had four good reps.
Then I got 10 good reps.
And before you knew it, through this new attitude, through this new shift that Greg had said to me, you know, focus on what you can control.
Focus on what you're getting, not what anyone else is getting.
Whenever you get an opportunity, you take advantage of it.
You treat it like it's the Super Bowl.
You treat it like it's game day.
Go out there and treat practice like no one else does.
And I did that every single day.
And it was a lot.
It was taxing on me.
There was a lot of stress for me even in high school.
When I look back at those times, it wasn't probably like a typical college experience because I was really motivated to play, but I had to take it to a new level that the other guys wouldn't.
So going into my fourth year, now I had competed off freshman year, sophomore year, going into my third year.
And I had learned these tools to compete.
And I said, whatever they asked me to do, that's what I'm going to do to the best of my ability.
And I went in there, I competed really hard my third year, and I lost the starting job to Brian Greasy.
And Brian Greasy led the team to a 12-0 national championship that year.
So I was part of a national championship team, and I barely played.
So I go into my fourth year, and I was like, now's my time.
I worked hard to compete my first three years.
Going into my fourth year, I got a great opportunity to play.
And I worked hard.
It's time for me to come.
And they recruited a kid named Drew Henson, who was one of the top prospects in the country from Michigan, right next door to University of Michigan.
And here he was coming in the door that everyone knew about.
He was on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
So all the fans and all the media, they weren't interested in Tom Brady, backup quarterback to Brian Greasy, Tom Brady, backup quarterback to Scott Dreysbach his first year or Scott Dreisbach his second year.
Now we have Drew Henson coming in.
And I was like, the competition is relentless.
At first, I was looking at the guys ahead of me.
Now I got to be looking down at the guys behind me too.
But I said, you know what?
I'm going to apply the same thing that I had learned in those previous years.
I'm going to go out there and compete as hard as I can.
And I'm going to treat practice like a game.
And I'm going to gain the respect of my teammates every day through my work ethic.
I'm going to work hard in the weight room.
I'm going to work hard in the film room.
I'm going to work hard to be a good student.
And going into my fourth year, it was a little bit of a battle.
And my teammates named me team captain.
And I won the starting job.
And we had a good year.
We finished 10 and 3.
In our bowl game, we played in the Citrus Bowl.
And we came back from a, I think it was a 10-point lead in the fourth quarter to win the game.
And I was like, man, that was unbelievable.
Now that I'm going into my fifth year, like, we're going to have a great year.
I was 10-3, learned a lot, you know, beat everyone out.
And then I showed up and Coach Carr says, well, you're going to compete with Drew Henson to be the starter going into your fifth year.
And I was like, you got to be f ⁇ ing kidding me.
But I was like, you want me to compete?
That's what we're going to do.
And Drew had improved too.
So Drew was learning to compete as well.
And my view on team sports was you compete and whoever wins the job, that's the person that gets it.
No one's entitled to a position on a team.
Whatever is best for the team, that's what everyone has to say.
Look, man, the kid beat me out.
He's better.
Gives us a better chance to win.
So I competed really hard again in my fifth year, took it to a new level, thought about my conditioning, my strength, thought about how I was doing my making my decisions off the field.
Going to my fifth year, and I was starting to play really good.
And I thought, you know, I'm going to have a chance.
And Coach Carr called me in.
He said, well, Tom, this is what we're going to do.
You're going to start.
Drew, you're going to play the second quarter.
And I'm going to decide at halftime who plays the rest of the year.
And I was like, not what I wanted to hear.
But I'm going to deal with it the best way I can.
So, first game of the year, we played Notre Dame.
I start.
Drew comes in in the second quarter.
He says, Tom, you're going to play the rest of the game.
We're down four points with two minutes left in the game.
I drive him down the field.
We score.
We win the game.
I'm like, man, way to go.
I'm ready to keep this going.
He says, we're going to do the same thing next week.
Okay.
At this point, is this common?
This isn't like coaches do this regularly, right?
No, it's totally.
This is totally normal.
It's definitely not normal.
And again, I was a team captain, too.
So, you know, I had to do what was right by the team.
And I took that.
That was like one of the greatest honors.
I always say that was one of the great honors that you could have was when all your buddies from college and these great athletes, they name you captain because they say, man, you deserve it.
We want you to be the leader for us.
So I go into the second game of the year and I start.
Drew comes in.
He says, Tom, you're going to play the third and fourth quarter, which I did.
And we won pretty handily.
It wasn't against a great team.
So we played at Syracuse.
And I played in the first quarter.
We didn't score.
Drew came in through a touchdown pass in the second quarter.
Came in and he said, Drew's going to play in the second half.
And a fifth-year senior, captain of the team, 10-3, won a bowl game in my fourth year, got off to an undefeated start in my fifth year.
And I was like, all right, let me cheer him on.
I'm going to cheer him on.
And we won the game.
I stood up there and we sang the victors.
I sang it louder than I ever sang after a game.
Hail to the victors.
And I wanted my teammates to know that I had their back, even if it wasn't right for me.
Or I didn't feel it was right for me.
So we platooned for another couple games.
Sixth game of the year, we're undefeated.
We're going to Michigan State.
They had an undefeated team.
I started.
Drew played the second quarter.
And they started Drew in the second half.
We didn't have a great third quarter with Drew in.
So they brought me in and they said, Brady, you're going to play the rest of the game.
Almost the end of the third quarter.
We scored four touchdowns from the mid-third quarter to the end of the game.
And we ended up losing.
So we were 5-1.
I walked in there after the game.
All the teammates came up and said, great job.
And Coach Carr said, we're going to platoon next week.
And I was like, wow, we're really in on this platoon thing, huh?
We played Illinois at home.
We were huge favorites.
I played the first quarter.
Drew played the second quarter.
I started the third quarter.
I threw an interception.
He took me out of the game.
They put Drew in.
Drew threw an interception.
They took him out of the game.
They put me back in.
Had a pretty good fourth quarter of the game.
Driving to win the game.
Our starting center, we're in field goal position to win.
I'm in the shotgun.
Snaps the ball 25 yards over my head to knock us out of field out of field goal range.
We lose the game to Illinois.
And after that, Coach Carr said, the platoon's off.
Tom's playing the rest of the year.
We didn't lose a game the rest of the season.
So, and that wasn't just because of me.
I want to be really clear.
That was, we had a great team.
But what did I learn from that whole situation?
You know, it was a tough battle for me.
It was a tough go.
It was tough in high school.
It was really tough in college.
There was a lot of stress.
Nothing was given to me.
I didn't take the easy way out going to Cal and saying, God, that could be really easy.
Close to home.
My mom can do my laundry.
Everyone can come to the game.
I can start.
I stuck it out at Michigan where it was 10 degrees in the wintertime.
And it was a lot of tough competition.
So, of course, now I'm going to the NFL draft.
And I'm like, all these pro coaches must have seen how good I was.
I mean, they watched me in Michigan.
We beat Ohio State, you know, my senior year.
We played Alabama in the Orange Bowl.
I threw for 340 yards in the Orange Bowl.
We were down 14 points in the fourth quarter against Alabama in the Orange Bowl.
We came back and won in overtime.
Man, I'm going to be a second round pick.
And, you know, round one, two, and here we go.
Sixth round, pick $199.
And I was like, all right, I'm going to make all those other teams pay.
But what did I learn?
You know, what did I learn?
Like I said, I wasn't the prodigy.
I learned about work ethic.
I learned about resilience.
I learned about gaining the trust and the respect of my teammates and coaches to name me captain.
I learned about how to dig deep within myself a long way from home without a ton of support for the position I was in to still try to find a way to succeed in this situation that I really wanted to be in because it was the best for me anyway.
And here I go.
I get picked by the New England Patriots in the sixth round, 199.
And I always joke when they called me, they said, Tom, you know, hey, Thomas, you know, Bill Belichick, we're, you know, picking a sixth round.
Like, we'll see him Monday.
Like, get ready to go.
So to the Patriots, and there are three quarterbacks ahead of me.
Sound familiar?
So I was number four.
And Bill Belichick kept me as the fourth quarterback in my first year.
Now, now, like, there was just cuts the other day.
They keep two quarterbacks most of the time on an NFL roster.
Now, Bill Belichick saw something in me through watching me work a little bit and watching my love for the game.
All right, you know, we should, this kid's probably not ready to play, but, you know, I like him.
You know, he's kind of tough, and, you know, he doesn't look that athletic, but he throws the ball pretty well and he seems to really enjoy the game.
So I'm going to keep him on the roster.
And, you know, that's where my pro journey began.
So that was a long answer to your question.
But I think the most, if I look at that journey from where I was as a kid to where I was as a 22-year-old.
I had my parents that were in my life to support me every step of the way.
I had my junior varsity football coaches that were there every step of the way.
I had my throwing coach and mentor, Tom Martinez, there every step of the way.
I went to Michigan.
I had Coach Carr challenge me to say, those who stay will be champions.
So I stayed.
Greg Hardin found a way into my life who said, don't worry about all these things are out of your control.
Focus on what you can do.
Focus on the two reps you got.
I had all my teammates that supported me.
I had my sisters that supported me.
It takes so many people to get to where we get in our life.
Yeah, I was there doing some of the work, but I couldn't have done it if I didn't have them.
So when I stand up there, even sitting here today in front of you, I'm just a story like everybody else.
It's all just a narrative.
You know, you have people in your life that are there to support you, hopefully, that are going to encourage you and challenge you every step of the way because there's no straight line for anybody.
There's not a straight line for me in this path.
People, kids may sit here and your kids may say, God, oh, Tom Brady, you know, God, he was able to win.
You know, I heard you name some great, you know, records that I was very fortunate to be able to have over a 23-year career.
All I think about is my parents.
I think about my kids.
I think about my family.
I think about Greg.
I think about my best friend and body coach, Alex.
I think of the people that I work with every day.
So for me, I just am a representation of all these people that are coming to my life.
And I felt very motivated to, you know, I always said we play for the name on the front of our jersey was a Patriots or the Bucks.
And I played for the name on the back of the jersey, which was my family and the people that encouraged me.
So that was a great first, you know, 22 years of my career in my life.
And I got to the Patriots and you talked about that one moment where I said, wow, I can really do this.
So think about it.
I had been in all this competition at Michigan.
I had Brian Greasy ahead of me lead us to national championship.
I had one of the top recruits in the country, Drew Henson.
And I was staring those guys down every day.
Here I come to the Patriots and I get drafted and I'm fourth on the depth chart.
And I finally see Drew Bledsoe throw the ball for the first time.
And in my very naive, competitive way, because he signed a 10-year, $100 million contract with the New England Patriots when I was making $185,000.
I looked at him and I go, I could throw the ball better than that.
Which I was the only one on the field who saw that.
And I wasn't, but I had a belief that I could if I worked the same way and if I gained the trust and respect of my teammates in the same way, that if I ever did get that position, and I told this to my best friend who was one of my roommates in college, I said, if they ever put me on the field, they're never going to take me off the field.
And they never did.
Let me ask you, when's the last time, September 1st, you weren't preparing for a season?
I mean, it's got to be, you know, 32 years.
32 years, right?
So here's a question.
Why are you so loose?
I've never seen you this loose.
Why are you so comfortable?
Like, you are, I've watched a lot of your interviews.
I've watched a lot of times where you're being talked to.
You are like in a very comfortable, loose place.
Why is this happening right now?
It's kind of weird watching you.
Do you guys understand what I'm saying or not?
For sure.
You are so just like in a very good place.
What's going on with you?
Well, I think it's a lot of it's probably maturity.
I think, look, when you're, and maybe you guys have seen me, you know, on television and talking in front of, look, in the NFL, you're not up there to like narrate the story for the journalists.
You know, you're like, it's not a battle per se, but you're there to keep your strategy from anyone else.
You know, so when you, you know, I'm not up there to get into a lot of deep strategy because I feel like I was giving away things to the competition a lot.
So I learned, and look, when you're in the Patriots for 20 years, like, you know, we answered all the questions with as few words as possible.
And we were not trying to give away any bit of our strategy because it was intense competition.
So I just think now at this point in my life, you know, I'm here to share as much as I've learned.
I was, like I said, I've been, I feel like I've been so blessed.
I'm so grateful for all the people that have been in my life because I couldn't have done it without all of them.
All those experiences that we think are the hardest things in our life end up being the best experiences in our life because if you approach it with humility and you look inward, they become the best opportunities for growth and learning.
Is there a part of the reason why you may say, no, Pat, I'm always like this.
You just haven't seen me because I'm doing the interviews when they're asking me the question.
So what did you think about the ball that was dropped?
We all made some mistakes.
I made some mistakes.
We have to get back and watch the tapes and we're going to figure out a way to get better.
We're looking forward to playing XYZ team this next Sunday.
We have some work to do.
You would always like giving those answers, right?
But were you always like this behind closed doors?
And the reason why I ask is the following, because is there any anxiety when you're by yourself?
You're like, shit, I'll be playing right now.
I can beat that guy.
I can do this.
Or are you kind of like, that chapter is so done.
I am fully good.
I am so at peace.
I am so fulfilled.
I got so many other things I want to tackle.
I'm done, done.
And you're the way you are now.
Yeah, very much so.
I think it's a lot like that.
I feel like I did my part.
You know, I ran a lot of marathons.
And it's not that I wouldn't love to still do it.
I mean, I'd love to throw the football.
I'm going to probably throw the football for as long as I could.
But I also know that, you know, I don't know if it's a good analogy because a lot of people do run.
But man, it's great to run the first probably four miles of the marathon.
And it's really fun to cross the finish line.
But man, those middle miles probably really stuck.
And if you want to be good at those middle miles, you got to work really hard in the whole offseason to prepare yourself for a real big challenge, which is the NFL season.
And, you know, I have a 16-year-old son.
I have a 13-year-old son and a 10-year-old girl.
And, you know, they've been to enough of my games.
And, you know, I want to be at their games.
And I want to be there for them.
And, you know, it's a very intense season.
And, you know, it's just a different chapter in my life.
I was really, I was the oldest guy in the league for the last three or four years.
You know, I was like, and it's not that I didn't have the ability to still relate to those guys.
I still feel like I could go out there and play at a high level, but I just, you know, they need someone that's going to be in it year-round.
And I think for me, that commitment's too much because my kids need me year-round too.
And, you know, that's the most, you know, very important thing.
Tom, I had our guys run some numbers here.
So here's what we have.
College football, players of all time in the history of America, how many kids have played for college football, any level of college.
5.62 million kids have played college football.
Wow.
25,000 is NFL, which means roughly 0.0045 make it to the NFL.
Out of the 25,300 Hall of Fame, 0.012, okay?
Then you have the guy that makes it into the all-star game or the Pro Bowl, right?
Whatever the sport is.
Then you got the guy that wins a championship and is the MVP.
Big deal, right?
Then you got the guy that does it twice or three times.
And then you got the guy that keeps going and going and going and going and has got seven championship and he's already worth a ton of money.
There are no more accolades that this guy's got to get and he keeps driving.
So what is the mountain you have to hit for you to continue?
Meaning, it's already challenging enough to play for college football.
How many guys play college football here?
Put your hands up if you play college football.
It's not a lot of hands, guys.
You're putting your hands up for college football.
Okay, how many here played in the NFL or got drafted?
Anybody here play in the NFL?
How many hands do you see?
One person NFL.
Anyone else?
One out of 3,000, right?
We're talking NFL.
So for you, it has to be, you know how sometimes people use this script.
I'm assuming it's a script because if I had to make that decision, I'm not having this script.
Well, you know, I have to go talk to my wife and our family, and we're going to take some time off and decide what we're going to do next season and come up.
It's a phenomenal script that everybody uses, right?
You know deep down inside what you're going to be doing.
You know, you're like, I'm going to come back because I want to get that next one.
For each next hurdle and mountain, what did it take to get you back?
And was that like an evolution of making a decision?
Or was it like, no, man, I'm going to go because I don't know what interview was.
And one of the, if it was Edelman or if it was Walker, I think it was Edelman where you're like, hey, man, imagine if you beat Montana with five.
It's like, this guy's not going for Montana.
This guy's going for Michael for six.
He wants to have seven.
So did you know that's what you're doing to be the greatest of the greatest?
Or was it a process that was an evolution?
Yeah.
So, I mean, I'm happy I was very long-winded to give you guys a lot of context.
But to think about my high school journey and my college journey, now I get to the pros, right?
And I'm the fourth quarterback my first year.
And going to my second year, and I'm like, I made a lot of physical improvement, doubled down on my work ethic.
Now it was a professional work commitment, different than college, where college you're still an amateur.
Now, professionally, you're a pro.
It's different.
It's your job.
But I wanted to do extra because now I had more time.
I didn't have to go to class, you know, and I could just focus on football.
So I wanted to, you know, be a pro quarterback.
So I had to work at it.
And I watched Drew every game and I learned from him.
And I watched John Freese and Michael Bishop.
And my second year, we signed Damon Heward to be come in here and compete to be a backup.
And we signed a veteran quarterback.
And here I am going as the third quarterback.
And I said, I'm going to compete with Damon to be the second quarterback in my second year.
And I beat Damon out at the end of training camp.
And Coach Belichick said, you know, Tom's going to be the backup.
Damon, you're going to be third.
Drew's obviously the starter.
So in the second game of the year, Drew Bledsoe got hurt.
And I said, if I ever get put on that field, I'm never getting taken off the field.
And Drew suffered a very difficult injury, internal bleeding in the hospital, you know, and it was a crazy year, 2001 for all of us, 9-11.
And, you know, in my football journey, it was a crazy year.
We ended up winning the Super Bowl that year, and I had an incredible team.
But I learned that I was so motivated to be the best I could be, that it wasn't I wasn't motivated to be the starter.
I wasn't motivated to win the Super Bowl.
I just was motivated to give my best, do the best with the opportunity I got, and to never let my teammates down.
Those were my motivations.
This is at the beginning, you're saying.
It is beginning and throughout.
This is why people would say after, you know, a second Super Bowl that we won and a third Super Bowl that we won and a fourth Super Bowl we won in 2014 against Seattle and a fifth Super Bowl against Atlanta in 2016 and a sixth one against the Rams in 2018 and then they go to Tampa.
It was the same motivation.
Money didn't motivate me.
Fame didn't motivate me.
I didn't give a about any of it.
I always took less money because I wanted a good team around me.
I didn't care about going to all these different places and doing those things.
I just wanted to be my best.
I wanted to go out there and the team believed in me.
I didn't want to let them down.
Every year was different, just like in your business.
Every year is different.
You can't sit there and say, God, we had a great year.
Let's just do the same.
Like, you don't think everyone's watching?
The whole competition's watching, especially if you're good.
So it's one level of discipline.
And I think this is a lot.
Like discipline and I would say consistent discipline has been one of those prodigy-like strengths that I had.
So I didn't have the arm that could throw the ball 80 yards.
I didn't have the 4-3 speed that Michael Vick had.
I didn't have the, you know, the size that a lot of guys had.
But I did have something inside of me that no one could see from the outside, this level of discipline that I could accomplish something that was really important and really special.
But not let it get to my head and not to think that I've arrived or to think that I'm something different or better than anyone else.
I just thought, man, we put our mind to it.
We accomplished something incredible as a team.
Let's go do that again.
Wasn't that unbelievable?
And the good part in football is the next year you start right back at the bottom.
You don't start as Super Bowl champ.
Kansas City Chiefs, they're not the Super Bowl champs this year.
They were the Super Bowl champs last year.
And nobody could take that away from them.
That is theirs forever.
They have a banner.
They have a ring.
It's great.
But it doesn't mean anything for this year.
And that's the challenge of sports.
That's the challenge we all face.
That's the level of discipline.
I became very disciplined with my body through this guy who I met along the way.
His name's Alex Guerrero for the last 21 years, my best friend, body coach, mentor, everything.
I owe so much of my success to him.
And, you know, we just learned how to treat my body a certain way so that I could optimize my physical performance.
I could do things outside of the box because I needed my body to feel good.
It was my asset.
If my body started to deteriorate, I couldn't throw the ball the way that I wanted.
So a lot of people, you know, this is in a lot of people can be really consistent, let's say with your diet because it's always on people's mind.
Like, I want to get healthy.
Well, most people could say, man, I want to eat healthy for one day or I want to exercise for one day or I want to be more hydrated for one day.
Well, can you do it for a week?
Well, that's more discipline, right?
Can you do it for a month?
That's more discipline.
Can you do it for a year?
That's even more discipline.
So I was so blessed to have this discipline over a really long period of time.
And to be honest, people will say now, oh, come on, Tom, don't you go out there and just have whatever you want now that you're done playing?
And I'm like, no, man, this is still my asset.
This is still my body.
Look at what we dealt with at COVID three years ago that can withstand the traumas that it's going to be faced with.
And in football, it's faced every week.
You're getting a car crash every single week.
So how do I develop a body proactively?
How do I think about my health and wellness proactively?
So I don't find myself in the surgeon office at the end of the year.
So I don't find myself as a 50-year-old former athlete who needs a knee replacement.
So those were really important steps on my journey because when I began to understand how to throw the ball better, when I began to understand through Coach Belichick how to study the game more and to be a real student of the game, right?
There's only a certain lifespan for athletes.
Everyone thinks, oh, as an athlete, you just have to basically maintain this level until your body completely deteriorates.
Well, and I tried to prove to everybody, guys, it doesn't have to be like that.
You just got to make good choices every day, as good as possible.
And I still get people that go, how did you do it?
And I'm like, I wrote a freaking book.
I literally wrote a book.
Buy the book.
I mean, not to buy it from me, but buy it because it's good knowledge.
You know, like go out there.
I'm trying to give you answers to the test.
You know, this is a lot of athletes want to maximize their potential, maximize revenue.
You guys want to maximize the potential and opportunity you have in your business.
Well, that's a lot.
That's a lot of consistent discipline.
It doesn't mean that you can have one good month.
It means that you got to do a lot more right than wrong.
It means you got to make a lot more good choices than bad choices.
It means you have to be more disciplined than not disciplined.
It means you have to surround your people with very smart people, not people that are going to help you think less.
You got to challenge yourself, not challenge yourself less.
So we're all faced with those decisions every day, and you get the opportunity, just like I had the opportunity to choose.
What do you want?
What are your goals?
What are your priorities?
What do you guys want to achieve?
You guys are sitting here as entrepreneurs, CEOs, leaders, running business, running families.
What's the choice you get to make every day to wake up and say, all right, this is where I'm going to focus my time and energy?
How disciplined are you to maintain that routine over a period of time?
And I think that will determine your level of success.
Fantastic.
But the question, the question I ask is, why do it?
Meaning, is it a vision you're solving for?
Is it like yourself?
Hey, vision, in order for me to be able to play for XYZ years, XYZ years, and I got to be healthier.
I got to be appliability.
I got to be more flexible because I'm shooting for a goal or I'm shooting for a vision.
Or it's just, no, I got to be ready for this year.
I have a hard time believing that it's just for one year.
Was there a vision for you to say, if I'm going to be the best of all time, I'm going to need to make sure I take care of my health.
I take care of your mind.
I minimize the amount of distractions.
Were you solving for a vision or was it just one season at a time?
It was one season at a time.
And I'll say this.
I never once in my life ever said I wanted to be the best of all time.
Ever.
I wanted to be the best I could be, period.
That's all I wanted.
I learned that in college.
It didn't matter what the other guys were doing.
It didn't.
Powerful.
It mattered what I was doing.
I had to look in the mirror every night.
I had a, you know, for different reasons.
Last year was a hard year for me.
One of the hardest in my life.
And I printed out the man in the glass, you know, the big poster.
And I put it on my mirror in the bathroom.
And I looked at it every single day.
And I said, be proud of the man in the glass.
Be proud of that man that wakes up every day and does the best that he could do with his priorities.
You know, and a lot of things happen in our life.
You know, we all face our challenges and adversities and we all go through things.
And I think life is about dealing with a lot of things that you didn't want to have happen in your life, whether it's your business or whether it's sports or whether it's personal or, you know, children.
And like I said, we all have our unique challenges, but do the best you can do.
Show up every day and make the commitment to yourself and the people that count on you, the people that you support you.
And through a lot of failures, you're going to learn a lot and you're going to hopefully be humbled because sometimes, you know, you give your best and it doesn't work.
And I learned that in sports and you learn it in life in different ways too.
Sometimes you do what you do.
You try your best.
You work hard, but it just doesn't in the end go the way you want.
So what are you going to do?
Quit?
You're going to just blame everyone else?
You're going to go in there and blame the guy next door and blame that person and blame the dog and go out there and sleep until 10 o'clock?
Or are you going to get out of bed, wake up and go do something about it?
Learn from it and make it better.
So style of leadership, right?
Some of these guys here, they run the business, so they're the CEO.
They're the owner of the company and they have a right-hand person, right?
So let's just say the CEO is craft.
He's dealing with the coach and then the coach has the best salesperson or the best engineer.
These are different dynamics with relationships.
What was your style of leadership?
Meaning, leadership, we talked about it earlier today is one.
Hey, you lead by example, right?
But that's not enough.
Sometimes you lead by example, you're quiet.
You're like, you don't say anything.
Well, you got to do more than just lead by example.
You got to get other people to do things they typically wouldn't do on their own.
What style of leader were you?
So if I'm a guy that I'm like, hey, man, I don't want to play anymore.
I got two more years.
I want to get my check.
I want to go.
I want to go to a different team, get my big contract, and I'm done.
How are you talking to me there?
How are you enrolling me into me giving my best?
Are you asking questions?
Are you kicking my ass?
Are you taking me out to dinner?
Are you telling me to come over to the house?
What was obviously from the people that we've spoken, anybody we've talked that's been a teammate.
Tom, I've interviewed a lot of people that are athletes.
I don't know how many guys that were the GOATs, their teammates, freaking everybody loved them.
Dude, people love you.
Like teammates loved running with you.
You played three different careers.
You didn't have one career.
You were one of those guys that had three careers that you played.
But what was your style where you kicked their ass, you challenged them, yet you believed in them?
What was the method of you driving your guys?
Yeah, so a lot of it, it's a great question.
I think that, and this is another probably very important thing in my mind, is in terms of leadership is how you relate to the people that you work with.
And my vision of a relationship comes down to one word: caring.
Do you care about the other person?
And do you collectively care about what you're trying to achieve?
The only way people are going to feel that they can trust you is if you care about them.
So if you just see them as a transactional relationship, oh, you're just here for this time being.
Well, that's all they're going to give you.
But I felt like I need to connect, especially as I got older.
I got to connect with the young players.
I need a relationship.
I need the ability to relate to them.
They need to trust me.
I need to trust them.
We need to be vulnerable to one another.
I need to care for them.
So before I could yell at them, which believe me, I yelled at a lot of people.
The relationships I had with my teammates, I had, I played with guys from all over the country, every background, you know, every college.
And man, I got to be just me.
Like, you know, people, you would think, oh, man, you're treated a certain way, which, yeah, when you're outside of a building, people know you.
They see you on TV.
They treat you a certain way.
When you're in the building, man, you're just another guy.
You're like, you know, my son went to camp for three weeks sleep away camp.
And there's no electronics.
And this is up in Maine this year.
There are no electronics.
They sleep in like a like this log cabin.
You know, they swim in the lake every morning.
They eat in the cafeteria.
And I drive away last year and I'm like, we all need more of that.
And then about five minutes later, I was like, well, I do live that life.
I'm still a football player.
You know, we're all in this building where we're eating in a cafeteria.
We're getting MF'd by our coach.
You know, we're showering in the same spot.
You know, everyone's, it's an all-community.
You know, so this ability to have this relationship with so many people has been a great part of my life.
And I think my ability to relate to them, care about them, they felt like, well, if Tom, why should Tom care about me?
And I'm like, dude, because you're my teammate.
I know, Tom, but you've already won six Super Bowls.
I'm like, I don't give a shit.
Like, we have this year.
This is the year, my first year in Tampa.
I don't care what I did.
Like, that's, I look at those things one day and I'm like, that's great.
Someone's going to say it.
But this is the moment right now.
Let's get to work.
Let's, you know, let's get to know who you are.
Let's get to know you.
Let's make the most out of your career.
Look, my career is great.
Like, but I want the best for your career too.
And if it's going to be your best career, you need me to be good.
And I need you to be good.
So let's work together.
Because every year those things change.
Was it?
Was it, you know how you get a person that comes in and you sell them on the culture?
Here's what we're all about.
So leader, I'm going to sell you.
Here's why we do this.
Here's why you accept high standards.
Here's why you get up and do your here's why you watch the tape.
Here's why you take care of your health.
Here's why you get because if we do this, at the end of the season, we got a chance at winning a championship and being the best.
Okay.
Or is it more the pure pressure of the culture?
You either fit the culture or you're not going to want to be around this culture.
So you filter yourself out.
Which was more the model at specifically more under Belichick and yourself in New England.
Was it more selling the culture to the player or was it more, no, man, this is our culture.
Either adjust or I'm sorry, it's not going to work out.
I think it's a great question.
And it's like, it's hard to develop culture, right?
Because that's a word that's thrown around a lot.
And I think that has to do with like values of the company.
But in the end, what does culture mean to me?
Do we care about each other and do we care about what we're trying to accomplish?
Most people just care about themselves.
And you just care about your own personal situation.
My coworker.
What the mission is.
The owner usually doesn't think like that because this is his business.
But the more you give people the opportunity to have ownership of that culture, the better.
And I was in the, I look at some great cultures over the years.
Like, you know, sports are kind of easy, you know, somewhat easy.
But even like the culture of like, you know, the armed forces, our military, you know, like you show up to the naval academy, like, man, that's a culture.
Like, and people are accountable to that.
They show up every day.
They show up on time.
They respect each other.
Everyone's probably got different tenets that they believe in.
But the fundamental belief is I'm giving myself to something greater than myself.
I'm giving myself something greater than me as an individual because it's going to pay off in ways that nothing in life can be accomplished in a big way without teamwork.
Teamwork is what it's all about.
You show up every day, you play your role, you do your best, and then you communicate about it.
And then you have people that hold you accountable to the results.
And if the results aren't good enough, then you re-strategize or you get rid of some people and you move on.
So I think what we are fortunate enough to develop over an early period of time in New England was a culture of a lot of teammates that may not have been the best like myself, but we cared a lot.
We worked really hard.
We were really coachable and we won.
And then some other players were like, dude, that's what I want to do.
I want to win.
They joined our program.
So then we had, which is really important, you need people that drive the culture because it just can't be you.
Because when you turn your back to focus on what you got to do, you need other people driving the culture too.
And we developed a culture of culture drivers.
Willie McGinnis, Teddy Brewski, Mike Vrabel, Troy Brown, Wes Welker, Kevin Falk, Matt Light, all these guys that they just, it was inherent to what the team ultimately ended up becoming.
We all drove the culture.
And then no one was going to it up.
So you got some people that came in from other places.
And man, they might have had maybe a certain reputation.
And they realized that when they got in that locker room, I can't make bad decisions here.
There's no room for bad decisions in this place.
Now, not that we were all like angels or nothing.
We weren't.
But we weren't destructive to what the culture was.
And those guys who were, they didn't last long.
And they realized pretty quickly they didn't fit in.
And they moved on somewhere else.
And my view was always like, man, if you're about yourself, you may be amazing.
I would love to compete against you.
Go play for the other team.
Because when you're around a bunch of selfish people, and I've been around those, you know, guys that you win the game and they're pissed off because they didn't get the ball as much as they wanted.
And you're like, there's one ball.
I'm trying my best.
I'm trying to do what's best for the team.
Like, there's a lot of other good players here.
Some days it's going to be your week.
Other days it's not.
But what are we in this for?
We in here to pad your statistics, whether that's, because we all get accolades for those and we have, you know, people that want to see us succeed.
But in my view, the team success was always most important.
And I think the great reward in my life is not the record that you would read off before I came on stage.
What you said was your teammates loved you.
That's the greatest reward I could ever have.
I'm telling you, when we have the guys there, please, when we have the guys that are at Foxborough, and for me, sometimes if you want to learn about me, ask the people that work with me.
You're going to learn more.
If I want to learn about you, of course, I can do an interview with you and you'll give the answers you'll give and you're maybe not wanting to offend anybody.
So you kind of now at a different phase of your life.
But if I talk to your teammates, they're going to be like, no, man, listen, here's how he was.
Here's this.
Everybody talked very highly of you.
But let's stay on this.
So driver for you, what drove you more?
Because you just said something.
If you're selfish, hey, man, congratulations on you being great.
I cannot wait to compete against you, right?
Straight up to your face.
Okay.
What drove you more?
Did words of what other people said about you in the paper media drive you kind of like Ted Williams was driven by that?
Did, hey, Tom Brady is done.
You know, Max Killerman, every freaking season.
Now he's done.
He's done.
He's done.
Is it more Peyton Manning's the better quarterback between the two?
And it's just going to be like, you know, Joe Montana just yesterday said, well, the greatest quarterback of all time is Dan Marino.
We all know that.
It's not me.
It's not Joe.
It's time.
Okay.
Did that drive you?
You know, is it more, you know, the people who left you, they're like, hey, man, I mean, it's great.
It's been a great run, but I'm going to go play with XYZ team.
I'm going to go play with XO.
You think that guy's a better teammate to go?
Or is it people from other sports that they're like, hey, man, the greatest of all time, the GOAT?
I mean, listen, everybody says he's the MJ.
He's the Jordan of this.
He's the Jordan of this.
And why are they saying he's the Jordan?
Why don't they say he's the Brady of this?
He's the Brady.
I'm going to change.
And I don't know if you're going to be fully comfortable to assert because some of these guys are your relationship, your friends.
Which one drove you the most behind closed doors?
I think that the point is, is like the attachment of someone else's thoughts about me didn't, they did 1%.
And here I was, I was a little bit older, but I was still pretty decent as a player.
And I was like, all right, free agency's coming.
And I called my agent and I was like, all right, what's the deal?
Like, what do we think?
And he went off a list of teams, right?
And there was probably like seven or eight teams.
And in my mind, I'm like, seven or eight teams.
Like, there should be like 20 teams.
Like, you're telling me there's like that many better quarterbacks than me?
And obviously the situations fit certain ways.
But it came down to like there was a couple teams that like you can be motivated by more than 1%.
But I'm saying you could be motivated by a newspaper article or talk show debate or by people saying, Peyton managed to get better.
I got better.
But at the end of the day, I don't think that motivates you every day.
I just don't.
I don't think you wake up every day super motivated to go read the newspaper.
I think you wake up every day and hopefully you can look at yourself and say, did I give it my best?
Was that my best?
Did I give it everything I could?
Did the people around me get as much as I could?
And if the answer is no, that's okay.
Like, that's okay.
Like, but just at least you know it.
But don't think that, like, you know, that you're going to have a lot of success if all you do is care about yourself.
You don't work that hard.
No one's that accountable.
Look, I was on a team that was last year in Tampa.
It was tough.
When I see a defense sack the quarterback and every D line then runs up to the guy who sacks a quarterback and they do a group celebration, I go, oh, I don't want to play against it.
There you go.
But then I see one guy sack the quarterback and he's got his ninth celebration and, you know, and none of his teammates celebrate with him.
I'm like, well, he's in it for himself.
You know, that's not going to be, that's not going to go well over a period of time.
So these are just things you guys can see now, you know, with just a little awareness.
Like, who are the dangerous companies?
Who are the dangerous teams and competition that you guys are facing?
When you guys succeed, is it all about that person?
Is it about the team success?
I always felt like the quarterback's job is when it doesn't go well, you take the blame.
When it goes well, you give the credit.
That's what great leaders do.
You know, you always, that's how it should be in all those sports.
By the way, Sam, Kelly, Mario, can one of you guys find my phone and bring you to me?
I don't have the time, so I don't know what time it is.
One of you guys can find my phone.
Tom, question.
Have you watched the movie The Last Dance?
Have you watched the documentary last night?
I loved it.
So a couple questions for you.
One, the moment with Isaiah in Jordan, okay?
And I see you as a guy that you kind of, maybe you watch the competition and everybody else can.
I've seen your shot, your turnaround shot.
You got a good game as well.
You're an athlete.
You're a guy that kind of follows along with what's going on everywhere.
The moment of Isaiah not shaking his hand when they lost, and they walk off, Bill Amber, and Michael's like, you kidding me?
I lost you last year.
Humiliated.
I came and shook all your hands one by one by one.
And I said, hey, go win the championship.
I go in the gym, come back, train, we beat you.
You don't want to even give me that respect?
No problem.
And Michael was a grudge guy.
Yeah.
Okay.
And then dream team, boom, doesn't let him get back on the team.
And, well, it was never Michael.
It was never this.
Okay.
Well, it was Michael, let you say.
And then come to the celebration that happened last year or a few months ago where all the top 75 NBA players are there.
There's this one scene that's gone viral on TikTok.
And I don't know if you know which one.
I haven't seen it.
There's one scene that's gone viral.
It's freaking hilarious.
Yeah.
Where you see Magic is there shaking hands with Isaiah and Michael standing behind Magic.
Okay.
And Magic's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, all this stuff, all this stuff.
And then Isaiah walks off.
And you see, Michael comes and he whispers something in Magic's ear.
And this is within seconds after he talks to Isaiah.
And they are both laughing so hard.
Yeah.
Now, a couple trolls added additional sound to say what would have been said.
I'm going to show you afterwards.
It's unbelievably funny.
Did you in your career ever have an Isaiah Thomas?
I could hold a grudge as good as any of them out there, actually.
That was good aspects of, I would say, the motivation.
Like, you know, it's very different.
Like, I didn't have any friends on the other teams.
I didn't, you know, and I think it's a little different day and age.
Interesting.
Yeah, I didn't.
You had ex-teammates that left?
Well, yeah, to a degree, but I mean, I was, my friends were the guys that were in the battle with me.
So it's very different in today's age, which I actually think is a little, You've got to create a lot of different emotion to heighten your sense of awareness and focus.
Like for me, anger was good.
Anger was good because it was motivating.
The more I could create an enemy, the more I wanted to go out and kill those guys.
Now, I knew I was going to kill them physically.
But man, if I could just, what did they say?
You know, and what did they look like?
And did they disrespect me at all?
You know, and did that say something?
Like, those are little, little, little things that can get me right in the emotional frame of mind that when I ran on the field and I said, let's go.
It was really, let's go kick some ass.
That's what we were doing.
So there wasn't a lot of smiley faces with me out there.
There wasn't a lot of smiley faces with Michael Jordan.
There weren't a lot of smiley faces with Kobe Bryant.
There weren't a lot of smiley faces with Tiger Woods.
Right?
Tiger wasn't trying to be friends with anybody.
Tiger had no friends.
Tiger's friends were guys that he knew he could kick their butt.
Those were Tiger's friends.
And they were very happy to have their butts kicked by Tiger Woods to be his friend.
So Tiger had him right where he wanted him.
And I think for me, like, even when I watch sports today and I see like golf's a good example, I see these guys on the range.
Yeah.
Like they're all buddies and their caddies are friends.
And I'm like, that's not the killer instinct.
That's just not.
I don't know how you can want to crush the competition because they are your competition, but then to like have dinner with them the next night.
Now, I had a few friends like because maybe it was a long period of time, but I could count on one hand the number of maybe Peyton Manning and I.
And I love Peyton.
Maybe I've had dinner with him twice in 23 years.
And it's not because I don't love him.
I really do.
Twice in 20 years.
Probably.
And, you know, our competition was always like I looked up to him so much.
I admired Peyton Manning.
Like, I loved his game.
I loved everything he did.
But if we wanted to get where we wanted to go, we had to get through them.
So I had to create something different in my mind.
He couldn't be my friend.
You know, when I see that with a lot of the guys that, you know, Drew Brees, I love Drew.
He was incredible.
But he wasn't my friend.
Now he's my friend because I'm not competing him against anymore.
And I just think it's different now because of social media, the ability to connect with everybody.
Everyone's friends now in sports all the time.
And I'm like, I don't get that.
That's just not my thing.
So, and it's not that like I'm trying to be a jerk, but in my job, it's different than my personal, you know.
It's interesting.
Like when I was a quarterback, I was just playing quarterback.
Yeah, it was me, the person, but it was me, the quarterback that was out there because I was doing a job.
I wasn't the father.
I wasn't the dad out there.
I wasn't, you know, the husband out there.
I was the quarterback out there on the field.
I was a quarterback when I went to work.
Nothing was going to get in the way of that.
And then when I stepped off the field, great, I'm back to who I am.
I had to draw on a part of me that was emotional, aggressive, angry, decisive, irrational.
All those things.
And then when I came back into life, okay, well, like calm down, you know.
So, but I would say a lot of the guys that I looked up to approached it the same way.
You know, I don't think Jack Nicholas was trying to be friends with anybody.
I don't think Joe Montana was trying to be friends with anybody.
I don't think a lot of, I don't think Muhammad Ali or Mike Tyson were trying to be friends with anybody.
I think they were going out there on a mission.
And if there was someone in their way, they had to crush them.
Question, let me follow up.
So you said Peyton Manning.
To me, Peyton Manning is a competitor.
It's like Michael Clyde, Michael Barkley, Michael, you know, it's like a magic.
Fine, but you know, it was like, no, you know, the whole game in the Olympics, whatever game it was, where Michael and Magic, what do you call Magic and Bird came up to play that video that's about 40 minutes and 30 seconds?
And you see, he says, listen, I'm the guy.
There's a new chief in town, right?
And it was like, and like, listen, Larry says, magic, relax.
We're not at this guy's level.
He's better than us, right?
I'm not talking about competition.
I'm talking about who disrespected you because Isaiah disrespected Michael.
Did anybody disrespect you?
Disrespect you that you said it's done.
I would say there were very, I can't think of any competitors off the top of my head, coaches.
Like, I like the guys that would like, you know, and I remember a few instances.
Like, you guys remember Indomikin Sue?
Of course.
Okay.
And he ended up being a teammate.
Thank God.
Because Indomikin was one of the biggest, fastest, most explosive athletes the league has ever seen.
And the Dolphins signed him to like a $20 million a year contract, highest paid defender in history.
And they were in a division.
So we see him twice a year.
And he had a reputation that, you know, he was played to the echo of the whistle.
And I would always try to butter the D lineman up because I didn't want them like trying to hit me any harder than they already were trying to hit me.
Like they get paid a lot more the more they kick my ass, which that's good incentive for them.
So every opportunity I could get, I would try to be like, you're a great player, man.
Like stay out of my backfield.
You know, like, man, like, damn, you really hit me hard on that one.
You know?
So Indomikin, one time, we were playing in Miami, and he had been in the backfield like a couple plays in the game.
And I can feel it because I let go of the ball, and then this heavy ass arm would come in and just boom.
And I'm not that big.
I mean, he's, and when he hits you, it's like different than everyone else hitting you.
And I never wanted to show him that, like, God damn, that hurt.
So he got me a couple times early.
So it was like the second drive of the game, and we were driving the ball.
And I let I, one, two, three, four, five, I dropped it and I threw the ball.
And just as I threw it, boom, he hit me again.
And I'm like, how did he get here that quick?
So I slapped him on the butt and I go, dude, stay out of our backfield today.
And he looked at me, goes, I'm not your friend.
And I was like, I respect that.
I respect that.
I never said another word to him.
And he became my teammate a few years later.
And I love being his teammate.
But look, he didn't give that, you know, I won this or won that or had this or that.
And there were a lot of guys that were.
A lot of guys would come up to me and they'd be like, hey, man, it's an honor to be on the field with you.
And I was like, oh, thanks, man.
I appreciate it.
And in my mind, I'm thinking, they're done.
Here we go.
It's going to be easy.
Today's going to be easy.
So, Tom, I have to ask this question from you.
So, six championships.
Okay.
You got six ranks.
So, from a fan's perspective, and we've had this debate with friends, just to kind of see which one it is.
What drove you more?
Was it to get one more than Belichick or one more than Michael?
It was neither.
I promise you.
I promise you, it wasn't.
It was, I, I, when I really doubled down on my health and wellness in about 2013 with Alex, who I referred to earlier, and I said, I said in my, when I turned 30, I want to play till I'm 40.
And I started to improve in my 30s, which doesn't really happen for athletes because I really started to work on all the things that were making me successful physically.
I only trained doing the things that really worked.
My nutrition got better, my hydration got better, all the pliability of treatments I got better.
And he and I would joke, dude, like this is unbelievable.
I'm getting faster.
My arm's getting better.
I learned better techniques.
A new mentor came into my life, Tom House, who's another great throwing coach.
I learned a lot from him.
I had all these years with Belichick.
Mentally, I knew what to do.
Physically, I was improving.
Emotionally, I was at a great point.
Like, why can't I continue to go?
And I just thought, man, I'm going to play 10 more years.
And when I was 35, I was like, I feel better at 35 than I did at 30.
Like, I still got another 10 years in me.
And I literally committed.
I got 10 more years.
And I said, I'm going to play till I'm 45 years old.
And last year, I was 45 years old and playing.
So what it's not about, like for me, the when I made that decision at 35, it wasn't, I'm going to play until I win seven Super Bowls.
I never once said that.
We won the fifth against Atlanta, which was unbelievable.
Unbelievable.
Like that, that game, my teammates, like that was sick.
That was incredible.
I still watch that.
And I'm like, it was, I mean, I'm glad I was playing because I'd had a heart attack if I was watching.
And then 2017, we actually had like probably a better chance to win.
And we lost to the Eagles in the Super Bowl.
And we played a great game.
We just, look, I played great.
I just, we didn't win.
Then 2018, we freaking found a way to beat the Rams through a lot of good process, a lot of good, we weren't the most talented team in 2018.
We were.
We won on process.
We won on culture.
Our culture drivers led us to succeed.
We won through work ethic.
We went through a lot of intangibles.
And then I went to Tampa in 2020.
And, you know, we put together a great group of players, teammates.
Everyone was super focused that year.
And then I just think winning Super Bowls was the result of a lot of great process.
Like my view is like, you can't control the outcome all the time, right?
Like the ball's going to bounce the other team's way.
Like dude caught the ball on his helmet in 2007.
That would have been the greatest team ever.
And that's like one that still gets me.
Because we had a great team that year and the dude caught the ball in his helmet with one of the greatest player I ever played against on his back.
Sometimes it should go the other people's way.
It shouldn't always go your way.
So you get motivated by the losses.
You stay motivated through the winning.
What you can control is your process.
You can control those intangibles.
You can control the work ethic, the consistent discipline, your attitude, your culture, how much you care.
All those things are in you.
They just need to be drawn out of you.
And really, when you're in that position that you feel like you're got those pretty well under control, then you start passing those on to the other people that you're working with that are parts of your team.
Because I don't care how good any one of you are sitting out there.
It doesn't matter unless you got a great team around you.
You know, you could be great.
You probably are great.
You need a lot of other great people to support you.
Tom, and I, and I, absolutely.
I appreciate the answer.
It's awesome.
It's great.
But I'm selfish and greedy, man.
I got to push back.
Let me tell you why.
Okay.
So, you know, I'm writing a book right now.
It's going to come out December 5th.
It's not out.
It's going to come out like four or five months called Choose Your Enemies Wisely.
I think you've chosen your enemies wisely because I think for me, I'm driven by enemies.
I can't even describe it to you.
Like I have a list of all the quotes, everything they said, what they looked at.
I mean, my names are for me.
I know what I'm driving at this point in my life.
And then you graduate enemies and you say good things about them and you go find new ones.
And then boom, new ones.
Boom, new ones, right?
Okay.
So let's say that's really the reason.
Let's buy into them.
We're going to be skeptical as fans and we'll have our beers and talk and say, I don't agree.
I agree.
We'll do our part, right?
Because you're the guy.
We're on the other side.
I don't know.
If you're going to do that, then you would have stayed with a team and you would have wrapped it up there.
Robert Kraft is willing to give you a one-day contract.
I think he said it this year, May 23rd, to come back.
Patriots, I want to do the ceremony, which freaking is going to be sick.
Of course, whether he's joking or whatever, I'm just being playful about it.
You know, he loves you the way he looks at you.
He's got so much love for you.
But you come back and you get your seventh.
Just like you said, maybe 1% of the media drove you.
Which one of the two drove you more?
Even if it's by 1% or half a percent, is it having one more than Michael or Belichick?
I got to ask you, bro, you're killing me.
Even if it's half a percent, why are the two?
I would rather have one than lost.
And I'd rather have seven than six.
I get it.
But if Coach Belichick was to win a Super Bowl this year, I don't think it takes anything away from me.
I think it only adds to how great he is.
Like, I have a great appreciation for him because without him, I'm not sitting here today.
So, like, he wasn't my competition.
He was my competition when I played against him that one game and we won.
But he wasn't, like, I genuinely root for them.
I really do.
Like, I think every once in a while, and maybe you guys have seen little snippets of me that, look, I do have a little grudge from time to time.
And I think that's totally fine.
I think emotion, you know, maximizing and optimizing our potential is physical, mental, and emotional.
I believe that.
Physically, I was able to, mentally, emotionally, there's little triggers absolutely all the time.
Some opponent says something in check.
They really don't want me in high school.
Check.
Oh, I was a six-round pick.
Check.
All those little things add up.
But I still, the man in the glass, that's the one that motivated me.
He's the guy I was accountable to.
Nothing that anyone did took away from me.
The only person that could take away from me is me.
So can I give you my interpretation of that answer?
Please.
Okay.
By the way, this is my interpretation.
I speak sign language, right?
So I'm trying to kind of read in between the lines.
The way I take it is, Eiffel could beat them straight up, the one game that you played.
But in my mind, based on what you just said, having one more than Michael is more important than having one more than Belichick.
That's how I process what you just said.
Is that fair?
Is that fair?
Can I live with that?
Can you?
I love Michael Jordan as literally, there's no athlete.
I'm not running off.
Michael is like, if there's your kids, you know, and that throw, I don't know how they feel about me.
I think today is positive.
They love you.
They love you.
But Michael Jordan was my, everyone wanted to be like Mike.
So like, even when I see Mike today, I'm still like, that's Michael Jordan right there, you know?
And I just think he's the coolest guy.
And, you know, I loved his determination.
I love, you know, I see like what Messi's doing here in Miami.
Like, unbelievable.
Like, I see Cristiano Ronaldo.
I admire athletes as much as anybody else.
Especially the guys that I really, you know, it's like there's some guys that are athletes, athletes, you know?
And when I see some of those guys, those are the guys that I love.
You know, like I was in, I went to a preseason game the other day and I saw Steve Smith.
He was the receiver for Baltimore and Caroline.
And I f ⁇ ing love Steve Smith because he wanted to kill the defensive back.
89, right?
89.
And he was a little dude, but played with the biggest heart.
And I would have loved to play with Steve Smith and Julian Edelman.
And these guys, like, there's a lot of guys that are prima donnas.
You know, they were the prodigies.
It just came easy for them.
You know, like, I don't think it came easy for Michael Jordan, as great as he was.
You know, LeBron's been through a lot.
It's tough for LeBron.
Like, he's unbelievable.
You know, so I love Steph Curry.
Like, these are the guys that I look up to.
And they inspire me, you know, in the same way.
So I'm looking to be inspired too.
Just like you guys are looking to be inspired.
I'm looking to be inspired too.
And I draw on a lot of people that are teaching me different things too.
So I came and speak because of you.
So I came here because I love what you're doing with people.
I love how you're trying to impact the world in a positive way.
Thank you.
Thank you, Tom.
Appreciate you.
So, means a lot.
Thank you.
But I got a gift for you.
I got a gift for you.
We put almost a thousand hours into this gift, okay?
Based on some of your answers, I think you're going to love this gift.
I don't know what kind of reaction I want to get from you.
You have no idea how much I've been thinking about it all night saying, I hope this guy falls in love with this gift as much as I freaking love this gift to give to you.
But before we give the gift, I do want to go through.
We order these supplements for everybody.
These are their protein bars.
Did you guys, everybody should have one of these on their, what do you call it?
On there.
We got 3,000 of these for you.
So a few things.
So for you, when it comes down to your health, if we can talk about TB12 so everybody knows and they can go to the website, we'll put that in the video as well.
So a few things.
You, one, you sleep at 8.30.
Two, bioceramic sleepwear, right?
Recovery pajamas, okay?
No tomatoes, no strawberries, no eggplant.
Flotation therapy, two gallons of water a day.
Breakfast, 36 ounces of protein, 80% vegan, 20% organic meat.
If you eat chocolate is a square of chocolate and it's a specific kind of chocolate, right?
It's a cacao or something like that.
Dark chocolate.
Yeah, the dark chocolate that you eat.
Man, like, how much was this and this the reason why you were able to play as long as that you did?
Yeah, huh?
I mean, hugely important.
It's like, you know, everyone, like I said, this is, I was trying to treat my body like a Ferrari, like an F1 car.
You know, you just can't put little crappy tires on there and, you know, figure out how much gas you got.
Like, I always wanted a lot of gas in the tank, especially as I got older because it got challenging for us.
You know, we're not young.
We don't, you know, have the same, you know, biology in our 40s or 30s that we did in our teens and our 20s.
So I had to really lock in on my routine over a period of time.
And I think that a lot of that didn't happen overnight.
Like, I started with my body coach Alex and started taking some, like, just nutritional supplements.
And then when I got good at that, I started doing a lot of pliability work, making sure that all my muscles were long and unrestricted.
Then I started to go, okay, well, the only way to improve our treatments through long and unrestricted, you know, movements with my muscles is to hydrate them.
You know, do you want your muscles to look like beef jerky or do you want your muscles to look like beef tenderloin?
Should they be really moist and hydrated so they can move?
That's the only way to absorb the forces on the field.
Great.
Let's stay really hydrated.
Oh, great.
We cause a lot of inflammation in our bodies through workouts, through playing football games, through practicing, through throwing passes.
How do I reduce inflammation?
I got to eliminate some foods that cause inflammation.
Strawberries, eggplant, all the nightshades, tomatoes, things that we referred to.
So a lot of those things took 12, 15 years to really manifest themselves in total.
But I approached it in a very holistic way.
It wasn't like, hey, I do all these things at one time.
It was, let's just start slow, you know, and then work over time to improve, you know, this process of my body and what I needed to do in order for it to go out there every day and compete with guys that were half my age.
So all those things that you did were just little routines that built up.
And like anything, the routine I had in high school, that worked for me.
So I wanted to improve it in college.
I wasn't going to go, oh, I made it.
Now I'm actually a starter.
Let's go back to sleeping into nine o'clock, not studying my film, eating like crap, not caring about my teammates.
No, it was like, let's do more of that.
And then I got to the pros and it was like, what should I have done?
Oh, let's compete a little less, care a little less.
You know, now that I'm a professional.
No, it was like, let's double down on that.
So when it came to my health and wellness, it was more of that.
Oh, hydrating works.
I felt a lot better.
I don't feel like I had any really soft tissue injuries.
I could go out there and play a full season.
Let's do more hydration.
Oh, my diet's getting better.
I like the way my body's shaping up.
Let's do more of that.
Great.
Oh, my God.
I'm working out and I'm not as sore.
Let's do more treatments.
You know, so a lot of those things were just me trying to be open to the people that came into my life to say, hey, man, you know better than me.
So let me learn from you.
And let me try to take those things and incorporate them over, you know, this first half of my life.
What a great brand, by the way.
TB12.
What a great name for a brand.
Make some noise.
Tom Brady.
Yeah.
Okay, Tom.
I want you to face this way.
If you want to stand up, I want you to look this way.
Okay.
I never turn my back on a crowd.
Sunday, come hit me back there.
Alan, to get camera angle from there, a B-roll angle from there.
Alan, if you can come, Maverick, get it from that angle as well.
That angle.
I don't want you to look yet, Tom.
I don't want you to look at it.
I can't fit that in my car on the way home, you know?
We're going to deliver this to you.
So I want to, okay, so we sat there and we said, I wanted to put a painting together.
And we made a list of all the things that I think moves you.
Memories, family, moments you've had, all of those things in one painting.
I went and called my friend Brent Taylor, who's done a painting for me.
He's done a painting for Mark Cuban.
And then we started working on this.
Wow.
And it was phase one, phase two, phase three, phase four, phase five.
No, we got to fix it.
We got to do this.
We got to do that.
Constantly going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth until we finally got this.
So if you don't mind coming, don't take it off yet because I want him to see you and all of it come.
I want to see the audience react first, then you see it.
If you don't mind looking this way first.
Okay.
Okay, go ahead.
I can start crying.
Take it down.
Take it.
You cannot put it all down.
Go for it.
Put it all down.
Yeah.
Go for it before I tell Tom to come down.
Okay, hang on.
Okay, Tom, I want you to look at this.
Can I look?
Yes.
Tell me if you like this.
Oh, man.
So, can I explain?
Wow.
This is obviously family.
We know what game this is.
Wow.
This is you, all your rings, your favorite teammates, the legendary picture here, you draft 199, Michigan, your mom, your dad, you, your kid.
We created this Mount Rushmore with yourself, Michael, Tiger Woods, Messi.
And then we got the Tampa side, all of this gift for you.
So when you look at this, it reminds you of what you've done with the first half of your life, man.
This is hopefully a gift you appreciate from us to you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Anytime, man.
Oh, man.
Thank you, Bob.
Thank you.
Unbelievable.
Yes.
Thank you.
Unbelievable.
That's spectacular.
Thank you.
Anytime.
Any final words to the crowd before we wrap up?
Yeah, let's do a quick picture here.
Yeah.
Let's do a quick picture here.
Where do you want me?
I'm going to go to the next one.
Anywhere that come back to you.
Go for it.
Tom, any final thoughts?
Yeah, I would just say, obviously, it's a pleasure to be here with you guys today.
And I think for me, it's always, you know, I still think of myself as a kid growing up in the Bay Area, like on Portola Drive.
And to have you guys come out and obviously be a part of this event with Patrick.
It's an honor for me to be here.
And I'm happy that I could share a few things with you guys that could inspire you guys to dig a little bit deeper, to learn a few things that you could take back with you and your everyday life to try to maximize your potential and take advantage of the opportunities that you get.
And we're not victims of this life.
You know, we wake up every day with choices to make.
And you get a choice every day.
And like I said earlier, I think whether or not you're going to look back on your life as a success is going to be determined by what your values and priorities are and how often you're willing to wake up every day and make the choices that are going to fulfill you and bring you the joy that you're looking for.
So this is a great step in the journey.
It's an honor to be with you guys and hopefully we can do it again sometime.
Thank you.
Give it up, Tom Brady.
So I'm curious, now you've seen the whole thing.
What do you think was more important to get the seven drink?
Was it more I can do one on my own or was it more about Jordan being the goat of goats?
I want to hear your thoughts.
But you know, a lot of times I get asked questions about how you prepare for interviews like this.
Number one, it makes it very easy when you're very interested in the person you're sitting down with.
I am very interested in the guy we just sat down with is Tom Brady.
My entire family had to read Man in the Arena and write a paper on it.
My 10-year-old and my eight-year-old son at the time, they're now 11 and 9, we rented our Foxborough to go out there and take 96 of our sales executives and watch Man in the Arena for two days and bring out a couple of Tom's teammates and his manager for them to ask him as much questions.
And then during the break, they're eating food and they're on Foxborough, watching the stadium, just mentally, emotionally getting to that place.
But, you know, if you think about preparing for these interviews, if you're asking that question, the way I prepare for these interviews is I like facts.
I like history.
I like watching a bunch of content, which why I watch a lot of different things on him.
Then I like things I'm interested in, angles, topics.
Our research team does a phenomenal job.
Back in the days when I was doing interviews, we didn't have a research team.
So I was the research person, but you can hire fiverr in a lot of different ways to do it.
So it was a great experience sitting down with him.
I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.
I will say a lot of times people want to ask me questions to say, Pat, how do you do this?
How do you do that?
We launched an app recently called Minect.
And the whole purpose of this app, Minect, is many times you'll DM a lot of different people and they don't respond.
And the reason why they don't respond is because they've got a thousand DMs.
They can't just respond to everybody, but you want to get an answer back.
So what if there was a platform where you could pay to get a respond back for a DM with a video or a FaceTime call with the individual?
