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Tom Brady’s success came with a cost, and the bill seems to be coming due
Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady is still going through some things.
After making the decision to retire, and then deciding to come back for yet another season, Brady has endured some struggles through the early part of the 2022 NFL season. He has looked miserable when the Buccaneers have won, and he has seemed frustrated when they have lost, as he was this weekend in a loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers.
With rumors and stories regarding his personal life swirling around him, Brady shed even more light on the struggles he is dealing with this season recently. On a new episode of his “Let’s Go!” podcast, Brady spoke with Jim Gray and Kevin Durant about life during the season, drawing a comparison that raised more than a few eyebrows.
“I almost look at like a football season like you’re going away on deployment in the military, and it’s like, ‘man, here I go again,’” Brady said. “There’s only one way to do it.”
The veteran quarterback then elaborated:
“The reality is you can really only be authentic to yourself, right? Whenever you may say, ‘Oh man, I want to, you know, make sure I spend a little more time doing this.’ When it comes down to it, your competitiveness takes over and as much as you want to have this playful balance with the work balance, you’re going to end up doing exactly what you’ve always done, which is why you are who you are. You’re going to go, ‘how the (expletive) do I get it done?’ You know, ‘what do I got to do to get it done?’”
This statement from Brady is, perhaps, his career in a nutshell. What made Brady the quarterback he is today, and a seven-time Super Bowl Champion, was that competitiveness. That drive to prove everyone who doubted you wrong, even those who would dare to question you after two decades of success.
But that certainly comes at a price.
Consider this story, from Arizona Cardinals head coach Kliff Kingsbury. Back in May of 2015, Kingsbury and Brady were together in the Bahamas for the wedding of a mutual friend. As Kingsbury put it, everybody was having fun the night before the wedding, including Brady. “The night before the wedding, everybody’s up getting hammered. I mean, everybody. Even Brady is having fun.”
The next morning, Kingsbury could not sleep in, so he gets in a golf cart shortly after dawn to explore the resort, and could not believe what he saw:
“I wake up early because I can’t sleep real well and so I’m going to check out the island and I get in a little golf cart and I’m cruising along and I look up and I see on these polo fields some dude with some other guy, and it looks like he’s doing resistance bands drops. And I’m like, ‘What the…’” Kingsbury said. “So I drive over — this is like, 7:30 [a.m.], we were up getting after it — I go over, [Brady] is already pouring sweat. He has this assistant who’s holding these resistance bands. This is in paradise, and he’s just crushing these drops and then sprinting through and the dude’s just killing it and getting this workout in.”
Brady’s near-maniacal drive to succeed comes at a price, including sleeping in after a night of drinking in May, the offseason. Kingsbury could not believe what he was seeing, a quarterback still driven to this point despite all his success.
“I’m like, ‘You are such a sociopath, such a sicko,’” Kingsbury said. “His desire to be the best ever is just on [another level]. The world hasn’t seen much like this. A guy who has dedicated every waking moment, diet, sleep, work ethic, to being the best ever. So that just kind of tells the story of him and what he’s about.”
But for Brady, there is no offseason, not if you are going to become — and remain — the quarterback you want to be. You dedicate every waking moment to “being the best ever,” including treating the season like a military deployment.
The desire to be great has a flip side, with what it costs you in other areas of your life. For Brady, in his mind there has always just been that “one way to do it,” as he draws the comparison to a military deployment. It has led to his seven Super Bowl rings.
That drive, and eventual success, however, comes at a price. At this point in his playing career, Brady is still struggling to find that balance, and he may never will.
