Video of Tom Brady Sharing His Uniquely Tom Brady Advice With NFL Rookies is All the Life Coaching Anyone Could Ever Need
Remember this photo. Because this image will inspire the statue that gets unveiled in 2044 after Drake Maye leads us to seven championships.
These two generations of Patriots quarterbacking greatness, past and future, crossed paths at the NFL Rookie Symposium. In case you've gotten, this event is where the NFL assembles its top draft picks to get advice on managing their finances, protecting themselves, prolonging their careers, and life in general. It drew a lot of attention in 2014 when the rookies got a talk from Warren Sapp, who later that season would be accused of assaulting and robbing two Phoenix area prostitutes over Super Bowl XLIX weekend. Sapp was joined by Cris Carter, who famously advised them to designate a member of their "crew" to be "a Fall Guy" to take the rap should they ever get into trouble:
Well this year the league took a different tack. Rather than book an ex-player who pays for 3-way sex and then reneges on paying (allegedly), and another who weirdly puts on an affected accent he's never used in thousands of hours of television to tell young men to do sell their loyal friends down the river for something they themselves have done, they settled Tom Brady and Jay-Z.
The best player in the history of the sport and the music mogul who's currently cashing massive checks from the NFL to keep the Super Bowl halftime show cool so we ever have to endure Maroon 5 again. And in doing so, gave these impressionable 20-somethings the best advice anyone has probably ever received:
"When you have 53 guys on the team and you think it's all about you, it ain't about you. It's about us. And the biggest problem I see with a lot of the young players today is you guys are making it too much about 'I' and 'me' because of social media and because of branding and all that.
"It's fine. You're not gonna win. …
"There was a difference between being a star and being a champion. …
"Every day of practice is important. And you know why? Because when I was on the Patriots and we had 20 years of winning, every day was a big day. I treated a preseason game, I treated a regular season game, like it was a Super Bowl. So when I got to the Super Bowl, it was just another day for me."
Oh, and that aforementioned future statue I referenced? Here's the inscription for the base of it. Because words this profound deserve to be chiseled in granite for all eternity. Not unlike the words of Socrates, Lincoln, or MLK. This speech is part them, part Herb Brooks in the Team USA locker room, part Yoda. But ALL Brady.
Sure, as I've mentioned before, a cynical man could point out that Brady is decrying athletes using social media to draw attention to themselves when he owns a fitness and lifestyle brand, a production company that has done two documentary series about his life, as well as a movie about his adoring fans that has his own name in the title:
… and was just the guest of honor in a celebrity roast that was the most talked about TV show of 2024.
But that doesn't make him wrong. Nor does it mean these prospects wouldn't be wise to commit every word of his advice to memory and follow them to the letter. Because he did treat every preseason and regular season game like it was a Super Bowl. And, I'll add, every practice too. He endeavored to make every snap of training camp perfect. When it wasn't, he worked on it until it was. Ross Tucker has told the story many times about how in his short stint in New England, Brady pulled him aside to work on snaps with a level of detail he'd never seen from a teammate, telling him "It all begins with you and me."
He treated those reps like it was the Super Bowl. As opposed to Vince Vaughn's Jamie O'Hara in Rudy:
That's the difference between being a star and a champion. And, I'll add, the difference between being a champion and a GOAT.
So make the most of the rare and blessed opportunity you've been given, noobs. Whether or not you also decide to keep a Fall Guy handy, that's up to you.