From Bill Belichick to martial woes to President Donald Trump.
Tom Brady’s interview with Howard Stern had no boundaries. Whether Brady was talking about naked men in a locker room or his relationship with Bill Belichick, you got the sense the former New England Patriots quarterback was prepared to speak freely for the first time in a long time.
New England, after all, has a reputation for hushing up their players. But Brady now works for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, where the team doesn’t care quite so much about controlling the output of information. In fact, coach Bruce Arians is notoriously transparent with the media. It was an interesting change of pace to see Brady address so many topics candidly.
Here’s a roundup of some of his comments.
“I think he has a lot of loyalty,” Brady said Wednesday morning with SiriusXM. “I think he and I have had a lot of conversations that nobody’s ever been privy to and nor should they be. So many wrong assumptions were made about our relationship or how he felt about me. I know genuinely how he feels about me. Now, I’m not going to respond to every rumor or assumption that’s made other than what his responsibility is as Coach is to try to get the best player for the team not only in the short term but in the long term, as well. What I could control was trying to be the best I could be in both of those situations also.
“I got into uncharted territory as an athlete because I started to break the mold of what so many other athletes had experienced. So, I got to a point where I was an older athlete, and he started to plan for the future which is what his responsibility is. And I don’t fault him for that. That’s what he should be doing. That’s what every coach should be doing. Not that I would ever coach, but if I’m ever in a position of authority, I would understand that too. I recognize that. We’ve talked about it.”
“I called up Mr. Kraft, and I went over to his house, and I just said — and it was a funny time because we’re all dealing with this current corona situation that we’re in,” Brady said, transcribed by NESN. “I went over, and I just said, ‘Look, I just want to say how much I love you and appreciate what we’ve done together. I know that we’re not going to continue together, but thank you. Thank you for providing what you have for my family and for my career.’
“I was able to call Coach (Bill) Belichick at the same time and thank him. It was great, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.”
“I would never want for them to be Tom Brady’s son playing football. I don’t like that at all,” Brady said, transcribed by NESN. “But from a team, camaraderie, discipline, I think there’s something about contact sports that teaches you a lot about discipline, respect, mutual respect for your opponent that you don’t get in non-contact sports.”
“What kept me from smoking a lot of weed — obviously in high school you try that and drink and go to parities — but I always felt like I was letting my dad down,” Tom Brady told Stern. “I definitely had fun in high school with partying and drinking and smoking weed on occasion.”
“I thought when I got hit, something happened,” Brady explained. “It ended up being a hernia in the game, where the abdomen wall split open. I don’t know all the details. But other than that, (my) testicles — literally, one side was like an orange and then the other side was normal. I was like, ‘Something’s wrong here.’
“The guy who was my backup quarterback at the time, Matt Cassel, drew pictures of me with this one huge testicle on one side, and then he would leave them in my locker every day,” Brady told Stern. “‘Purple Balls,’ he’d call me because I got all bruised up. Man, that (expletive) hurt. “That was a really tough injury. There were a few of those over the years.”
“She wasn’t satisfied with our marriage, so I needed to make a change in that,” Brady told Howard Stern on Sirius XM on Wednesday. “Her point was, ‘Of course this works for you. It all works for you. But it doesn’t work for me.’ … The point of a relationship is that it has to work for both.”
“A couple years ago, she didn’t feel like I was doing my part for the family,” Brady said. “She felt like I was playing football all season, and she would take care of the house. And then all of the sudden the season would end and I would say, ‘Let me get into my business projects. Let me get into my football training.’ And she’s sitting there and saying, ‘Well when are you going to take care of the house? When are you going to take the kids to school?’ And that was a big part of our marriage that I had to check myself, because she has goals and dreams, too.”
“Then the whole political aspect came, and I think I got brought into a lot of those things because it was so polarizing around the election time. It was uncomfortable for me, because you can’t — and not that I would undo a friendship — but the political support is so different than support of a friend,” Brady said in an interview with Howard Stern on SiriusXM on Wednesday.
Brady added: “I didn’t want to get into the political thing.”
“I don’t have any trust that this guy can help us win the game. If you put him out there, I’m going not to throw him the ball,” Brady said, relaying what he’d tell Belichick.
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