The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are preparing for their most-anticipated season in nearly two decades.
If they want to be special, they’ll have to treat their new quarterback as though he is any other player. At least that is what former New England Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi believes.
Bruschi was a teammate of Brady’s for nine years, so he knows a thing or two about playing with the best. In that time-span, the Patriots won three Super Bowls thanks in large part to the heroics of Brady, but also an overpowering defense that proved to be among the NFL’s best. That’s why Bruschi believes the Buccaneers should not just feel safe because they have Brady on the offensive side of the ball.
“They need to get over Brady-watching,” Bruschi said, as transcribed by ESPN’s Jenna Laine. “Because they get to the sideline and all of a sudden it’s like, ‘It’s okay, Tom will bail us out.’ That’s what I call Brady-watching. I’ll be watching that early on with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, if they’re Brady-watching or if they feel themselves as a team that everything is important, and not just when that guy right there is under center and everything is gonna magically happen.”
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Bruschi also explained his feelings about players on Brady’s team calling him the GOAT, saying they should be treating him as a peer more than anything else.
“I’ll say this right now,” Bruschi said. “If those players see him as that four-letter word, they better get over it. The four-letter word is a word I will not use to describe him. It’s that farm animal, it starts with G. I don’t do that. Because that’s almost like putting him on a pedestal. It’s like, dude, you’re still the same guy I intercepted in practice and took 20 bucks from. Come on, now.
“That’s my one advice to his teammates right now. He is on a level plane as you, because he’s gonna make mistakes, but he’s also gonna make you better. And it can’t be done without you. Don’t look to him to do it. Our teams never did.”
Many will agree Brady still was a ways away from being considered one of the best to ever do it when he and Bruschi were teammates, but Bruschi makes a point to which most Patriots of the Brady-era would probably agree.
