Tom Brady has mostly tried to keep the focus on the present ahead of his return to Gillette Stadium.
But a clip from his upcoming ESPN documentary series, “Man in the Arena,” released Friday hearkened back to the early days of Brady’s NFL career, when he was a young quarterback learning all he could from head coach Bill Belichick.
Brady’s weekly Tuesday meetings with Belichick, the QB said in the doc, were vital to his development.
“When I look back at that time (in New England) it was a really growth stage part of my career,” Brady said. “It was a development of myself as a player but also a person off the field. I was soaking up all the information. Even today, I look at some of these young players and they’re like, ‘What do you think of this guy in his third year or fourth year?’ In my mind, I’m thinking, OK, he’s talented, but who is going to teach him how to evolve and grow? Who is going to assist him in learning what football is all about? What his knowledge is?
“I had Coach Belichick there to teach me. Every Tuesday, we would meet and go through the entire defensive starting lineup and their strengths and weaknesses. What we could attack. What he was watching and how I could see the things that he saw so I could gain confidence and anticipate.”
That Tuesday meeting tradition has continued in the post-Brady era, as Patriots rookie quarterback Mac Jones explained earlier this week.
“We try to meet with the quarterbacks and stuff and figure out just situational stuff, which helps,” Jones said. “I can’t go into details on that, but it is really beneficial. Just whether it’s the team we’re playing or whoever, just watching football, hearing it from a great coach like him and getting advice from the guys in the room that have played for a lot longer than I have, so just listening and trying to see what they see and pick up on things, and it definitely helps just kind of start the week off right, I guess you could say.”
Brady left the Patriots last offseason to sign with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, with whom he immediately won his seventh Super Bowl. He’ll face his former team for the first time Sunday night.
Belichick has been overwhelmingly complimentary of his former QB ahead of that highly anticipated matchup, praising Brady on multiple occasions.
“I think I’ve been on the record dozens of times saying there’s no quarterback I’d rather have than Tom Brady, and I still feel that way,” Belichick said Friday morning. “I was very lucky to have Tom as the quarterback and to coach him. He was as good as any coach could ever ask for.”
“Man in the Arena: Tom Brady,” produced by ESPN and Religion of Sports, is set to be released in November on ESPN+.
