The past few months haven’t been very easy for Tom Brady.
After a pair of ugly wins to start the 2022 NFL season, the Buccaneers dropped four of their next five games including two losses to a pair of vastly inferior opponents: the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Carolina Panthers. Tampa Bay as a team didn’t play very well through seven weeks, and that includes Brady. The star quarterback’s uncharacteristic mistakes are partly responsible for the talented Bucs offense not clicking.
To make matters worse for Brady, it appears his personal life has seen better days as well. Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner isn’t ruling out the possibility that those tough off-the-field matters are having a lingering impact.
“… I go and watch the tape from Sunday and I just don’t see the Tom Brady that we’ve come to know,” Warner said Tuesday on NFL Network. “The mistakes that he’s making, the things that he’s not seeing. I’m not one that ever wants to say some of the stuff that’s going on outside the game seems to be trickling inside the game and inside the lines. We’ve never seen Tom Brady do that before. He’s so good at focusing through everything else and being able to play football. But right now, he’s doing things that aren’t Tom Brady-esque and you have to wonder whether that other stuff is getting involved.”
Regardless of what’s the primary source for Brady’s ongoing struggles, it doesn’t look like the Bucs are on the precipice of figuring things out and taking off. Tampa Bay also will be hard-pressed to get right in Week 8 when it will host the Baltimore Ravens on a short week in prime time.
So while it’s probably too early to call it a “lost season” for Brady and the Bucs, things are definitely trending in that direction.
