Tom Brady is acutely aware of his athletic strengths and weaknesses.
Some of Brady’s best traits still rank among the NFL’s best, even at 45 years old. Few have better pocket awareness than the seven-time Super Bowl champion, who also can be deadly accurate when an offense is humming. The 23rd-year pro can still put plenty of zip on the football, too.
One area where Brady has lacked throughout his career is speed. Buccaneers running back Leonard Fournette was cognizant of this when he issued a challenge to the star signal-caller at a past Tampa Bay practice, but Brady still wasn’t willing to take the bait.
“One time we was at practice, I’m like, ‘TB, I’ll give you a 50-yard head start, race you 100 yards,'” Fournette said in a Twitter video, as transcribed by Sports Illustrated. “I said, ‘I bet you five grand.’ He said, ‘You kidding me? I’m almost 50 years old. You’ll burn my ass.’ Well, he’s not fast anyway. I mean, a 50-yard head start, I think that was fair for an old man, you know what I mean? He didn’t take it. He was making jokes about it all day, man.”
A Brady-Fournette footrace isn’t completely off the table, though. The future Hall of Famer responded to the power back with a new stipulation, offering to take part in the challenge if given a 60-yard head start.
A full-field dash would be a fun activity to work in some conditioning in the spring when NFL players are gearing up for a new season. But for now, Brady and Fournette need to focus on trying to beat the Dallas Cowboys in a wild-card matchup Monday night at Raymond James Stadium.
