Tom Brady has spent much of his post-playing career reflecting on the lessons that fueled his rise from a sixth-round pick to a seven-time Super Bowl champion. And in the latest edition of his 199 newsletter, he zeroed in on a subject he calls essential to greatness: mental toughness.
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For Brady, one of the first true tests of mental toughness came long before his Patriots debut, during his fifth year at Michigan. By then, he had fought his way up the depth chart, from being the QB7 and earning the starting job. But in a shocking turn, once Brady became the QB1, he was told that he would be platooning with prized recruit Drew Henson.
This reality hit hard in a September 1999 matchup against unranked Syracuse.
Brady started the game but was benched for the second half. Henson and the defense then carried the Wolverines to a crucial 18–13 victory while TB12 stood on the sideline, dejected. Looking back, he admitted that intense emotions had consumed him in the moment.
“I was disappointed, frustrated, embarrassed… I could have been angry, and if it were a few years earlier, I might have even gotten down on myself about it,” TB12 recalled.
But instead of sulking, the GOAT leaned on words from Greg Harden, Michigan’s renowned counsellor who worked with dozens of Wolverines athletes: “Don’t focus on what others are getting; focus on the opportunities you have, on the things you can control.”
As it turned out, this perspective reshaped his response. After the win, as one of Michigan’s captains, Brady was expected to lead the team in singing the fight song. He could have easily hidden in the background from this responsibility, but instead, he made a choice.
“I got up on a table and sang the fight song louder than I ever had before,” Brady wrote. “I wanted to be the loudest one in the room, to show my teammates that I was just as excited about the win as they were… That one bad quarter, one tough decision, one rough turn of events wasn’t going to break me.”
Naturally, this experience became a building block for the resilience and resolve Brady would later lean on in the NFL. As the Patriots legend explained in his newsletter, more than suppressing emotions, mental toughness is about channelling them: “having those emotions, feeling them completely, and then doing the right thing, or the hard thing, despite how you feel.”
It’s funny how this small incident became such a defining learning moment for Tom Brady, because from the outside, it was nothing but a benching in a mid-September game. However, the GOAT made it a lesson in focus, composure, and leadership that set the stage for everything that was to come.
Simply put, stories like these are proof that sometimes, greatness begins not in victory, but in how you respond to disappointment.
