After eight straight years of winning at least one playoff game, Tom Brady’s New England Patriots were finally upset in the first round by the upstart Titans (coached by former Patriots defensive great Mike Vrabel) in 2019. And with that, the Brady era in Boston came to a close.
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A rift between him and head coach Bill Belichick became too much for the team to bear. They chose the coach over the quarterback, who was 42 and supposedly due to start losing to Father Time. Right?
Well, it turns out Father Time would eventually win against TB12, but not any time soon. Brady still had one more big run left in him, and he chose the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as the setting for his comeback.
While most were elated when Brady decided to come to The Cigar City (bringing a string of aging Pro Bowlers in tow), some were unsure how he would fit in the locker room. Team captain and three-time All-Pro linebacker Lavonte David was dubious at first, expecting Brady to separate himself from the team in the locker room.
“I was a guy who had the misconception as well. I was kind of judging him, just off of his greatness,” David said.
“Understanding a guy of this caliber, he probably don’t wanna be bothered all the time. He probably just wanna come in, work, and go home. And whatever it may be. But when I got that phone call, when he called me, all that went out the window.”
However, before Brady even arrived in Florida, he called David. That call served to quell any worries the (at the time) eight-year veteran had about the GOAT coming into the fold for the Buccaneers.
“He told me, ‘Hey man, I’m coming to your guys’ locker room. You guys don’t treat me no different, allow me to earn my respect from you guys,'” David recounted.
“And when he said that, I was like, ‘What? Like, bro, whatever you want in this locker room, you can have it bro, it’s yours. This is your locker room now, what are you talking about?’ (Laughs) Once he said that, it kinda like changed my whole perception of Tom, man. Still to this day, man, great dude.”
Brady was competitive as ever, but apparently, it rubbed off very well on his younger teammates, some of whom were a full 20 years younger than the QB at that point.
David continued to reminisce about playing with and being able to watch such an iconic athlete prepare and perform on a weekly basis.
“Got a lot of respect for him, and obviously he changed my life around big time. Just watching the way he works, the attitude that he brought, day in and day out,” the linebacker continued.
“Extremely competitive guy. Practice is like game days for him, man… I’m happy that I got a chance to share three years with him. And he helped me get over a hump that I was tryna get over for a very long time, that I thought that I may not ever get over. But it was definitely a privilege to watch him work and be the guy that I didn’t think he was, but at the same time, he was. You know what I mean?”
Tom Brady not only had one more run left in him at age 43 with the Buccaneers in 2020. He had one more Super Bowl run left in him.
And not only did he win the Super Bowl. He dominated the budding Kansas City Chiefs dynasty to do so, thereby stamping himself as the greatest of all time. Considering that, at 43, he beat Patrick Mahomes in his prime, it’s going to be hard for anyone to surpass Brady any time soon.
