“Tom Brady Is Not Taking Those Days Days Off”: Troy Aikman Reveals Brady Wants Other Teams To Practice Less, Citing Ulterior Motive For His Offseason Complaints

Arth Chandra
|PublishedJul 04, 2021

Tom Brady was uncharacteristically vocal during the offseason trying to argue that the NFL should reduce the number of offseason workouts. But while Brady seems to be propagating the same to reduce offseason injuries, Troy Aikman believes Brady had ulterior motives.

During the NFLPA’s bid to reduce the number of offseason workouts in May, Tom Brady took an active role and used his status to try and stop the NFL from pushing players so hard during the offseason. “We shouldn’t have overly competitive drills in May and June,” Brady said, “There’s no (bleeping) pro baseball player that’s throwing 95 mph in the middle of December.”

Part of Tom Brady’s message to all players today: The NFL is the only pro sport with “overly competitive” drills during the offseason, and the all-virtual 2020 offseason showed there’s a better way. “There’s no f—ing pro baseball player that’s throwing 95 mph in mid-December.”

— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) May 7, 2021

And Troy Aikman was shocked to hear this

Troy Aikman believes Tom Brady tried to get an advantage over the other players.

The fact that Brady was calling for fewer practices was something that shocked Aikman.

“I was surprised to hear Tom Brady say ‘Yea, the players need more time off,'” Aikman said on the Flying Coach podcast with Rams coach Sean McVay and Peter Schrager. “He was very vocal. It shocked me, because I know Tom well.”

“And then I realized, that’s the greatness of Tom Brady, because I can assure you, he’s not taking those days off and that team is not taking those days off, and so he views it as a total competitive advantage,” Aikman said. “If teams are practicing less and he’s practicing more, that’s going to give him a leg up on the competition, and I think that was really the whole motivation in his comments.”

“I’m all for getting rested,” Aikman said. “I’m all for all those things, but at some point you have to pose the question: Do you want to be great or do you not? Do you want to be a great team? Do you want to be a great player? And if you do, that means you have to put in the time.”

What Tom Brady wanted out of those comments nobody knows. But it is interesting to see how other NFL players perceive how Tom Brady thinks.