“Why do we fall? So that we learn to pick ourselves up,” was one of the best pieces of advice that fuelled Tom Brady during his 23-year NFL career. The seven-time Super Bowl winner brushed aside a lot of adversities to reach the pinnacle through his work ethic and steely determination. According to Brady, his achievements wouldn’t have been possible without his “great mentors.”
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In a freewheeling chat with the School of Hard Knocks, Brady shared the “greatest advice” he can think of to be “one’s best version.” “Don’t worry about anybody else. So many times we lose track of what we are getting by focusing on others,” he stated.
Meanwhile, Brady also went on to detail the life-changing advice he received in college, which helped him to make the best out of each opportunity.
“When I was a sophomore in college, I had a sports psychologist mentor of mine, Greg Hardin—God rest his soul, he passed away about six months ago. And I would go and b*tch and complain to him that I was not getting the same opportunities that other guys were. And he sat me down in his office on a Tuesday afternoon and said, ‘Why don’t you quit b*tching about all the things that you are not getting and worry about the things that you are getting?’” he recalled.
And, Brady applied it to perfection. When Drew Bledsoe was injured in 2001, Brady, who then had limited experience in the NFL, led a fairytale run with the Patriots, which later cemented his position as the QB1 and shaped his legacy there. It denotes the fact that if you wait and train hard to excel yourself, you will make good use of the opportunity that comes knocking on your door, a major point to remember amid the QB competition.
Additionally, Brady had one more mentor to thank—his personal trainer, Alex Guerrero, who helped him tackle several adversities, including the 2008 ACL injury.
“I had so many great mentors that taught me the right way. My best friend in the world, my brother Alex Guerrero, who is now running the entire health and wellness department for the Raiders. He taught me a lot, and it was a lot of discipline that I learned through our work together about how to take care of my body that allowed me to do what I love to do for a long time,” Brady recalled.
In addition to the physical support, the mental well-being of Brady, taken care of by Alex and psychologists like Hardin, played a key role in Brady turning out to be a leader who walked the talk on the field. His former teammates including Rob Gronkowski and Julian Edelman still remember Brady as a “workaholic” who demanded his teammates to take that extra yard for the team’s benefit.
Ultimately, it all reaped rich dividends for Brady and the Patriots, helping him achieve what none of the other QBs could achieve in the NFL—to win the Super Bowl a total of seven times.
