There might not ever be a quarterback like Tom Brady ever again in the NFL. Guys like Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson are their own unique brand of special, and are paving a new path, but Brady undoubtedly got construction underway on the era of football we've all been blessed with.
It's pretty hard to deny that Brady is the NFL's GOAT, with anyone saying otherwise is simply looking for an argument. Whether he shares some of the rarified air he breathes is yet to be seen, but as much as we're all looking forward to what the future holds, Brady is spending his first years of retirement looking back.
Specifically, Brady is cycling through his career and analyzing it with the sort of scrutiny he would his game film every week. He was recently a guest on The Pivot with Ryan Clark and mentioned the one big regret from his playing days, and it's classic Brady stuff.
Tom Brady's one regret about his career is another reason the Bucs were lucky to get him
Brady didn't take all of his success for granted; rather, he thought he felt he was a little too serious about winning at times which zapped some of the love of the game.
"When I see these young players, I see like Patrick out there at quarterback, running around, laughing, having fun, I'm like, 'I used to be like that!'" Brady said. "I just got too serious, but, again, I can only look back and think, 'Okay, if I do it again, which I'll never do it again, I would be different.' But the reality is, you can't."
It sounds like most of that regret has to do with his days in New England rather than Tampa Bay. Brady noted that as he got older, he enjoyed practice more than games since he had conditioned himself to take the real action so insanely seriously.
"When I got older, I would enjoy practice more than the games because I felt like I had such high expectation in the game," Brady continued. "In practice, no one was watching. I could have a little more fun. I could be a little more lighter. Even when I look at myself later in my career, I had this face — it was a scowl — all the time. It was me just being super self-critical."
Even though he's talking about not wanting to be self-critical, Brady is in fact being incredibly self-critical while also revealing a deeper level to how lucky the Bucs were to be a part of his career.
What's most impressive about this is that Brady seems to have become more self-aware later in his career and the version of him that showed up in Tampa Bay wasn't as hardcore as the one in New England. Despite this, he still managed to win another Super Bowl and nearly win a final MVP trophy while with the Bucs.
Brady is going to be back in the mix on Sundays, although he'll be up in the booth rather than on the field. He's set to make his debut as NFL on FOX's lead color analyst, replacing Greg Olsen alongside Kevin Burkhardt. After hearing his big regret, it's highly likely that Brady is going to try and bring some of the joy into the booth with him and we're going to see a totally different version of him than we're used to.
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