Seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady spoke glowingly about his parents and provided great advice for young people who hope to follow in his footsteps one day.
FOX’s NFL lead analyst appeared on “Fox & Friends” and recalled a moment before Super Bowl LI against the Atlanta Falcons when he mentioned that his father, Tom Sr., was his hero. Brady was emotional when talking to reporters before that game, and he explained on Friday that his father was helping his mom, Galynn, go through breast cancer treatments at the time.
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“I was so blessed to have a mom and dad that supported my athletic and career journey every step of the way, and, I had a great foundation about family and about commitment, support for one another,” Brady said. “At the time, my mom was battling breast cancer, and my dad was there supporting my mom through her treatments. And it was a very challenging time for our family.
“And I just think about my dad and the commitment that he’s made to her, to my sisters, to myself, to his grandkids. And, he’s the greatest man I’ve ever known. And I still feel that way. I try to make him proud in everything that I do. And, when you have an example like that, like I did with my dad, I can just take what he taught me and try to be that kind of dad that I am for my kids.”
Brady, throughout his career, set a high bar for himself to clear. He wasn’t the best player going from high school to college and was far from the best college football quarterback when he was at Michigan.
In the NFL, he was a sixth-round draft pick with very little professional expectations as he started as a backup to Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe. He may have even become a baseball player if he had wanted to, as the Montreal Expos selected him in the MLB Draft.
As he never wavered in his commitment to be the best, he said his parents never wavered either. It was the belief system they instilled in him that helped him believe in himself.
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“I was just like a normal American kid that wanted to grow up and chase my dreams. And I would say my parents, they never kind of tempered my expectations for what I thought I could accomplish when I wanted to go to Michigan,” he said. “They didn’t think, ‘Oh, it might be too hard for you. You should probably pick a school where maybe you’re going to go play earlier, play a freshman.’ I always had this belief that I could do it, and my parents said the whole time, you could do it, absolutely.
“I was one of the slowest players at the NFL combine when I got drafted by the New England Patriots. And my mom, you say, honey, you are so fast. You get out there on that field and you can run. And certainly, I know I couldn’t. I said, mom, I love you. You’re very biased toward your own son,” he added. “But I think the reality is, there was never a plan B for me. I never had to deal with that. And I think they supported me.
“And I got to believe in myself, because you need people to believe in you, even when you don’t always have the most confidence in yourself. And if you’re surrounded by people that love you, that are there for you when you fail. Because the reality is, in life, when we try things that are very difficult, we do fail because they’re hard. And when they’re hard and you overcome them, you learn a lot about yourself. And if you can apply those things going forward to accomplish what you want, you’re going to gain a lot of self-esteem and a lot of self-confidence.
“I just felt that trying things that were outside of my comfort zone ended up being the best things in my life. And having parents that supported me when I did fail, that was the biggest blessing in my life.”
“Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade asked whether part of Brady’s success on the field was having the chip on his shoulder from being a sixth-round pick back in 2000.
Brady said “absolutely.”
“I feel like overcoming those challenges and adversities that I had, whether it was in high school and college, allowed me to be the professional athlete that I was,” he said. “I learned a lot of things through failing that a lot of guys didn’t learn through high school and college because they were the best athletes. So, these sustainable qualities that you have as an athlete, like your work ethic, like your discipline, like your determination and competitiveness, those are what people would call into tangibles, because we can go measure physical strength or speed or all the things that are important, but in the end, they’re not sustainable over the course of a 23-year career.”
Brady lamented what top high school and college athletes are going through now with the advent of the transfer portal and name, image and likeness.
“And I look at what we’re doing to college kids and high school kids, and we make it so easy on them. Now, if you don’t like where you’re at, go somewhere else where you can play, and it goes from being, let’s say, college or high school, a transformational experience to a transactional experience,” he said. “And you’re always trying to transform yourself into something a little bit more, into a little bit better version of yourself. But when you make it easy on yourself, in the end, you’re doing yourself a disservice, because you’re not challenging yourself to get outside your comfort zone.
“And if you get outside your comfort zone, you’re going to realize like, ‘Oh man, I’m kind of on my own, but I’ve got people that support me, but how do I figure this out?’ And part of that figuring it out is to dig a little deeper within yourself and to develop a better work ethic, to be a little more bit more disciplined in what you’re doing and to be more determined to accomplish it every single day. And if you cheat that, in the end you cheat yourself, and you’re never going to accomplish your goals, you’re going to be settling for your plan B’s your entire life.”
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