QUARTERBACK TOM BRADY
Press Conference
December 13, 2019
Q: Have you watched any of the NFL Top 100 shows about NFL players?
TB: Have I watched them? Not much. Yeah, not much.
Q: Maybe in the offseason?
TB: Yeah, probably more of an offseason project. But yeah, just haven't had a chance to. I haven't watched much TV this year.
Q: One of your former teammates Rob Gronkowski is a finalist in the top 100 for tight ends. What is your reaction to him being a finalist?
TB: That's pretty amazing. He's certainly deserving. What a great player he was for us. There's been a lot of other great tight ends and just to be even thought about is, I'm sure, very flattering. He earned it.
Q: How close do you think this offense is to figuring it out?
TB: How close to figure what out?
Q: You said that in a Mac Miller quote on Instagram earlier. How close do you think the offense is to getting things together, meaning clicking on all cylinders?
TB: I think every week we're making a little progress. Every week we're trying to learn from our mistakes and just put all the right things together and hopefully just keep improving. Guys are working really hard and that's been great to see and that's what we've got to keep doing. Things just don't kind of happen magically, so we're working pretty hard at it.
Q: You've said that a few times this year, that there's no quick and easy solution to what you guys are going through right now. How much do you embrace the challenge that comes with trying to get to where you want to be?
TB: Well, you have really no option. We have a job to do and that's to go out there and do the best job we can do and score as many points as we can. I don't think it's trying to be less than what we're capable of. I think the point is just we've got to maximize our potential, and I don't know what our potential is. We've got to be the best we can be. If we do it well one time, it's how well can we do it consistently? I think part of it's just consistently, we haven't done a great job, and I think that when you're not consistent, it just leads to other issues. Trying to be consistent and dependable is what a great offense is all about, and when you have really great play-making ability, all those things make it very hard to defend.
Q: Is that the beauty but also the frustrating part of sports – it's not scripted? This is a new challenge, a new year and three games to go, and you still have a chance to get where you want to go.
TB: Yeah, there's a lot of new pieces and you're always trying to incorporate from week-to-week. And every year, it's a little bit different, the challenges are different. You just can't rely on, "Oh well, we'll just do exactly what we used to do," or, "We'll do exactly what we did last week." You have to kind of reinvent yourself every week. How the game plan takes shape and what guys are asked to do in order to execute takes shape. It's always a little bit of a challenge, but football season is not supposed to be easy. It's a hard grind for us, it's a hard grind for you guys. Probably just the fantasy football owners, they want us to play forever. We're in the middle of it, we're deep into it and just got to have the mental toughness and the competitive stamina to keep showing up every day and working as hard as you can to be ready to compete when we're called upon.
Q: Pete Frates passed away this week, what are your thoughts on this man who gave so much to the community and everything he's done to fight ALS?
TB: He just had a great impact and I think took a really tough situation and turned it into a great positive for people and brought great awareness to a tremendous cause. He's resting peacefully now and we wish his family the best.
Q: Is football still fun for you?
TB: Yeah.
Q: Is it as fun as it was 10 years ago, 15 years ago?
TB: I'm not going to make a bunch of comparisons about year-to-year, but yeah, I love it.
