"I was Very Naive" - Tom Brady Opens up About His College Football Struggles

did you always like if I was in high school with you uh 13 14 15 years old did you always have an absolute Killer Instinct where I'm gonna show you I'm gonna prove the way to see what I'm gonna do I'm gonna kill this guy when we face him was it always like that when you were in high school or that kind of developed later on yeah I think it developed over a period of time and I think there was a work ethic that was in me um I think most people probably know a few things about me but I was never I would say like a prodigy you know I wasn't like the kid where you see Tiger Woods swinging on the Johnny Carson show at two or three years old and you know his swing looks as good as it did at three years old as it did you know as he as he grew older or you know certain players that that had this unbelievable uh Prodigy aspect to themselves I I saw myself as someone who probably had some other traits that maybe were hard to identify but that were really sustainable over time which was I would say work ethic and and discipline and that was instilled in Me by I think my parents I mean there was part of it that they gave me it but also just behaviorally growing up in an environment where my dad was out there out to work every morning you know trying to go make a living for our family and my mom woke up every day trying to figure out how to make sure the home was comfortable for us and you know to support the kids so there was this discipline that I had that even as 13 14 15 years old where all these other boys Series where I went to an all-boy School in the Bay Area and I remember showing up my first day as freshman year I didn't have much you know hair under my arms or anything like that I was like and these other kids came in shaving and I'm like what the hell is this I didn't know how to put the pads on in my pants when I tried out for freshman football I mean I had never played until that point except in the streets so these kids came out there they had you know helmets and shoulder pads that they had worn for four years through Pop Warner and I went on the field and I was like I'm gonna get killed out here you know and my freshman year I didn't even play I was the backup quarterback on a team that went 0-8 that says a lot I couldn't get on the field and we never won a game anyway I mean it's one thing to be the starting quarterback in the lose if they don't even think you're good enough to be a starting quarterback on a team that's on it you must really suck and the reason why I played my second year was because that quarterback quit because he's like I'm not playing football anymore we suck I'm gonna focus on basketball so naturally I was like oh cool I'll continue to you know work on my skill because I actually had a halfway decent arm but a lot of it was even going into my second year in high school there were workouts in the morning at 6 a.m before school and I was like okay I can I can get up at 6am and I can go do these rope drills where you'd run through the Rope you see a lot of people do that there were these Hills that we would run up and there was probably less than 10 people there but I was probably one of the three that were there almost every single day to try to continue to push myself to grow in these maybe physical areas that I was really behind a lot of other people at because naturally no one's good at everything I mean that's just not the way life Works we're all talented at certain things but we can really continue to improve our weaknesses if we're humble enough to identify them and we can build on our strengths and I think we're all trying to find a more well-rounded aspect to ourselves but a lot of that has to come with this this understanding about yourself that what you know is very limited and what you don't know is Limitless and you have an opportunity every day to surround yourself up with people to help you grow and that could be in my case it very much was my parents early on and then as I learned to love the sport of football yeah I was watching kind of on the periphery of pro athletes but there was a high school there was a junior college football coach that I wanted to become a better Pastor because I had a good arm and he was a three-sport coach at a junior college his name was Tom Martinez one of my great mentors and he coached women's softball which is how it really I knew him women's basketball and men's football and I would go up there and I would go up there to his Camp to learn to throw the ball better when I was in 14 years old 15 years old and it just became this like I said life was pretty simple when you could kick a ball or throw it and that for me it was throwing it and I wanted a throat ball better so who better than to find this guy who was probably ahead of his time as a coach and he taught me how to throw the ball uh with some good fundamentals and I really saw that it's like wow I can go see someone who has more knowledge than me and I can learn from him and I can take him back to my school and everyone's going to go wow Tom you made some improvements and I think that was a good learning experience for me even at a young age so it wasn't it wasn't the uh you know because there's a couple different ways that you it happens right like in the in business world you're trying to do the business you get into real estate Insurance technology whatever it is and then all of a sudden you're like let me see if I can make money with this thing then it's kind of like oh my God this is actually great and then you kind of size yourself up against other people are like wow I think I can actually beat that guy and who is the guy that does it this well let me go to that guy oh wow I didn't know about this kind of like we were telling the story about Hernandez but when when was it like when was it where you said no I think I can play against everybody because even in college if you think about the two Drews in your life right yeah you're you're in Michigan you got what Brian Griese I believe right and then Drew of low yeah and then you got Drew Hansen who becomes a like you he was also a baseball player too he ended up I think getting drafted by the Yankees by Johansson and and it was an interesting structure to coach had one quarter one quarter you know two quarters two quarters first half second half which is kind of tough to create momentum I think you guys went 21 and 5 or 20 and five or something like that with the record you had and then so but you were like a backup to Drew and then comes Drew Bledsoe back up to Drew again so there's a backup are you in your mind saying where the market kind of like the movie Sea Biscuit yeah you're just a horse to help the other guy get better you're not the horse that's supposed to be the number one horse so you always train to kind of be here to build the confidence the other guy that's going at what point did you say these guys have no freaking clue who the hell I am I'm a number one guy did that ever click in your mind where you were number two saying I belong being number one well I think there was a naturally a very competitive part of me and I love that and I can I go back a little bit of course give you a little context too so my freshman year in football I didn't I didn't even play literally didn't play maybe two or three passes the coach furnace sideline screamed at me one time my freshman year Brady you're moving in slow motion and um I was I mean I was slow as still still am so going into my second year I I like I said the guy quit ahead of me so I became the junior varsity quarterback there were three teams in my high school and I had a coach named Boba now Perry Carter Joe Hessian at Sarah high school and they were there for the football experience they were having as much fun as the kids were they didn't see it as varsity football they were there to embrace the Love of the Game and for the kids that weren't good enough to play on varsity and they really took me under their wing and we had so much fun that second year I love my football experience one of the great years of my entire life I really started working hard with Tom Martinez to throw the ball better my third year I won the starting job in my high school and I love this sport so much that I stopped playing basketball and I just played baseball and football but in the Summers I would go and my dad who was very available to me with the greatest Mentor the greatest dad I could ever imagine was so right there by my side to say Hey Dad I want to be better football player great let's take you to the University of Arizona Camp let's take you to the Cal Berkeley Camp let's take you to uh the Stanford Camp you know this is when you just sign up and there's a thousand other kids and you're just in a group and you know that's just the way it was but my dad was there to say go for it son and if there was a blessing in my life that I would say you know some of the things I blessed with hard work discipline you know what I was also blessed with being very naive I had no idea how hard it was and but I believed because I was like I don't know like I'm I'm gonna get better and I'm gonna I'm gonna be better well going into my fourth year in high school I was recruited but not like a lot of the top kids there was look I was big I was the size I am now tall I had a good arm but there were a lot of other physical deficiencies that they saw so I wasn't a high recruit so I had there was and it was a different era where look we're lit in the digital age now that's not the way things worked back in 1994. we had to make VCR tapes with my dad in his office when I said Dad we gotta like put together the most clips that I have and this is when my dad would film the games I mean now it's like Channel 5 broadcast every High School game in the area like this was my dad with a camcorder and every time the ball was thrown he'd be focused on me right and the ball would go this way and he'd stand up and the camera would go to the left and he'd be watching and he'd start jumping out go so of course we miss like every important throw that I in high school so we pieced together enough enough Clips to like go hey man where get Tommy where do you think you want to go to college and I was like I don't know like University of Illinois and I was looking at a lot of like maybe not top tier College programs and in the end I was like well yeah just let's send one to USC let's send one to Michigan and I was like do you think we should send one to Michigan dad and he's like yeah may as well you know you think you like it of course I'm from California you know I didn't Michigan that's a long way from California so I send these tapes out and there's a little bit of Buzz about me and I start getting recruited and I get these letters and of course I'm like wow get every day I'm getting these different letters from school saying oh you know you we consider you a prospect continue to keep up the good work and I would file them all you know in a file folder and my cup my high school counselor came up to me and he's like Tom we got to start applying to colleges and I'm like dude I'm getting a scholarship what are you talking about and he's like yeah no we're going to apply to all these colleges and um funny story I never applied to any college but I actually got halfway decent through my fourth year in college that the the momentum picked up and I wanted to go I got offered a scholarship to UCLA and then they turned me away at the last minute because another kid signed before me and I really wanted to go to USC that was probably my first choice but they didn't want me either they signed another kid who was one of the top recruits on the west coast so I never forget these stories by the way these are like hardcore ingrained so then I went to Michigan I show up they walked me into the big house and it's called the big house for a reason there's a hundred and two thousand people in there on a college football Saturday now it's expanded like 112 000 it's incredible and I walked through the tunnel at Midfield and they go from Sarah High School in San Mateo Tom Brady and I looked up and I was like I want to go to school here so I'm there for two days I don't talk to my parents the whole time you know we didn't have cell phones and I get to the airport in Detroit and I call my dad collect and I go Dad I think I know where I want to go to college and like he started breaking down and he's like what you know leaving to to go all the way back to Michigan and he said are you sure you want to go and I said Dad if I want to be the best I gotta beat the best and this is where the best are so I showed up on campus as a freshman in the spring in the fall of 1995. I was the seventh quarterback on the depth chart there were six other guys ahead of me and Michigan is a good is a great College there's you know it's competes for national championships and I wanted to be a great football player if I was gonna be a great football player I wanted to compete against these other guys and they were all better than me like like I said just like in high school I was deficient well I was we had another athlete who was in my freshman class in Michigan Charles Woodson and Charles showed up on campus he had a goatee he looked like a Greek god and I was like how am I in the same locker room as this guy this guy looks like a physical freak which he was and he won the Heisman in his third year and he went on to be a Hall of Famer in the NFL and he's one of my great friends but we laughed because man that freshman locker room I'm looking over there at like Charles Woodson as the seventh quarterback and Charles out there starting on opening day as a true freshman and I I I was you know worked really hard because I developed this work ethic in high school and I realized man if I want to be good I gotta I gotta wake up in the morning I gotta do the extra work and I got to show up when other guys aren't and I've got to learn I've got to continue to be open to learning and my freshman year I redshirted never played barely practice but I learned a lot my second year I had improved a lot physically through that work and I started to compete in a way that would the coaches would notice me a little bit and my second year it was a few little crazy stories but of how it got to be the way that it did but I ended up becoming the third quarterback in my second year and it rotated a little bit there my second year but I went from third in my second year to now my third year I was competing to be a starter and because I learned to compete in high school and I learned to compete my first two years in college in fact I almost thought about leaving Michigan and in my second year I got a call from uh Steve Mariucci at Cal and he said Tom if you come here you can start for us and you're going into your third year if you leave Michigan you can come here and you can start for us and of course Cal was one of my great choices I thought I could go home and be a starter and I walked into coach Carr's office the head coach at Michigan at the time and I said coach like I you know what's my situation like and he said Brady I want you to stop worrying about what all the other players on our team are doing you all you do is you focus on the starter the second guy you don't worry about what's you're focused on you came here to be the best I want you at this program and if you're going to be the best you got to beat out the best and he goes you got to start working with this guy named Greg Hardin who was another Mentor in my life Greg just came out with the book A few days ago and Greg had been a sports psychologist at Michigan and like you know we got to start building this knowledge and we got to create a strategy and a plan and he would said you know I would complain all the time that the guys ahead of me were getting more opportunity than I was there was a certain amount of repetitions in practice the starter would get 20. the backup would get 10 and I would get two and I'd go in and I'd say well how can I ever get better all these guys get all the Reps and I only get two and he said just go in there and focus with the two that you got and make them as perfect as you possibly can so I said okay so that's what I did they'd put me in for those two man I'd Sprint in there like it was Super Bowl 49. let's go boys here we go what flight we got and I did really well with those two because I brought enthusiasm I brought some energy and I had a little more confidence in myself and it went from two reps to getting four reps because those two were pretty good then I had four good reps then I got ten good reps and before you knew it through this new attitude through this new shift that Greg had said to me you know focused on what you can control focus on what you're getting not what anyone else is getting whenever you get an opportunity you take advantage of you treat it like it's the Super Bowl you treat it like it's game day go out there and treat practice like no one else does and I did that every single day and there was a lot it was taxing on me there was a lot of stress for me even in high school and I look back at those times it wasn't probably like a typical college experience because I was really motivated to play but I had to take it to a new level that the other guys wouldn't so going into my fourth year now I had competed first off freshman year sophomore year I'm going into my third year and I had learned these tools to compete and I said whatever they asked me to do that's what I'm gonna do to the best of my ability and I went in there I competed really hard my third year and I lost a starting job to Brian Griese and Brian Griese he led the team to a 12-0 national championship that year so I was part of a national championship team and I barely played so I go into my fourth year and I was like now's my time I worked hard to compete my first three years going into my fourth year I got a great opportunity to play and I worked hard it's time for me to come and they recruited a kid named Drew Henson to who was one of the top prospects in the country from Michigan right next door to University of Michigan and here he was coming in the door that everyone knew about he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated so all the fans and all the media they weren't they they weren't were interested in Tom Brady backup quarterback to Brian Griese Tom Brady backup quarterback to Scott Dreisbach his first year Scott Dreisbach his second year now we have Drew Henson coming in and I was like the competitions were Relentless at first I was looking at the guys ahead of me now I got to be looking down at the guys behind me too but I said you know what I'm going to apply the same thing that I learned in those previous years I'm gonna go out there and compete as hard as I can and I'm going to treat practice like a game and I'm going to gain the respect that my teammates every day through my work ethic I'm going to work hard in the weight room I'm gonna work hard in the film room I'm gonna work hard to be a good student and going into my fourth year it was a little bit of a battle and my teammates named me team captain and I won the starting job and we had a good year um we finished ten and three we in our bowl game we played in the Citrus Bowl and we came back from a I think it was a 10 point lead in the fourth quarter and to win the game and I was like man that was unbelievable now that I'm going into my fifth year like we're gonna have a great year as ten and three learned a lot you know beat everyone out and I showed up and Coach Carr says well you're going to compete with Drew Henson to be the starter

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Keywords: Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneur Motivation, Entrepreneur Advice, Startup Entrepreneurs, valuetainment, patrick bet david, Valuetainment Media, Patrick Bet-David Valuetainment, tom brady, nfl, college football, career, pbd, pbd podcast, brady, patriots, new england patriots

Id: NqTp0Ye1Ls4

Length: 18min 56sec (1136 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 20 2023