Tom Brady Talks Michigan On The Howard Stern Show

Former Michigan quarterback and current Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady made an appearance (over the phone) on Sirius XM's The Howard Stern Show on Wednesday morning. Brady opened up about aspects of his personal life, as well as his career in football, including his time at U-M.

Brady discussed his journey after arriving at U-M, playing under Lloyd Carr, how he almost transferred to Cal Berkeley and how his experience at U-M molded him going forward in his career, among other topics.

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"When I was recruited out of high school, I was very much a late bloomer. When I was in high school as a freshman, I was the backup quarterback. I didn’t start playing football until I was in high school.

"I got recruited pretty late in the process, and ended up getting a scholarship offer from Michigan, went there. I was really low on the depth chart there, kind of had to work my way all the way up to starting by my fourth and fifth year, and thought I would have a great opportunity [to play professionally]. I always thought, ‘Man, of course I’m going to play pro football,’ and ended up getting picked pretty late by the Patriots …

"When you’re not born with all the physical attributes — and I would say that I definitely was not ... Compare me to Michael Jordan, Michael was a physical freak. He didn’t start on the varsity when he was a freshman in high school. I didn’t start on the freshman team when I was a freshman in high school. M.J. was the third pick in the NBA draft. I was the 199th pick, so I think you see some really incredible athletes, and Michael is the rare exception that he had the mental makeup …

"Nobody from my high school days would’ve envisioned great success in college. And then, when I went to college, I don’t think any of my college teammates would ever envision my pro success, and I think early in my career, I don’t think any of my pro teammates could’ve imagined that I’m still going to be playing.

"When I went to college, it was 1995 and I was in a freshman locker room, and the guy right across from me was Charles Woodson. And, Charles ended up winning the Heisman Trophy three years later, was a first round pick and had a hall of fame career in the NFL. I was in his class at Michigan, and at that time, nobody would’ve said, ‘Tom Brady’s going to have more professional accomplishments in a team sport than Charles,’ because Charles was clearly the best athlete on the team.

"Now, I was an OK player, and Charles was one of the greatest players of all time and he became that. But, I would say, even as a baseball player, I wasn’t even the best player on our team, but I still got drafted and other guys got drafted, too. I was probably just a late-bloomer, and there was an intangible aspect that I don’t think people could ever realize the fire that burns in me to a) prove to myself that I can accomplish something and then also to use a bit of external motivations to keep achieving in something that I love to do."

"When I went to Michigan, the head coach that had recruited me [Gary Moeller] ended up getting fired before I got to school. I committed in the spring, but by the time I got there in the fall, they had fired him. And then, the guy who recruited me [former assistant Billy Harris], he left to go from Michigan to Stanford before I even stepped foot on the campus.

"So, within four months of me committing and then going there, the head coach who recruited me was gone, the recruiting coordinator was gone. As it shook out in college, what I realized was that when you’re not ‘their guy,’ there’s a different dynamic. And then, when I got to the Patriots, Coach [Bill] Belichick had drafted me, and I was ‘his guy.’ And, I think when you’re ‘their guy,’ they want you to succeed, too. So, they really empowered me, and for me as a young professional, I was empowered to be the best I can be, because they want to see me develop."

"It was my second year, and the guy that was playing above me, Scott Dreisbach, he was very much their guy. And, I thought he had gotten off to a good start in his career, and I was looking up at all these guys on the depth chart that were ahead of me, and I thought, ‘I’m never going to get a chance here.’

"So, I remember talking to the people at Cal — because that was my second choice, to go over to Berkeley — and I was thinking, ‘Maybe I should go there because I’ll get more of an opportunity to play.’

"And then, I went to go talk to Lloyd Carr who was the head coach at the time, and I said, ‘I don’t think I’m really going to get my chance here. I think I should leave.’ He said, ‘Tom, I want you to stay, and I believe in you. I think you can be a good player, but you gotta start worrying about the things that you can control.’

"I still feel this way today, in a team sport, you gotta sacrifice what you want individually for what’s best for the team. If you’re not the best guy, it’s a disservice to the team if you’re forced to somehow play. So, my feeling was, ‘If I’m going to be the best, I’ve gotta beat out the best, and if the best competition’s at Michigan, then I gotta beat those guys out if I’m going to play.’"

"So, I just ended up started to just committing to be the best. And at the time, I started working with a psychologist, who was really a great influence on my life. It’s a little emotional, because it was a really vulnerable time in my life, where I was kind of questioning who I was because I had gone from California to Michigan. It was a long way from home, a different environment. His name was Greg Harden. He helped me kind of grow up from this kid in California to being more of a man, being on my own and taking more personal responsibility for my life, because he wasn’t going to let me just be a victim.

"In essence, he became one of my great friends. It was just a big shift of my mind from me complaining all the time that I wasn’t getting what I wanted to stop complaining and doing something about it."

"If they only give you three repetitions in practice, do the best you can with those three. And then, if you do well with those three, they’ll give you five. If you do well with those five, they’ll give you 10. If you do well with those 10, they’ll give you 20. Well, I would complain that I was only getting three. How can I prove myself if this other guy’s getting 30 and I’m getting three? And then finally, I started doing great with those three, and then I did great with those five and I did great with those 10, then I ended up being the guy who was getting 30, and the other guys were getting three.

"Even if you look at how that translates to other aspects of your life … For me, I think that’s transpired over the course of my career, if you look at a finite example of a game or let’s say a Super Bowl — we were down 28-3 against Atlanta in Super Bowl 51, and you could look at that situation and basically quit and say, ‘We have no shot at winning.’ Or, you could say, ‘This is going to be an amazing comeback. When we come back from this, this is going to be the defining moment in our life or in our professional career.’

"I think when you shift your mind to think that way, it becomes very empowering, as opposed to being very discouraging. So, anytime we’re down in a game, I think, ‘Man, if we come back and win this game, we’re the hero,’ rather than, ‘We got screwed, we got no shot.’

"I think for me, it’s very much about, ‘How do I reframe it in my mind?’ The hardest things, whether it’s been a game, whether it’s my situation at Michigan, there’s a lot of things in my life where they didn’t go exactly how I hoped they would go, but in the end, they went exactly the way they needed to go, because I could’ve never experienced what I needed to experience to grow as a person if I hadn’t have experienced them that way."

"Fortunately for me, where I got drafted at the right time, was such a confluence of factors where I was really, really ready and eager to prove myself, because in my college experience, I actually learned a lot about competition and about teamwork, about all the things to me that really mattered. And, I was ready to kind of go all in in the professional level, and that was Coach Belichick’s first year, too. So, the two of us together came in with a lot to prove. I came in with this attitude that I could bring a lot to the team, and I was all about the team because that’s what I learned in college."

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