At an age when some men may be breaking out a certain blue pill, Tom Brady keeps breaking a certain blue tablet.
Via Adam Schefter of ESPN.com, Brady busted not one but two tablets during last Sunday’s game against the Saints. Brady was frustrated by an offense that scored no points -- and that really didn’t get going until after a fracas sparked in part by Brady.
He laughed it off during his weekly Let’s Go! podcast. On Thursday, he offered a less sarcastic assessment of his in-game outbursts.
“I can always do better,” Brady said. “I can always obviously do better as a quarterback and, yeah, not let my emotions get the best of me. Sometimes they do. It’s an emotional sport. It’s an emotional game, and we’re all out there trying to do the best we can do. And you’re right, I think there’s a frustrating part for all of us when you get a little older and you expect it a certain way and it doesn’t go exactly the way you want. But that’s it, that’s the way it is, and I’ve got to do a good job as a leader to be at my best regardless of how I feel about a certain situation.”
As offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich tells it, it’s not a bad thing to have Brady blow a periodic fuse.
“Normally when he gets like that, he’s not really mad at [anybody] else -- that’s how he gets on himself, really,” Leftwich told reporters. “If you know him well enough, when he really goes, he’s really talking to himself most of the time. We know Tom, we know Tom -- everything is fine, this is what he [does]. That’s the good thing about having Tom on your team -- if things aren’t going well, you’re going to get that reaction out of him. [It] normally gets the guys going, so that’s excellent when you can get that from your quarterback.”
So, yes, those qualities that parents try to discourage five-year-old Timmy from exhibiting become admirable in 45-year-old Tommy. He’s passionate. He holds himself to a high standard. He puts winning above all else.
It sounds so much better than, He’s a spoiled brat who has a tantrum whenever he doesn’t get his way.
Either way, the Bucs would be wise to ask Microsoft for a few extra Surface tablets. And Microsoft should be happy about this. While it’s not the kind of product placement they envisioned when doing a sponsorship deal with the league, we’re talking about the Microsoft product at a time when its biggest competitor -- Apple -- has begun muscling in on the NFL turf.
