I usually listen to Stern on-demand, I’ll catch him live if I’m in the car, but I rarely make sure to tune in at a specific time. Wednesday morning with Tom Brady was different.
Brady isn’t even close to being my favorite guest on the show, but I knew everyone would be talking about the interview while it was happening and I didn’t want to be left out. That’s what makes Stern the best, his ability to be appointment listening is unmatched.
When Brady’s connection froze three or four times in the first 10 minutes of the interview, which was being conducted on Zoom, I was nervous we were in for a bust. When Gary Dell’Abate said they’re going to switch Brady to the phone, I again thought the interview might fall flat. I should’ve known Howard would come through.
Keeping tabs on Twitter, it became clear many sports reporters haven’t listened to Stern much considering the way they gawked over his conversation with Brady. I would encourage you to hear him with more engaging personalities such as Lady Gaga, Nick Cannon, John Stamos or even Rachael Ray. If Brady wasn’t willing to be open, Stern wouldn’t have taken the interview.
Stern asked Brady about the amount of credit Bill Belichick gets for the Patriot’s success: “I think it’s a pretty shitty argument actually that people would say that, because again, I can’t do his job, and he can’t do mine. Would I be successful without him, the same level of success? I don’t believe I would have been. But I feel the same vice versa. To have him allowed me to be the best I can be, so I’m grateful for that. I very much believe that he feels the same way about me, because we’ve expressed that to each other.”
Stern and Brady share a common friend in Donald Trump, knowing him long before he became President. Both declined Trump’s invitation to speak at the Republican Convention in 2016. “I got brought into a lot of those things because it was so polarizing around the election time,” Brady said. “It was uncomfortable for me. You can’t undo things. And not that I would undo a friendship, but the political support is totally different than the support of a friend.”
Brady discussed drinking and smoking weed, both of which he stopped in high school. “I definitely had some fun in high school with partying and drinking and smoking weed on occasion,” Brady said, but he stopped because “I felt like I was letting my dad down.”
Brady told Stern he skipped OTAs in recent years to focus on his marriage with Gisele: “She didn’t feel like I was doing my part for our family. She felt like I would play football all season and she would take care of the house and all of a sudden when the season would end, I would be like, ‘Great, let me get into all my other business activities. Let me get into my football training.’ And she’s sitting there going, ‘Well, when are you going to do things for the house? When are you going to take the kids to school and do that?’ And that was a big part of our marriage. I had to, like, check myself. Because she’s like, ‘I have goals and dreams too.’
While everyone spent the last 12 months guessing, Brady said he knew a year ago that he was probably leaving the Patriots: “I would say I probably knew before the start of last season that it was my last year. I knew that our time was coming to an end.”
