NFL reporter on Brady: “I probably couldn’t have sold this story to many people”

Tom Brady Buccaneers
Photo credit USA Today Images

Well, he did it.

Tom Brady has led the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to the Super Bowl, this after holding off the Green Bay Packers, 31-26, at Lambeau Field on Sunday.

The Buccaneers will face the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LV at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay on Feb. 7.

“Most of the core of this team, forget the Super Bowls – hell, they haven’t been to a playoff game, and now they’ve won three on the road,” Tampa Bay Times Bucs reporter Rick Stroud said on After Hours with Amy Lawrence. “It’ll be years from now before we get to understand what Tom Brady is accomplishing, but I probably couldn’t have sold this story to many people: that he would leave New England, that he would come down during a pandemic when there’s no offseason, that there wouldn’t really be much of a training camp, no preseason games, have to start the year at New Orleans, make it as a Wild Card, and go on to win three [playoff games]. Yes, he’s back in the Super Bowl, but in Raymond James Stadium.”

The Buccaneers will be the first team to play a Super Bowl in their home stadium. Brady, meanwhile, will play in his tenth Super Bowl – this one for a franchise that hadn’t made the playoffs since 2007.

“When you see it every day, when you see the impact he has on this football team, the attention to detail, the work ethic, how everybody believes – that’s the word you come away with, just the belief that these players and coaches have in Tom. He’s refreshed by a change of scenery and new teammates and the warm weather and all of that, of course. But he’s all about winning, and it’s just what he does better than everybody.”

Brady is 6-3 in Super Bowls. He has played on this stage in five of the last eight seasons.

“I get the Brady fatigue thing, but if he wins this, I think you stop talking about him as just a football player and you start comparing him to people like Babe Ruth,” Stroud said. “I’ve never see anything like it. It’s just been a great story.”