Brady reveals father’s illness rocked start of his season
QB’S parents battled COVID in California
We so often hear how Tom brady overcomes adversity, and uses it as motivation.
Football adversity. ya know, having to fight like hell in college in the late 1990s for every morsel of playing time. being snubbed until late in the 2000 entry draft. barely playing as a rookie in New england.
Then having his unmatched early-career successes asterisked for purportedly being an overly gifted beneficiary of great defences and great coaching. And in recent years being constantly doubted as he approached and passed age 40. even deflategate. but early on this past NFL season — his seventh campaign that climaxed with a Super bowl championship — Tom brady quietly dealt with the personal anguish of being cross-continent while both his parents fought COVID-19. real-life adversity, in other words.
Brady’s father, for much of September, battled for his life in a California hospital. And it happened so fast. One day he wasn’t feeling well, and got tested.
“The next day I couldn’t breathe,” Tom brady Sr., 76, told Andrea Kremer, in a feature that aired on CBS shortly before his son spearheaded the Tampa bay buccaneers’ 31-9 victory Sunday night over the Kansas City Chiefs in Super bowl LV.
“We walked into the hospital and that was the last time I saw (wife) Galynn for 18 days.
“I had pneumonia as well as COVID. They were pumping me with oxygen. (doctors said), ‘If your lungs don’t absorb the oxygen, then we’re going to have to put you on the ventilator.’ It was a harrowing experience.”
Just as it was for the couple’s three daughters, their youngest offspring Tom, and all their grandchildren.
Only in recent days has brady’s parents’ plight fully come to light.
during Monday morning’s virtual Super bowl MVP news conference, the 43-year-old shared a bit of what it was like at the time.
“Anything that affects your parents is pretty tough,” brady told me, “especially (when they’re) on the other side of the country and I’m in Florida. A lot of families have been affected by this COVID situation. It hit my dad pretty hard. My mom recovered pretty quickly; my dad had a little rough go. In the end he came through like he always does. He’s a fighter.”
Galynn shared to Kremer her frustrations of being told daily her husband was in stable condition, with little other information. “every day it was just waiting for the doctor to call,” she said. “It was just so unnerving.”
both parents recovered. Tom Sr. returned home on Sept. 23. He and Galynn were in the stands Sunday night at raymond James Stadium — along with brady’s sisters and a small army of grandchildren — as the most accomplished NFL player in history added another folded-corner page to his unmatched football resume.
“I was just so happy (dad) was there last night watching us play,” brady said, bleary-eyed following a raucous bucs victory party, rife with champagne and cigars, and after just two hours of sleep. “It was just amazing to have everybody there … I know I couldn’t do it without my family. I’ve always said I had three sisters who were way better athletes than I am.”
brady’s oldest sister Maureen, an all-american softball pitcher at Fresno State university, is now a nurse, “but in her heart she’s still an athlete. She gave me a hug after the game and said a few things that, you know, probably aren’t appropriate for this call.”
Little did we know back in September that as brady and the buccaneers offence struggled to do much of anything right in an opening-week loss at New Orleans, every day he had been frantically calling the California hospital “to try to speak to his dad,” Galynn told Kremer.
As for brady’s rough transition into head coach bruce Arians’ and offensive coordinator byron Leftwich’s system, given that the pandemic scuttled all NFL team workouts and practices in April, May and June — then contracted and limited summer training-camp workouts — it’s no wonder the bucs offence hiccupped so much.
brady, after 20 years in New england, was still learning the bucs system.
“It takes time, and this year was so unique in that we had no time,” Arians said. “We’re going to New Orleans — and I’m speaking for Tom here — and it was like, ‘What the hell’s that play?’ And, ‘What’s that word mean?’ And, ‘What the hell’s this guy going to do on that play?’
“It just took time. And it’s not easy. And I can’t give Tom enough credit for just hanging in there with the coaches, and knowing this is going to work out sooner than later. And it did.
“Just the verbiage itself … after 20 years. And I was in that (Patriots offensive) system. I know that system. Ours is different. I’m just so grateful to him for battling through.”
brady said during his family’s September crisis that Arians “was very supportive of me, and Clyde (Christensen) my quarterbacks coach was very supportive.
“It all ended up well.”