Tom Brady says 'crash landing' to end the season makes it tough to adjust to off-season
AP Photo/Peter Joneleit
- Tom Brady and the Buccaneers' season ended with a playoff loss to the Dallas Cowboys.
- Brady explained that the season's end comes like a "crash landing," and adjusting to the off-season can take some time.
- "Doing it for as long as I have, there's no soft landing. It just ends, and it's over," Brady said on his podcast.
Tom Brady's 23rd NFL season came to an end with a playoff loss to the Dallas Cowboys.
After a trying season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers that still ended with a division title, Brady fell short at home against the Cowboys in the Wild Card round.
Speaking on his podcast, "Let's Go!" Brady explained that the sudden stop that comes with a playoff loss makes adjusting back to an off-season lifestyle a difficult task.
"There's a lot of decompression. I know we use that word a lot, but there is a real crash landing element to all of this," Brady said. "Doing it for as long as I have, there's no soft landing. It just ends, and it's over, and as much as you'd love for something to be a little softer on the way out, it's just not the reality."
Brady compared the work of the season to running on a treadmill.
"You're on a treadmill going really fast, and you've got to go fast, because every team is going fast. In order to win every week, it's a full sprint. It starts the minute after the previous game ends — How quickly can you recover? How quickly can you understand what you screwed up and what you didn't screw up? How do you start game-planning for next week?
"You get into that programming for like 20 weeks between preseason games and then 17 regular season games and playoffs. By the end of the year you're running fast.
"Then all of a sudden you lose, and you're no longer preparing for a game. So what happens? The treadmill stops. Because no one is going into work, because no one has to prepare for anything."
While preparing for next week's opponent is an all-consuming task throughout the course of the season, when the outlook shifts from what happens next Sunday to what happens next season, it's a dramatic shift.
"There's no reason to get up at 4:45 a.m.," Brady said. "There's no reason to do a lot of those things that we are conditioned to do — watch 14 games on a flight home on a Monday to try to prepare for Tuesday and game plan. There's part of your life that just stops.
"It's just a different type of mode of life. We get used to it over a period of time, although it's never a smooth transition."
Brady's off-season this year is set to be especially busy. After his brief retirement last year, Brady's future is once again uncertain. Another year with the Buccaneers is on the table, as is a potential jump to a new team — or Brady could choose to retire once again, this time for real.
As things stand, Brady isn't ready to share his future plans just yet.
"Jim, if I knew what I was going to fucking do, I would've already fucking done it, okay?" Brady told co-host Jim Gray on the podcast this week.
"I'm taking it a day at a time."