Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady seems to have acclimated to his new team on the first day of training camps. The three-time NFL MVP is already providing wisdom for one of his new targets in tight end, O.J. Howard.
Howard recalled the conversations he and Brady had on the field:
“Juice!” Brady called out. “Keep those shoulders square.”
“Right here!” Still pumping his arms. “Last minute . . . Catch it on your hip,” Brady said, with some garbled words in the middle.
“You hit it on the head,” Howard said. “That’s Tom coaching me. Tom’s been coaching a lot of guys one-on-one.
“When he says, ‘Shoulders square,’ if you watch me on film, and he watched me, watched me a lot, I’d be running a vertical route, not going as fast as I should have. That’s because I’d be running a vertical route, but I’d look back and it’d slow me down. He’d say, ‘Keep those shoulders square. Don’t slow down for me. Six, eight yards, pump your arms, sell it like a go route—I’ll get you the ball.”
“When Tom does that,” Howard said of the coaching point, “it’s huge for me to hear. I worked on that all offseason, a bad habit I had to break. He puts it in my head every day. That’s what a true leader does. He does it in a humble way. So chill. That’s Tom Brady, one of the best to ever play our game, and every day he’s got something for me to make me better.”
The former long-time New England Patriots gunslinger seems to have developed personal relationships and chemistry with his new teammates already. Brady's role will be crucial to the team as he will try to lead a revamped roster to bounce back from a 7-9 record last season.
Heightened expectations are already set on the new-look Bucs with former Patriot Rob Gronkowski coming out of retirement to play with his old quarterback. Completing the cast are veterans Sean McCoy, Mike Evans, and Chris Godwin.
A new dawn is expected to arise in Florida as Tom Brady will try to power the Bucs back to the Super Bowl stage for the first time since 2002.
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