Getty Tom Brady celebrates winning a seventh Super Bowl with his children.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady doesn’t like the GOAT nickname, but he doesn’t mind sharing a picture of himself with one amid his insatiable quest to top the NFL charts.
Brady did just that on Thursday in reaction to pop musician Justin Bieber’s Throwback Thursday Tweet. Bieber posted an old picture of himself with a bike below the caption “Your Boy.” Brady responded with an old picture of himself holding a goat from a 2005 GQ photoshoot with the caption “Your Boy” again.
Furry animals aside, Brady’s issue with the GOAT nickname stems from the acronym — “Greatest of All Time.” He said as much on the Good Morning America show in 2019 after leading the New England Patriots to a sixth Super Bowl win.
“I don’t even like that. I don’t even like it — it makes me cringe,” Brady told host and former New York Giants star Michael Strahan.
Brady certainly didn’t like it when Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson said it to him following a win over Brady’s New England Patriots in 2019 per ESPN’s Seth Wickersham.
“It was the last thing he wanted to hear, after a loss and in general,” Wickersham wrote. “He hates it when people call him the greatest ever — maybe because it speaks to a kind of finality he’s not ready for yet, maybe because he simply doesn’t feel it. He has accomplished more than anyone else in his sport, yet he still feels like it isn’t enough.”
Brady won three Super Bowls with the Patriots at the time of the GQ photo with the goat. He eclipsed the careers of other challengers to the GOAT title since, such as winning more Super Bowls than Joe Montana. Brady took it further in 2020, becoming the second quarterback to lead two different teams to the Lombardi Trophy — Peyton Manning being the first.
Manning Challenge
Bucs quarterback coach Clyde Christensen said on the Zach Gelb Show that Manning winning a Super Bowl with a second team motivated Brady in leaving the Patriots for Tampa.
Did @TomBrady ever open up as to why he left the New England #Patriots?
@Buccaneers QB coach Clyde Christensen told us 1⃣ reason why.
Full Zach Gelb Show on @CBSSportsRadio chat here: t.co/SIGkLlNNX6
“He said one of the things that looked fun and challenging to him was what Peyton did in Denver,” Christensen told Gelb. “I do think that the challenge of that was a huge thing for him.”
Manning led the Denver Broncos to a Super Bowl win in 2015, after leaving Indianapolis late in his career. He also led the Colts to a Lombardi Trophy in 2006.
Brady signed with Tampa as a free agent in March 2020 after 20 seasons in New England, and he led the Bucs to their first Lombardi Trophy in 18 years with the Super Bowl LV win on Feb. 7.
Challenge a Compliment
Brady doesn’t want a compliment. He wants a challenge instead, he told Strahan in 2019.
“I guess I take compliments worse than — I wish you would say, ‘You’re trash, you’re too old, you’re too slow, you can’t get it done no more,'” And I’ll say, ‘Thank you very much, I’m gonna go prove you wrong,'” Brady said to Strahan.
Brady disproved the latest round of doubters, who ironically had similar arguments, in 2020 as he threw for 40 touchdowns and turned around a franchise that hadn’t won a postseason game since a 2003 Super Bowl win. He let everyone on social media know that, too, a week before having some Throwback Thursday fun with Bieber.
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