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Tom Brady may see no need to apologize for tossing the Lombardi Trophy at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers victory boat parade in February, but he made no bones about what he really thinks of the toss in hindsight.
“That was not smart for a couple of reasons,” Brady told Good Morning America host Michael Strahan, which aired on April 7. “One is, if we drop it, that’s a little bit of a problem. But the worst thing that could happen is that the edges on that trophy are so sharp, and had those things clipped one of my boys in the other boat, it would have been an ugly parade.”
Brady tossed the trophy from the back edge of his boat to tight end Cameron Brate amid a crowd of teammates on the boat behind Brady. It went viral on social media. and became a frequent topic among Bucs players, especially Brady, on TV and radio appearances such as when Brady went on the Late Late Show with James Corden.
Lorraine Grohs, the daughter of late Lombardi Trophy silversmith Greg Grohs, went on Fox 4 and asked Brady to apologize. Bucs manager Jason Licht reacted to the request with a GIF quote from the movie Stripes — “Lighten up Frances”.
Facing Critics
Brady hasn’t been a stranger to critics and doubters throughout his storied career where he won six Super Bowls in New England and one in Tampa.
Doubters came out before he ever took the field in the NFL 21 years ago with low appraisals by draft experts such as Mel Kiper Jr. The analyst said that Brady’s mobility could be an issue in the NFL.
Brady has often talked about going in the sixth round of the 2002 NFL Draft at pick 199. He Tweeted in February that it “still gets me fired up” following Kiper’s comparison of 2021 quarterback prospect Mac Jones to Brady.
“When people tell you, ‘hey, you can’t do this, you can’t do this, and you keep overcoming that, you build this confidence in yourself and this belief in yourself that even when nobody else believes in you that I’m still going to do it because I don’t give an (expletive) what you say because I know what I can do, and I’ve done it,” Brady told NFL Films.
Media pundits then viewed Brady as a system quarterback followed by allegations of deflating footballs and losing his touch with age. Brady won six Super Bowls and three regular-season MVPs with the Patriots along the way.
Critics Follow Brady to Tampa
Doubters sounded stronger all the more when Brady headed to Tampa for a franchise that hadn’t won a playoff game in 17 years nor reached the playoffs in 13 years.
“I would say I was always kind of motivated by people that say ‘you can’t do it, you’re not good enough, you’re not fast enough, not big enough, you don’t have a big enough arm,'” Brady told Strahan. “You know, I’ve had a body of work over a period of time, so you just say, ‘hey, like it’s quickly you forget.’ That’s the part about football — it’s not really about what you did last year. It’s kind of what you’re going to do this year. So for me, it was what I was going to do with the Bucs last year. I still feel that way.”
Brady quieted any naysayers by leading the Bucs to an 11-5 record and a Super Bowl LV victory for his seventh Super Bowl ring and fifth MVP. He gave his critics a friendly reminder of that on social media after winning the Super Bowl.
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