DIFFERENT STROKES

Tom Brady Claps Back at Successor’s Dig About How He Stressed Out Teammates

“This wasn’t daycare,” said Brady, now a freshly minted analyst for Fox Sports. “If I wanted to have fun, I was going to go to Disneyland with my kids.”

Tom Brady may be off the field these days, but he hasn’t lost the killer instinct that defined his 23-season career in the NFL. The former quarterback, now in his first month as a Fox Sports analyst, fired back at his successor, Baker Mayfield, for suggesting on a recent podcast that Brady’s intensity had elevated the cortisol levels in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers locker room. “He had everybody dialed in, high-strung environment, so I think everybody was pretty stressed out,” Mayfield said on the Casa de Klub podcast earlier this month. “They wanted me to come in, be myself, bring the joy back to football, for guys who weren’t having as much fun.” Brady then referenced Mayfield’s remarks in Sunday’s broadcast. “I thought stressful was not having Super Bowl rings,” he said. “So, there was a mindset of a champion that I took to work every day. This wasn’t daycare. If I was going to have fun, I’d go to Disneyland with my kids.” Kevin Burkhardt, Brady’s broadcast partner, replied that “the competitive juices” were clearly “still flowing” in Brady, to which he responded, “Still in there. No apologies.”