01-11-2010, 10:42 AM
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#2
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All Pro Poster
Join Date: Sep 2005
Posts: 19,184
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Re: Brady's WEEI interview is up
It Is What It Is Tom Brady on D&C
stuff which stood out to me. We just didnt have the players . nothing to do with fire and all that crap.
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Was the locker room commitment the same as it was during dynasty years? With the losses of [Rodney] Harrison, [Tedy] Bruschi, [Richard] Seymour and [Mike] Vrabel, did the culture of the locker room change? When you have four guys showing up late for practice, wasn’t that the role those players took to police that sort of activity? Does the culture of the Patriot Way still exist?
We’ve all thought about that. Guys like Tedy and Rodney and Mike and Larry Izzo and Richard, they don’t come around very often. It’s not like those guys are just available in free agency every year. Those are special players and special guys.
It’s not the Patriots uniform that makes the team play the Patriot Way that you refer to. It’s the coaches and the players all working collectively to the same goal. Any time you lose players like that, there is a loss. You lose a guy like Rodney, he would practice defensively, then he would come over and practice against the offense to give us a scout team look, and he would play a position that was different than safety — it was corner sometimes, sometimes it was the sub defender, the guy who was the slot — to work on his skills.
Those were exceptional players, big reasons why we were successful over the years. When you lose those guys, it gives other players opportunities, other players that are new to the system or players who had been here for a few years and watched those guys to try and grow into that role. Whether that’s a guy like Jerod Mayo or Sam Aiken, other guys who were elected captains.
You can’t sit here and say Rodney Harrison’s replaceable. There’s no way. But other guys have to step in, fill those shoes. Guys who were here with those types of players have to take those lessons, learn from them, and use those and apply those to what was happening this season.
I know it’s a long-winded answer. The reality is that obviously the leadership on our team wasn’t where it needed to be. I speak for myself — I’m one of those leaders who certainly needs to do a better job getting everyone on the same page and fill the void left by those key players.
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Quote:
Did you and Belichick know on Sunday at 1pm that the team wasn’t prepared?
I know he didn’t feel like Thursday we had a very good day of practice. He was really kind of pissed off about the way we practiced on Thursday. A lot of times, you have a really bad practice during the week and you overcome it. Some days, you don’t overcome it. Some days you have a really bad first quarter and you overcome it, and other days you don’t. That margin of error becomes a lot less when you don’t perform the way you need to perform during the week.
We’ve had plenty of bad practices. I’m not saying that’s why you lose the game. Coach, like he always does, he has a great pulse for what’s going on. I always feel we’re the best-coached team in the league. Nobody is more prepared as a team than we are. The way he coaches us, the way we watch film, there’s a great level of preparation. I just think that yesterday, when it comes down to it, we ust didn’t play well.
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people who care about his marriage and other crap affecting his fire 
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Has your commitment to the game — first to arrive at the facility, last to leave, earning the parking spot — become harder to maintain?
The guys who really know that answer are the guys that I play with. I love the game and I love playing and I love working hard for it. For me, there’s not a lot of things going on in my life, as funny as that sounds, other than my career and my family. Hopefully, because I got married, that doesn’t affect that way I play quarterback. That’s not something that I’ve thought much about and said, ‘My performance as a football player is really going to go down because I got married or I’ve had children. I think my life is very focused and prioritized on the things that are important to me, and that’s obviously my family and my football career. There’s not really a whole lot of other things going on other than that.
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