Former New England Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi recently spoke with MusketFire’s Sara Marshall, with Marshall putting together a great interview during a recent charity event.
Bruschi was promoting an Abbott HeartMates event where he and Buffalo Bills standout Damar Hamlin hosted their own “draft” connecting people who had dealt with similar heart-related challenges.
Here’s a full transcript from her interview:
On out of everything he accomplished over his career, what meant the most to him?
“Well, that’s a great question because there’s a lot of championships to talk about, a lot of big games that we won and established a long time of playing great football. But I think in my career, what I’m most proud of is probably my 2005 season when I came back from my stroke. Of course, I’m a huge advocate for stroke and heart disease awareness, which is a big reason why I’m here today. But coming back to play football after that, I’ve learned that it was much more impactful even now than winning championships because for all of the stroke survivors out there that have had to go through so much for their own little comebacks, for me to come back like that and still play four years was very special to me and the statistics weren’t very important to me, Sarah, but I did track, when I retired, I tracked how many tackles I had after my comeback, and it was 366. So I made 366 tackles as a stroke survivor, and that’s something I’m so, so, proud about and that’s probably my most impactful thing that I’ve ever done in my career, yes.”
On any funny stories about Tom Brady that he hasn’t told:
“There’s so many stories, I mean even the one recently of Tom saying that he could still come back and play, I think he’ll say that in ten years from now too. Just letting someone in in terms of stories about who Tom thinks he is, he thinks anything is possible at any time. I mean, I remember him telling me he wanted play until he was 45, and I laughed in his face, Sarah, so I didn’t think it was possible, and now he’s saying he might come back. I really believe that’s probably not going to happen, but his mind is one that will never change, and next year, three years from now, five years from now, I truly believe he still thinks that he will be better than like, [half] the quarterbacks in the NFL. That’s just who he is.”
On what he felt kept them motivated on defense:
“I think we had a unique way of continually pushing each other in a respectful, slash, maybe comical way. Because, I mean, OK, you go through ’01, and you win it. ’02, you don’t make the playoffs. ’03, you win it. ’04 comes around and it’s like you’re dealing with a lot of guys that know how to win. And then even going all the way to the ’07 team where you’ve got Super Bows in your back pocket, and all of a sudden it’s like, ‘OK, how do you stay motivated?’ You just have to constantly get motivation and be pushed by someone you respect and someone that you play next to. [Mike] Vrabel, [Willie] McGinest, [Roman] Phifer, [Junior] Seau, guys like that in the linebacker room, how we would just constantly ride each other even though we were in the league for over a decade, and you think that you know it all, and you have everything all figured out, but to have the humility to sort of think that, ‘You know what? I don’t have it all figured out, and if you push me, I’m going to accept it.’ So it takes a little bit of humility to understand that there’s still more work to be done, that you don’t have it figured out, and it takes a special teammate and a special player to understand that. Because there’s winning, and there’s consistently winning, and a lot of people don’t understand that there is a huge difference than winning one Super Bowl than winning three, four, five, six, like the Patriots did.”
On how there’s a lot people can take away from that message:
“You know, it’s hard because you have to forget your past successes. And it’s not hard not to celebrate it every single day. It’s just hard not to think, that, “Man, we’ve already won, like, two, three Super Bowls,’ I mean it’s like, ‘Wow, we’re awesome. [It’s hard] to try and humble yourself to realize there’s still work to be done.”
On the fact they were like ‘No, we’re going to keep going.’
“The special guys that we had, it was never enough. And you know, Tom ended up leading the way later on in his career by, of course, always saying his favorite championship’s going to be ‘the next one,’ and that let us all know that it’s about winning, not just one, two, but we need to keep winning more.”
On his partnership with HeartMates and how he got involved in it and what made it important for him to be a part of:
“Yeah, to be here with Abbott and also the first drafting of the HeartMates team, I actually had a … after my stroke, I had a heart procedure to repair a hole in my heart. I have an Abbott device in my heart as we speak, and I’ve had ever since 2005 in my heart procedure. So I have an emotional and close connection to Abbott, and the HeartMates team is just so special because we’re drafting 11 people today that have heart conditions that they have overcome in their lives, and we’re really giving them a community, well, we call it a team, all right? HeartMates is a team now of 11 people. It’s our first-ever team that we’re drafting that now can come together and share stories about everything they’ve been through. Their caregivers can now meet each other and sort of compare notes about, ‘What was it like with you?’ and ‘What was it like with you?’ and I think that’s important to do. It’s something that I’ve done at my foundation at Tedy’s Team and to now know that HeartMates is now sort of forming, this is special. Because the NFL Draft is coming up, and it’s just so perfect to do it this week, you know, prior to the draft that you’re drafting a team of people that now are going to form a team that’s going to be, basically, it’s a lifelong contract, and it’s super exciting what Abbott is doing.”
If you’re not following Marshall’s work, you’re missing out. She’s absolutely terrific, and you can follow all her latest articles via this link, and you can follow her on Twitter at @SMarshXO.
Here’s the full video of her interview:
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Ian Logue is a Seacoast native and owner and senior writer for PatsFans.com, an independent media site covering the New England Patriots and has been running this site in one form or another since 1997.
