got a couple of different topics. I want to address.
Let's take it all the way back to where we started
with Bruce, Arians addressing his relationship with the guy
who showed up and sat in the front row
at the press conference yesterday.
Tom Brady.
You mentioned that you talked to Tom. I don't know if you're
able to share any details from that conversation with us.
There have been reports about you know, friction with him,
but obviously, he's here today. He's here today to celebrate
your career. What can you say about your relationship with
him and that conversation?
Get your ass on the golf course, man. I'm getting broke.
Know.
We have a great relationship. I mean, at all, the players who
are there are few in here. Everyone's gotten cussed out
including him. So it's just part of me,
you know, so that does nothing. We have a great relationship.
I mean
as soon as he retired, I think we text every week.
Where you at. What are you doing? When you go play golf
when you can back down this way,
and so
people got it, right. I mean and
it couldn't be further from the truth.
We played that yesterday and didn't get bleeped. Look,
there's Tom Brady at the front row of the press conference and
Peter miles Simmons. And I talked about this yesterday on
PFT p.m. This is where
you need to inject common sense and I probably was less tactful
about it yesterday and I should have been imagine that, but
the fact that Tom Brady was, there means nothing, it means
nothing,
plenty of people, attend the funerals of
individuals. They didn't like,
I'm not saying there isn't a personal relationship there
that is premised on fondness. It's possible to have a Trained
professional relationship and a perfectly fine, personal
relationship,
and they like to hang out. They like to golf. They text each
other. That's fine. But you know what? We just can't work
together anymore. I have no reason to think the Tom Brady
has
a strained personal relationship with Bill
Belichick, but it was obvious. It got to the point after 20
years at the professional relationship couldn't continue.
So
by saying we get along fine, and we're going to golf and we text
that that
Buries the deeper question of whether or not Tom Brady, after
20 years, with the ultimate grinder, who was there
every day, working as hard as everyone else.
Swapping that for the guy who,
who bragged about the fact that he wasn't really doing all that
much. And if Rich horn, Burgers observations from earlier, this
year of any accuracy at all, and I have a feeling they do,
if you're going to Barnstorm in late in the week and start
messing with the game playing, when you haven't been there to
construct it, that's going to create resentment. That would
be true in any workplace. If the boss.
Us has mostly disappeared and shows up from time to time to
mess with the work that the people who are busting their
asses have done,
the human beings involved at some point are going to roll
their eyes. And at some point they're going to get upset.
That's just basic human nature.
Mike, I think what has to happen here is
You know,
if you depending on where you fall on this and depending on
what you believe,
I was thinking of this, I was telling somebody yesterday
that if you had asked me the first team I covered for
ever
was the Cincinnati Bengals where Boomer Esiason was
the quarterback Sam. Wyche was the coach
say Boomer and you know, I was a beat guy. I was around these
guys every day. And Boomer Esiason was Driven Crazy by
samwich
and loved his imagination, but
really had some issues with him. And later on during
the strike season of 1987.
They were at War
Phil Simms and Bill Parcells
when Phil Simms played for Bill Parcells.
I can tell you that he had to grind his teeth,
a lot to take the stuff from Parcells. There's a famous
scene.
For a Monday night game at Indianapolis in the 80s
where Parcells is screaming at Sims
on the sidelines
today. Phil Simms would walk
to Florida to be with Parcells if he asked him
and so and all the time over the years, you know, that
the friction between Mike Holmgren and Brett Favre. Legendary,
you know, the stuff between Bill Walsh
and the great Joe, Montana.
In a
huge, there is a huge divide between him, particularly after
he traded for Steve Young.
I guess what I'm saying is
almost every quarterback that I've covered for any long
period of time.
Has a problem and a major problem
with the people or person who coaches them day to day.
I'll take it all the way back to the 70s,
the guy, who allowed the personal friction to become
a permanent or the professional friction to become permanent
personal friction,
and alienation Terry Bradshaw with Chuck Noll.
They never had a good personal relationship because Terry
Bradshaw didn't respond well to the way he was being coached
and it never changed.
And he completely detached emotionally
from any positive feelings about Chuck Noll. And
I guarantee you,
if the original tea, B12
had any of the power and influence
that the current TB 12 enjoys,
the original TB 12 at some point.
What if tried
to engineer
a coaching change in Pittsburgh and he would admit it?
Yeah, that's a very good. It's a good point. Now,
you know what
old man? Rooney would have said. And Dan Rooney?
Get your heinie back in the water. Got up. Don't beat it.
No, but the same thing, but can you imagine? Can you imagine if
Robert Kraft if Belichick are if Brady ever went to craft
after three Super Bowls and say hey,
what about this? Belichick? Wait, well, you know, what are
you going to do? And he would have said yeah. Get out of
here.
Yeah. Yeah, but you know what? The difference is in Tampa Bay
after they've seen 20 years of game days with more
more wide swaths of red empty seats than people and they had
a year of Tom Brady
and they really want another one.
That's when your mindset changes
a little bit about listening to the guy that maybe
through two or three levels below, him is sending messages
about what it would take in theory. Hypothetically for Tom
Brady to
Odd to end, his short, retirement from the NFL.