Tom Brady’s first phone call with the Bucs should scare the rest of the NFL
By Josh Hill
Tom Brady trying to convince the Buccaneers to sign him seems like something that should be the other way around, but it happened.
When you’re the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, an NFL franchise most fans forget exists, you usually have to try and convince free agents to join rank. What isn’t expected is free agents pitching you to come play in Tampa.
What is really, really unexpected is Tom Brady being that free agent trying to convince you to sign him.
It probably didn’t take much of an arm-twist from Brady to get Buccaneers brass on board with wanting to offer him a contract, but that didn’t stop the 6-time Super Bowl champion from making a sales pitch anyway.
Bucs general manager Jason Licht was on Get Up on Monday and detailed what the first phone call with Brady was once the free agency tampering period opened. According to Licht, it was Brady who did most of the talking as to why he and the Buccaneers would be a perfect fit.
This should make everyone else in the NFL take pause for a moment.
Obviously the Bucs didn’t need Brady to talk them into signing him. For a franchise that has been mostly irrelevant since winning a Super Bowl almost two decades ago, Brady is Pulp Fiction shot of adrenaline.
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But the fact that Brady so badly wanted to go to Tampa should at least mildly be read into. Why did he want to go there so bad? What does he see in the Bucs that makes him want to add them to his already Hall of Fame legacy? The entire shock value of Brady going to the Bucs was that they needed him more than he need them, so why did he go so far out of his way to make sure the marriage happened?
That’s something that should make the rest of the league a little nervous. As soon as Brady signed with Tampa, everyone remembered that Mike Evans and Chris Godwin are the best receiving duo no one watched (unless they were on your fantasy team). All of a sudden it was remembered that Bruce Arians is a damn fine coach and a quarterback whisperer who helped develop Ben Roethlisberger and Andrew Luck into elite talents before reviving Carson Palmer’s career in Arizona.
We all tried joking about how Brady was doing what all old affluent East Coasters do in their twilight: Retire to Florida. But the jokes didn’t stick, and there might be a reason for that. Brady obviously sees something worth taking seriously in Tampa and the rest of the league is sure to find out soon enough as well.