Tom Martinez, a long-time quarterback coach best known for serving as Tom Brady’s personal mentor, has died of a heart attack suffered during a dialysis session, according to WVCB in Boston.
Martinez was 66.
He was awaiting a kidney transplant, and Brady had been personally trying to help the effort. “He’s a great friend of mine for a very long time and taught me how to throw a football at a very young age,” Brady told ABC News in January. “He’s been looking for a kidney for quite a while.” At one point, Brady attempted via his Facebook page to find a potential living donor for Martinez.
Before the 2011 season started, Brady visited with Martinez for a tune up.
”He asked me to come out, right before the season started. Labor Day weekend,” Martinez told Karen Guregian of the Boston Herald last year. “He said he was off. His throwing was off. So I went out there Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. We went through the film. Then all of a sudden, everything else fell into place. Within about an hour, he was back to the old Tom Brady. Then he had that 517-yard game. . . . I guess what we did worked.”
It definitely did, from the time Brady first attended a clinic put on by Martinez at age 13.
We extend our condolences to Martinez’s family, friends, and colleagues.