In addition to his Valentine’s Day visit to PFT Live, Patriots quarterback Tom Brady also spent time with Peter King of TheMMQB.com for an interview about a wide variety of topics.
One of them was Deflategate and Brady’s feelings toward NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. Brady had plenty of chances to slam Goodell publicly over the last two years for suspending him, but has avoided doing so and remained gracious through a much-anticipated handover of the Super Bowl LI MVP trophy. King asked Brady how he was able to do that.
“But I guess the point is, when you subject yourself to a lot of criticism, what I’ve learned from myself is, I don’t want to give my power away to other people by letting my own emotions be subjected to what their thoughts or opinions are. So if someone calls me something, that’s their problem. It’s not my problem. I’m not going to give away my power,” Brady said. “You can call me an a--hole and I am going to smile at you probably. I’m not going to say, ‘No, you’re an a--hole.’ Because that person is controlling me with what their thoughts and actions are. How can you go through life, now at this point, 17 years, being affected by everybody all the time with what someone says?”
Brady said that he thought about the best way to fight and found that it came through his play because it was the “only [part] I can control.” Brady controlled that part pretty well all the way through the Super Bowl, which supports the idea that taking the high road was the right decision for him to make.