Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady hasn’t lost many times in his career. He’s lost few enough times that he doesn’t forget them.
“I remember pretty much all the losses,” Brady told reporters on Thursday when asked if some losses stick with him more than others. “I probably don’t remember all the wins, but I definitely remember all the losses. I think they all stick with you because you’re competitive and you want to go out there and play your best every week. You’re not a movie actor where you get six takes when it doesn’t go right like, ‘Oh, let me do that one over again. I messed that one up. Let’s run that back.’ You’re a football player and you’re making split-second decisions and you always wish, ‘Man, I made every split-second decision right,’ but that’s just not the reality of the sport. You’ve got to try and improve it as best you can.
“Again, we’re just trying to work as hard as we can every day to make improvements that we need to make, understanding that it’s a process and it’s going to last. There’s probably not ever going to be a day where I’m going to say, ‘Hey man, we’ve got this all figured out. This sport, we nailed it. We figured out football completely.’ Every week it’s just a reinvention of what you’re trying to do, what the other team is trying to do, what you need to do [and] what you need to be better at. I think we all recognize we’re not at a place where we can ever relax. We’ve got to improve the urgency. We’ve got to make the improvements faster, learn from the mistakes and do a better job.”
This year’s losses may stick out a bit more because all happened with a new team and on big stages, from a late-afternoon Week One loss at New Orleans to a prime-time loss at Chicago to the Sunday night splattering by the Saints at home.
Brady definitely will remember Sunday night’s loss. Apart from the final score, 38-3, Brady generated his lowest passer rating since a November 5, 2006 loss to the Colts. The 40.4 rating from Sunday night also was the third worst of his 21-year career.