"It's about making improvements, and I think it goes to the guy that's the newest on the team to the guy that's the oldest on the team," Brady said. "I don't think you ever have it all figured out." Stew Milne-USA TODAY Sports
Time flies when you are one of the best in the league, right Tom Brady?
“It goes pretty fast,” said Brady Thursday at the outset of his 15th training camp with the New England Patriots. “I just think you appreciate it. There are very few people who have the opportunity that I have, and I’m very appreciative of it. You never know when the last one is going to be, so you just appreciate the moments that you have. Every year, it’s something different. This could be your last training camp; you never know. So you’ve got to make it count, and you can’t take anything for granted in the NFL. I try to do the best I can for this team and hope it leads to a great year.”
More often than not, it has for Brady, who has three Super Bowl rings and a pair of MVP trophies to show for his time working as head coach Bill Belichick’s hired gun. It was 13 years ago when Brady, in his second season, was pushed into the lineup for Drew Bledsoe during the 2001 season, a move necessitated by Bledsoe shearing a blood vessel in his chest after taking the bad end of a hit by New York Jets linebacker Mo Lewis.
Bledsoe assuredly didn’t believe that would be his last season with the Patriots, not at the outset of the year when he signed a 10-year, $103 million, NFL-record contract in his ninth year with the team that drafted him first overall in 1993.
“It’s about making improvements, and I think it goes to the guy that’s the newest on the team to the guy that’s the oldest on the team,” Brady said. “I don’t think you ever have it all figured out.”
Brady himself experienced the “only a hit away” fear that drives veterans each day in 2008, when he was lost for the entire season in Week 1 with a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee.
“There’s nobody that’s immune to it. You got to put the work in, you got to give it all you got, and hopefully on a daily basis you continue to make improvements,” said Brady, who turns 37 on Aug. 3. “This game is a very humbling game. You can’t ever think that you’ve got it all figured out. You’ve got to go out there and prove it every day.”
Brady hasn’t missed a game since 2006 — 80 consecutive regular-season starts — and had 25 touchdown passes last season with a ragtag receiving corps that unexpected lost top targets Aaron Hernandez (murder charges) and Rob Gronkowski, who started just six games last season.
Gronkowski has 42 touchdown receptions in four seasons with Brady. They worked on the side for an extended session after Thursday’s practice, and the connection is undeniable. But Gronkowski has only 17 starts the past two seasons and his ongoing recovery from a torn ACL has Brady looking to create a strong rapport with others in training camp.
“The more guys we have out here healthy, the better we’re going to be,” Brady said. “… When you have great players like that that are on the field, it helps you a lot. Your margin of error goes up. But you’ve got to prepare for both. We’ve had different times over the offseason where certain guys have been in there, certain guys haven’t, but I don’t think the expectations have changed. You’ve still got to go out and execute the play the best way you know how to and try to do it at a high level on a consistent basis.”
–Veteran nose tackle Vince Wilfork was on the field for the first time in team workouts since he tore his Achilles at Atlanta four games into last season. There was a time in the offseason when it appeared Wilfork, entering his 11th season at age 32, might not be back with the Patriots.
“Hopefully I’m picking up where I left off. I don’t know,” Wilfork said. “Like I said, I try not to think about it. That’s me. The future, you never know what happens in the future. Like I said, I’m not going to dwell over the past. Right now I feel good, I’m practicing, I’m excited about being here and I’m going to keep that excitement.”
–The Patriots first practice in pads is scheduled for Saturday.
“You can only do so much out here with no pads on,” linebacker Jerod Mayo said. “Saturday will be a good day but obviously we have some work to do tomorrow putting some plays in. Saturday will be fun.”
