With 24 hours to decompress, Tom Brady briefly discussed his return to Gillette Stadium for the Patriots season opener on his podcast, “Let’s Go!”
During Sunday’s ceremony, team owner Robert Kraft announced Brady would be an early entrant into the Patriots Hall of Fame next spring with an induction set for June 12, 2024, inside Gillette Stadium while introducing the former quarterback. Brady then addressed the crowd with the message that he’ll be a “Patriot for life.”
“I think those moments are great,” Brady said on his podcast. “Just to take nothing for granted. I had my family there, which was really fun. And to see a lot of people who have supported me over the years show up and I said it all on the field, so I’m not going to regurgitate it, but it was just a really special day. I was pretty worn out. I got on the flight. I was knocked out. There was so much energy and emotion. It was a great football game. There was a lot of great games yesterday. But it was a great celebration and another once in a lifetime opportunity for me.”
The Patriots lost 25-20 to the Eagles in Sunday’s season opener. For those hoping for Brady to make a comeback, the quarterback said he’s happily retired.
“I think the advice I gave different guys is if they’re looking in their career, and I told this to a friend last night. ‘Just make sure you leave it all out there.’ Because you just never want to have one drop left and think, ‘Ah, everyone’s out there playing, and I’m sitting up here, and I still feel like I could do it.’ I don’t feel like that,” Brady said. “I feel like I’m just super content with my decision and where I’m at in life.”
With Peyton Manning as a guest on the podcast, Brady said that he took inspiration from the former Colts quarterback in running out onto the field to Jay-Z’s “Public Service Announcement” before giving a fist pump to the crowd.
“He doesn’t ever think that I paid attention, but I’ll say that on Sunday morning yesterday at 6 a.m., I woke up — because I can’t sleep. I said, ‘You know what I’m going to do?’ I don’t quite know what I’m going to say to the crowd. Let me look at some of my favorite players get up there in their retirement and speak. So, of course, I type in ‘Peyton Manning’ — I Google ‘Peyton Manning jersey retirement speech.’ So, I go on. It’s him and (Colts owner Jim) Irsay standing up there. Introduced — he goes up on stage, says his great things like he always does, gets off the stage and throws — (Jeff) Saturday snaps him the ball, and he fires a post to — was it Reggie or Marvin? To Reggie. Marvin was probably like, ‘Nah, I’m not doing that. I’m not running.’ Reggie of course was like, ‘I’ll do it.’ And he hits Reggie in the end zone. So, I’m like, ‘You know what? I’m going to do something fun that the crowd is going to really like.’ So I’m going to run out there, kind of do my thing and I’ll get up on stage and have a good time. So, Peyton, I will say, even though you weren’t there, you were a part of that celebration for me yesterday.”