https://theathletic.com/1682998/2020/03/18/howe-what-it-was-like-to-cover-tom-brady/
Front row seat to history: What it was like to cover Tom Brady in New England
By Jeff Howe 2h ago
Four years ago in the Patriots locker room, Tom Brady was in the middle of a purposeful walk from his locker to the far door in the direction of the team’s meeting rooms when I mentioned I had to share a story one of these days.
Brady looked too busy at the moment, so I just wanted to put in on his radar. That’s when he stopped, turned around and said, “OK, how ’bout now?” I explained it might take a few minutes, but he was eager to hear it.
I’d never before mentioned this to Brady, but he casually knew my father, who was the bar manager at Abe & Louie’s in Boston for about 15 years. Brady had been there a number of times over the years, almost always uneventfully, but this story was about the one time he duped many of his Patriots teammates.
After the Patriots won Super Bowl 36 against the Rams, they held their annual rookie party in the private room at Abe & Louie’s. For anyone who doesn’t know, the party is the rookies’ rite of passage, as the ones with the biggest contracts pick up the tab for a night out with the veterans. This was Richard Seymour’s year.
At some point on their way to racking up a $30,000 bill, someone asked for the most expensive drink on the menu, which turned out to be a $375 glass of a cognac called Hennessey Timeless. When it’s your money, you sip it. When it’s a party on someone else’s dime, the rounds of shots add up, over and over and over again.
My father, Joe, was running the party, and Brady pulled him to the side with a request when the shots started flowing. Every time they ordered a round, Brady asked my father to secretly fill his glass with water. He’d pay for the cognac if necessary, but he couldn’t go shot for shot with the linemen all night.
At this point, Brady was cracking up in the middle of the locker room, and a handful of teammates joined the audience. He knew I uncovered one of his go-to moves.
What he didn’t know was the next part of the story.
As everyone was drinking more and more, Willie McGinest saddled up to my dad at the bar. Willie, who had known my father for a few years at this point, looked back at a completely sober Brady, then put his head in his hands and commiserated, “Joe, who is this guy? First, he takes over for Drew Bledsoe. Then, he wins us a Super Bowl. Now, he can outdrink all of us? What can’t this guy do?”
Brady loved it. He immediately quipped, “Veteran move!” I reminded him that he was 24 at the time, and he just smiled and tapped his index finger to his head.
(I later told McGinest the story. He said he had no idea about the water part and just laughed and shook his head.)
So anyway, Brady and I parted and he walked away. After a few steps, he turned back and asked, “How’s your dad? Tell him I said hi.”
Fast forward about a week, I was standing around the locker room minding my business when Brady beelined in my direction.
“Did you tell your dad I said hi?” he asked, wanting to make sure I relayed the message.
“I did,” I told him, and that he was happy Brady was asking for him.
Brady wanted to know how he was doing, exchanged a few more pleasantries and took off.
So that’s what it was like covering Brady the person, and I’ve been along for the ride since the 2009 season when he returned from a torn ACL.
Obviously, I’ll always remember the on-field highlights. The first game I ever covered, Brady hit Ben Watson for a pair of touchdowns in the final two minutes to beat the Bills, 25-24. It was one of the very few things that went right for that 2009 Patriots team.
I was there as Brady won his second MVP award in 2010, and then during the Super Bowl 46 loss to the Giants. I’ve always thought, if the Patriots won, that would have gone down as one of the greatest quarterbacking performances in history when Brady completed 16 consecutive passes to turn a 9-0 deficit into a 17-9 lead.
There were more wild comebacks in 2013 and the greatest game I think I’ll ever cover when the Pats toppled the Seahawks in Super Bowl 49 between a couple of legitimately great teams. I looked over at someone in the second quarter and said, “This game is (bleeping) awesome.”
There was Super Bowl 51 against the Falcons, the AFC Championship Game after the 2017 season against the Jaguars and the following year’s edition when all hell broke loose against the Chiefs. Brady had no idea Joe Montana was in the crowd that night until we spoke afterward in the locker room.
“He was my idol growing up,” Brady responded. “I thought he was the greatest player I’ve ever seen. He and Steve Young were my two guys I dreamed about being someday.”
Brady orchestrated the 57th game-winning drive of his career in the 37-31 overtime victory at Arrowhead Stadium. After witnessing Montana’s heroics as a kid, Brady acknowledged it was “pretty cool” to return the favor with a show of his own.
His family was usually close by, too. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more shellshocked locker room than after the last-second “Miracle in Miami” loss in 2018. Everyone — players, coaches, media — wondered how the Patriots could allow a 69-yard touchdown to lose at the buzzer.
Someone else had a different question. As one of Brady’s children clung to him, they asked, “Dad, who’s taller, you or Gronk?”
Perspective.
Brady was always approachable for a quick conversation in the locker room, but he was typically more reserved in terms of private interview requests.
One time a few years back, I told him I was working on a story about David Andrews’ quick rise from an undrafted rookie to an entrenched starter. Brady said he was thrilled Andrews was getting that type of attention and wanted to have his voice in the story but couldn’t be available until the next day.
I believed Brady, but these future interviews don’t always pan out, either because the subject is either trying to duck out of the conversation, simply forgets or has something else come up along the way. Not a huge deal, but it happens.
So I walked into the locker room the following day, a Friday, hoping to catch Brady before he took off for the weekend. He was sitting in his chair at his locker, facing the door where the media entered and asked right away if I was ready to go. He was good on his word and great in the interview.
Speaking of that chair, Brady had a pretty nice swivel chair with arm rests and a leather cushion, and he made sure to label it. Everyone else had a foldup chair, mostly to maximize space in the room when they weren’t at their lockers. I once pointed at Brady’s chair and jokingly asked a veteran how you get one of those. “Gotta be old,” he quipped.
Brady’s teammates revered him, but they weren’t afraid to clown on him, too. I’ll never forget after one of those miraculous comebacks, some players looked in the Gillette Stadium stands and saw fans leaving. One relayed the thought, “Why are you leaving? We’ve got Tom Brady.”
There are a million stories from his teammates over the years, but some that still stick out were the way they admired his commitment to turning around the team’s fortune following the 2014 blowout in Kansas City, or the way he responded during the same stretch to those calling for his job. It’s why they all fought so hard for him during the two-year Deflategate saga.
Duron Harmon once recalled his first encounter during rookie camp in 2013. Harmon was mid-business at the urinal when Brady appeared alongside him and said, “Hey Duron, how are you doing? Welcome to the Pats. I’m Tom.” Harmon said he was in shock, stuttered in his response and then ran to his phone to text his now-wife, “Babe, Tom Brady knows my name!”
Rob Ninkovich shared a story about a time he complimented Brady’s watch. Shortly thereafter, Brady gave him one for Christmas. Dont’a Hightower overheard Ninkovich’s story and said, “I’m about to go compliment that Escalade outside.”
I’ve got one more personal story left, and this one is embarrassing but too funny not to share. Needing a few quotes from Brady for stories I was writing prior to Super Bowl 52, I showed up almost an hour early for a weekday media session at the team hotel. Those access periods are a logistical nightmare for local reporters because the star players sometimes attract more than a hundred media members, and it’s almost impossible to ask questions with everyone screaming over each other.
So on this day, an hour early wound up being too late, and I was barricaded outside the scrum by the TV cameras. One Boston TV reporter, who was banked next to Brady’s table and knew I was trying to ask Brady a few questions, helped clear a path to get me a little closer, but still about four deep away. So Brady was about a half-hour into his session when that TV reporter noticed I still wasn’t able to get Brady’s attention. (Just me, but I won’t sell my soul by shrieking like I’m in a horror movie just to get off a question.)
The reporter gestured to squeeze between a tripod and the stage, but it was too tight and a lost cause. So that reporter literally ripped the railing off the stairs to the stage to get me closer to the table. This presented a new problem, as Brady was talking about 3 feet away and all the attention was refocusing on the two unwittingly obnoxious reporters. The TV reporter couldn’t reattach the railing into the staircase, and now security was grabbing my arm because, obviously, we looked like lunatics who were converging on the face of the NFL.
Just then, Brady finished his previous response, looked over at me, cheek quivering to stop himself from laughing and asked, “You good?”
“Man,” I shook my head, “it’s been a long week.”
“Go ahead. What do you got?”
After his media session, Brady walked down the busted staircase, looked at me and wanted to make sure I had everything I needed for the week. I assured him I was set and the rest of the city’s railings were safe.
So what was it like to cover Tom Brady?
Mostly, he was easy to talk to, even when he wasn’t
:muse: 
