Tom Brady doesn’t want to hear the excuses for the Los Angeles Rams from their season-opening loss against the San Francisco 49ers in Melbourne, Australia. In the season-opening edition of #AskTom, Brady made it evident that he doesn’t care about the narrative that the Rams might have been jet-lagged from their last-minute flight to Australia before their 27-7 loss to the 49ers. “There was one thing I thought about during all that: How much garbage people were talking about the stupid travel,” Brady said. “You know what matters? Playing good football. I don\u2019t give a s— if you show up five minutes before the game, an hour before the game, a week before the game \u2014 when you show up and you walk out on the field, complete the passes, make the blocks, make the tackles and play good football. There\u2019s nothing more important than execution. “Yeah, all the things might set up better execution on game day \u2014 travel, food \u2014 but at the end of the day, go out there and play well. That\u2019s how I settled the debate.” The Rams didn’t arrive in Melbourne until just over 24 hours before kickoff, a move that was widely questioned in the lead-up to the season-opening matchup. The 49ers, meanwhile, made their way Down Under over a week before the game, getting acclimated before their dominant win. That was just one of a few things that Brady hit on in his mailbag. He also fielded a question on the Super Bowl LI call sheet he showed during the Week 1 broadcast of the Washington Commanders-Philadelphia Eagles game before explaining certain routes and offensive concepts. Here’s the first full Ask Tom of the 2026 season. Q: Does terminology change from year-to-year, or do I have Josh McDaniels\u2019 full playbook now? Brady: You might have some words in the playbook, but you never know what Josh is cooking up. That Super Bowl call sheet was all dependent on who we had on the team, what our strengths were, going against who Atlanta had as their defenders and what we thought their weaknesses were. I thought the most important thing I was showing during that game is we worked really hard for two weeks to get all those plays segmented in the right places and, ultimately, Josh had to call them at the right time. There\u2019s still a lot of in-game adjustments happening, but I just wanted the viewer to know that the process for putting calls in the call sheet is an arduous process. It\u2019s all about continuous conversations by everybody, working to get all the calls in the right box so that when that situation comes up, it\u2019s really easy for Josh to find it, queue what he wants to call and then relay it to me as quickly as possible. It\u2019s not just a random set of plays. It\u2019s not a playbook; it\u2019s a call sheet. In the playbook, there\u2019s maybe 1,500, 2,000 different calls you can make. We boiled that down to 100, 120. Out of those, maybe 65, 70 actually got called and there\u2019s always a little bit of adjustments throughout the game to make sure you\u2019re giving yourself the best chance to win during that day, too. Q: Do you have to memorize the call sheet? If we wiped that, do you have to write that in yourself? Brady: No, it\u2019s literally impossible. There\u2019s no way that could happen. There\u2019s just way too much vernacular, so to speak, on those call sheets; they\u2019re very detailed. You have to know every motion \u2014 it could be a Zip, Zap, Zat, Whack, Hat, Home, Condo \u2014 I\u2019m really not [making up words]. It just sounds like [I\u2019m making up words]. It\u2019s called football speak, and it\u2019s a language in itself. Listen, I was really s—ty at Spanish, French and all of that. I wasn\u2019t bad at football. I knew my football language. Q: On the “Gronk & Jules” show, they said that you would tell them to commit if you\u2019re going to run the wrong route. How would you know when that\u2019s going to happen? Brady: I think there were a couple of players \u2014 Jules and Gronk \u2014 who didn\u2019t mind ad-libbing a little bit because, sometimes, let\u2019s say you have an inside route called, but the defender jumps inside. I would never mind if, rather than pressing him inside, I would rather press him inside and work him a little bit to the outside to still find the open spot. There was no point in running to a covered area of the field. You don\u2019t want to break into another guy\u2019s zone, so to speak. What you really want to do is still find a soft spot, but that soft spot moves four or five yards in each direction. I think the one guy that I really look to in the NFL right now who has incredible feel, and has for a long time, is Travis Kelce. He and Patrick [Mahomes] have a great chemistry between the two of them. Travis is never going to run to a spot that\u2019s covered. He\u2019s always going to pull up a little bit short or run through that area to find the next open zone. That\u2019s what great football players do. And that takes a lot of time to get to that place as well, between a quarterback and receiver. But when it works, it\u2019s magic. Q: Jules and Gronk were some of the best at that, that you played with? Brady: They really were. I put Wes Welker in that mix. I put Mike Evans and Chris Godwin in that mix. I put James White in that mix. Kevin Faulk in that mix. They didn\u2019t want to run into covered areas, and I don\u2019t blame them, because if you\u2019re running into covered areas, guess what I wasn\u2019t doing? They were covered, I wasn\u2019t throwing them the ball. Q: What\u2019s your take on the 49ers-Rams travel debate? How did you handle long flights before games? Brady: That\u2019s a great question. It\u2019s really top of mind, too. There was one thing I thought about during all that: How much garbage people were talking about the stupid travel. You know what matters? Playing good football. I don\u2019t give a shit if you show up five minutes before the game, an hour before the game, a week before the game \u2014 when you show up and you walk out on the field, complete the passes, make the blocks, make the tackles and play good football. There\u2019s nothing more important than execution. Yeah, all the things might set up better execution on game day \u2014 travel, food \u2014 at the end of the day, go out there and play well. That\u2019s how I settled the debate.” Q: You called one of Jalen Hurts\u2019 completions in Week 1 a “Butterfly with sore legs.” You made my English teacher proud on Sunday. Can you tell us a little bit about your literary upbringing? Brady: I like to tip my cap to Mr. Ralph Stark, my sophomore English teacher at Junipero Serra High School. Thank you for all of the C-plus grades you gave me that helped me continue my athletic career. I wasn\u2019t the best student; you know that. I was always pretty good on your quizzes. I had a lot of friends that helped me; they took the test in Period 2 when I had the test in Period 4 and they helped me with some of the answers. But I owe it to Mr. Stark and all my other English teachers that helped me through the Shakespearean period that I was really talented at as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tom Brady doesn’t want to hear the excuses for the Los Angeles Rams from their season-opening loss against the San Francisco 49ers in Melbourne, Australia. In the season-opening edition of #AskTom, Brady made it evident that he doesn’t care about the narrative that the Rams might have been jet-lagged from their last-minute flight to Australia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33630"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33630\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}