Tom Brady and the Buccaneers are back in the win column after Sunday’s 16-13 comeback victory over the Rams. However, the quarterback is focused on his team’s “embarrassing” game-day habit.
During the latest installment of his “Let’s Go!” Sirius XM podcast, Brady said that “the most embarrassing part of our team is our effort level on game day,” and it’s something they “better fix” as Thanksgiving approaches.
“There’s only so deep of a hole that you can dig, and you know, if you dig yourself too deep of a hole then you got no shot coming out of it,” the 45-year-old Brady said when asked by co-host Jim Gray if Sunday’s victory over the Rams “saved” the Bucs’ season.
“The best teams start playing well around Thanksgiving. That’s because you basically figured out what you are and what you need to do, and there’s definitely some things we do well but there’s a lot of things we don’t do well.
“I think too much of good, bad, good, bad, good, bad, leaves you average and no one’s trying to be average. If you want to be a great team, you gotta be way better than average. So correcting our mistakes, improving our effort — which that is probably the most embarrassing part of our team is our effort level on game-day, and that’s something we better fix.”
Brady avoided his first four-game losing streak since 2002 with a clutch performance in the fourth quarter to put the Bucs at 4-5 on the season and back in a tie atop the NFC South with the Falcons.
With nine seconds remaining, Brady tossed a 1-yard touchdown pass to rookie tight end Cade Otton to defeat the reigning Super Bowl champion Rams.
The moment, which Brady called “f–king awesome” postgame, gave the Buccaneers a much-needed confidence boost amid the media circus that has surrounded the team due to Brady’s high-profile divorce from supermodel Gisele Bündchen.
The Buccaneers play the Seahawks on Sunday in the NFL’s first-ever game in Munich, Germany before entering their bye week.