He might not be a member of the Pittsburgh Steelers, but he is one of only two quarterbacks who will be playing another NFL game any time soon, so it feels topical. And it does relate to the Steelers, because their new offensive line coach, Adrian Klemm, recently shared some of his thoughts on his former teammate, Tom Brady, who is about to start his 10th Super Bowl, and first with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
On an episode of the Coffee with Coach, Klemm was a guest interviewee, and spoke at length about his football background, all the way back from the early days to his future with his new promotion in Pittsburgh. Given that the Super Bowl was coming up, he was asked about Brady, and if he saw indications from him early on of what he would become.
“You could tell he was different. I couldn’t predict that he would be the greatest athlete ever or anything like that, but you could see he was different from everybody else”, he said. “His level of focus and commitment to the game, and just the level of maturity in terms of, everybody’s talking about first in, last out, he really lived that life”.
“When he became the starting quarterback, the year he won the Super Bowl, his first time starting, he was taking the o-line out, and he didn’t’ have any money yet”, he added. “He was from the dirt up, and he was a grinder. You had a certain level of respect for him”.
Klemm also talked about how Brady’s drive and work ethic drove others to push themselves—and that his relatively unremarkable athleticism was a part of it, because you knew that if he was going to be successful, it was due to the work that he put in.
“Subconsciously, you wanted to strain a little bit more and do all those things”, he said. “He’s just a different kind of person. He’s just wired differently, and just a special individual, and you could see that early on”.
We’re not in the locker room or the practice field or the meeting rooms, but the results certainly speak for themselves, as Brady’s success in the came is clearly unprecedented and unparalleled. 10 starts in Super Bowls is truly amazing, and almost surely will never be duplicated.
And to top off his career by reaching the Super Bowl with a second team, an exceedingly rare feat in and of itself—and doing it in his first season with said team—only adds to his legacy as the ‘GOAT’. Klemm was there for the beginnings of that legacy, and no doubt influenced his approach to some degree.
