Even though Tom Brady is 2 1/2 years older than his new offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich, that could actually be a good thing as the two can relate to a number of things about the game.
After all, Leftwich played in the league from 2003-12.
“Me and him talk a lot about the old days when you had seven, eight, nine days of two-a-days in a row,” Leftwich said to reporters. “We’re from that era of football in this league. We can talk old-school football, things that happened in ’08, ’09, things that are still relevant in this league, and the history that he understands, the history that I understand.
"The ability for us to be able to talk top-level football, high-level football, you’re never really on Football 101 when you have Tom — you have a guy that’s been there, seen it all.”
He added: “Just the conversations that me and him have, I mean, it’s exciting, man. It’s gonna be exciting to work with him and try to put him in position to play as good of football as possible. I mean, he’s a little older than me, so we can talk a lot of football from the past 30-40 years. We just communicate in that way and we try to learn each other, figure each other out so we can get our best.”
Aside from Rob Gronkowski and Brady, basically the entire Buccaneers offense knows the system, so this spring has mostly been catching Brady up to speed. His 20 years of experience has certainly helped the transition.
“This year, everybody kind of knows the system now,” he said. “It’s kind of just getting everything to Tom. That’s just part of it. That’s what we do every year at this time. We’ll use a lot of his input. Any time you’ve got a guy like this, leading your team from the quarterback position, you want to put him in the best position possible all the time. Yes, there will be a lot of collaboration, but it’s like that every year.”
Leftwich added: “There’s not a play he hasn’t heard of. There’s not a play he hasn’t (run). Now we just need to figure out what he does well and make sure we run a lot more of those plays on Sunday than not.”
As of now, the Buccaneers have the fifth-best odds to win the Super Bowl.
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