During his 20 years with the Patriots, Tom Brady was often asked about playing for Bill Belichick and he had a pretty standard answer.
"There is no coach I would rather play for," he often said.
The two obviously were very successful together, but it was always a business relationship. While the two would meet privately at times, it was always strictly football.
This year with Tampa Bay, it's a much different relationship with his new coach Bruce Arians.
“I think from the moment I really met him -- and obviously I had known about B.A. over the course of a lot of years, he’s a coach who has been in the league awhile -- but he came and commentated I think one or two of our games when he was doing that," Brady said via Zoom Thursday. "I got to meet him and speak to him really during free agency and then the whole pandemic and so forth is still on-going, it’s very difficult to develop a real relationship because we’re just — didn’t have the opportunity through OTAs and so forth to communicate. But, we did speak on Zoom with the captains at one point, we got a couple rounds of golf in which I think was a lot of fun. Just to understand his personality and understand his background. I had seen his Football Life, I had seen a lot of other things that have been broadcast and so forth.
“He’s a great man. He’s a great leader. He’s a great person. He’s a great friend. He’s very loyal. He’s just got a great way of communicating effectively with everybody around here. Everybody has a great affection for him for the person that he is. There’s nobody that would ever say a bad thing about B.A., he’s just so endearing to everybody and I think everyone wants to win for him. I think that is what you want to do for a coach — you want to get out there and you want to win for him. He puts a lot into it, expects a lot out of it. [He has] high expectations for us every day of practice. Just really excited for him to be recognized the way that he is. I know he’s a two-time coach of the year, but just done an amazing job this year with the team and really adverse situations and just — love playing for him.”
It was an interesting answer, which clearly shows the differences in the relationship he has with Arians compared to Belichick. And it isn't a bad thing, either -- it just shows there are different ways to be a successful coach in the NFL.