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Yes, Tom Brady’s gone. But Lavonte David, Carlton Davis, Devin White, Shaq Barrett, Vita Vea, Tristan Wirfs, Ryan Jensen, Mike Evans and Chris Godwin aren’t. And over the past three years, those guys got a lot of championship-level experience playing with No. 12.
The other thing they got from playing with Brady? A standard that won’t just go away.
It’s something coach Todd Bowles and I discussed at the Bucs’ hotel last week, as the team worked in New Jersey (they had joint practices and a game with the Jets), and something he very much believes his team is going to benefit from over the next five months.
“He was the same guy every day and he practiced every day and showed the young guys that you’re never too big to go through your routine and practice every day and try and get better,” Bowles says about Brady. “Everybody’s talented in their own right. But his work ethic you can never question. He did the same routine every day, and he competed every day. That’s where I think some of our younger guys got something to look at.
“We had guys that did the same thing that were fine, but some of the younger guys got to see how he worked every day. They knew they got to put in the work every day and take care of their bodies. I thought that was the biggest thing.”
Bowles was careful then to add other guys to list—“it wasn’t just him. It was Lavonte. It was Chris. We had a lot of guys that put in that kind of work.” But, just as he said that, he acknowledged that seeing a guy who was, by the time he got to Tampa Bay, a legitimate celebrity around the world, doing it did set the tone that no one was above the standard.
And that’s a nice legacy for Brady to leave in Tampa and, maybe, one reason why the backslide from his three years with the Bucs won’t be as steep as some expect.
Now they just have to figure out who’ll replace him (Baker Mayfield, for what it’s worth, just had his best week of the summer).
