Brady: I fought Deflategate suspension with my strong play
Fresh off Super Bowl victory No. 5, Tom Brady is hiding away at a remote location in Montana. That's where Peter King of The MMQB conducted a two-part interview with the New England Patriots quarterback on the heels of his roller-coaster 2016 season.
In part two of King's piece, published Wednesday, he asked Brady point blank about handling his four-game Deflategate suspension in such a stoic manner.
Brady explained that he had nothing to gain by allowing outside perception - that he should be fuming with commissioner Roger Goodell - become his reality.
" ... When you subject yourself to a lot of criticism (as a professional athlete), what I've learned from myself is, I don't want to give my power away to other people by letting my own emotions be subjected to what their thoughts or opinions are. So if someone calls me something, that's their problem. It's not my problem. I'm not going to give away my power," Brady said.
"You can call me an asshole and I am going to smile at you probably," he continued. "I'm not going to say, 'No, you're an asshole.' Because that person is controlling me with what their thoughts and actions are. How can you go through life, now at this point, 17 years, being affected by everybody all the time with what someone says?"
King countered that Brady's running saga with Goodell was much more than mere name-calling, as the commissioner essentially took the quarterback off the field for a month.
"Well, what's the best way to fight? There's only one fight I can win and that is how well I play," Brady said. "That's the only one I can control, because I tried to play for 18 months and it didn't work. So finally I said ... 'My team is going to go out and play great, I know they are going to, and when I come back, I am just going to do what I've always done.'"
Brady did in fact do what he always does. He returned to the field in Week 5 and led the Patriots to another division title, another league championship, and earned another Super Bowl MVP.