It’s six days before Tom Brady will play in his tenth Super Bowl and first as a member of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
It’s the first time in 10 appearances in the title game that Brady is still at home as he prepares for a Super Bowl. Usually, teams would be in the host city of the game in hotels and dealing with a whirlwind week of media availability leading up to kickoff.But nothing is “usual” when it comes to this year’s game.
Even with the Buccaneers making it to a Super Bowl being held in their home stadium in Tampa, the circumstances of the year mean no hotels, a wholly different media experience, and a brand new way for the 43-year old Brady to prepare for the Super Bowl. To help him in that process, Brady said on Monday that his family has taken off from their home to give him the space and quiet environment to prepare for the Kansas City Chiefs.
“My family won’t get back in town until Saturday,” he said, via Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times. “I really had an empty house for what will be 12 days leading up to the game. That’s the most time I’ve had to really focus on what I need to do from a football standpoint.”
The Buccaneers are the first team to ever play a Super Bowl in their home stadium. The San Francisco 49ers faced the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl XIX at nearby Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto, Calif. But the realities of the 2020-21 year mean the players are actually staying at home altogether as opposed to being in local hotels for the week. It’s just one of many things making this a new experience for the most experienced Super Bowl participant ever.
“I have time to get my body right,” Brady said. “There’s been no travel for our team. It’s a home game. That’s very different. We’re staying at our own home. That’s very different. You don’t have to eat hotel food for a week, that’s very different. The stadium will be, I don’t know, 25,000 people. That will be different.”
“I don’t have any perspective on this one,” he continued. “Because it’s the first time we’ve had a chance to do the things that we’re doing.”