“Think of today’s world, how we screw these kids up,” Brady told Fortune editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell. “Every time they mess up, we send them to an easier place to succeed.”
That’s not how Brady experienced it. As a high schooler, he had to “grind each year” to finally get a chance to play as a starting quarterback as a senior. Today, he said, a kid in the same position might have simply transferred to a school that would hand them a place on the starting lineup, with far less competition. Brady thinks that’s a huge mistake—and that’s a lesson he’s imparting on his own kids.
“We’ve all faced different challenges in life; we’ve all faced our own adversities,” he said. “Look at the hardest things that have ever happened. We look back at those and realize they’re the best things that could’ve happened.”
Brady reflects on his 23 seasons in the NFL, he said, and thinks, “there’s no way I would’ve had that success had I not gone through all the challenges of high school and college sports.”
Brady doesn’t buy that. When he was team captain, he said, part of his job as a leader was to “make some guys uncomfortable.”
As a parent, Brady is trying to emulate his own parents, who were supportive and dependable but never gave him the easy way out.
A version of this story appeared on Fortune.com on Nov. 14, 2024.
