Bucs offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich has to wonder how he got so lucky.

In his first year as a full time play caller, Leftwich had a chance to work with Jameis Winston, who despite 30 interceptions, led the NFL is passing yards and was second only to Lamar Jackson in touchdown passes.

Now, in his second season, Leftwich gets to work with the greatest signal caller to ever play the game.

While there is usually a period of learning who your new quarterback is and what makes him tick, the 40-year old Leftwich and the 42-year old Brady already share a mutual bond of playing in the league at the same time.

“We’re pretty close in age, we’re from the old school version of football,” Leftwich said. “Me and him talk a lot about the old days when you’d do seven, eight, nine days of two-a-days in a row. We’re from that era of football in this league, we can talk old school football, things that happened in 08’, 09’, things that are still relevant in this league, and the history that he understands, the history that I understand, the ability for us to be able to talk top level football, high level football, we’re never really on football 101 when you have Tom, you have a guy that’s been there.

Bucs OC Byron Leftwich – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

“The conversations that me and him have, it’s gonna be exciting to work with him and try to put him in position to play as good of football as possible. He’s a little older than me, so we can talk a lot of football from the past 30, 40 years, we just communicate that way and we just try to learn each other, figure each other out so we can be at our best.”

When speaking to the media on Tuesday morning, Leftwich reiterated that he’s going to put his players in the best position to succeed. What’s different this year though, is that the rest of the offense is up to speed on the game plan, and it’s Brady that needs to learn.

“My philosophy, and I believe is B.A.’s philosophy is also, every quarterback I’ve ever been around has a role in the offense,” Leftwich said. “I don’t just call plays, I don’t just come up with plays, I always come up with plays with the quarterback in mind. There will be some things that will be different here and there, obviously. We want to know everything that Tom knows. Anytime you have a guy like this leading your team at the quarterback position, you want to know and put him in the best position possible all the time. There will be a lot of collaboration but it’s like that every year.

“Since I’ve been a coach, I’ve always done that with the quarterback. You always want the quarterback to be as comfortable as possible. There’s enough football plays in our system to do whatever we need to do to get everything done. Yes, we’ll collaborate with Tom all the time, just like we do with every quarterback.”

For his part, Brady has tried to do as much as he can to get acclimated with the offense and his teammates by holding practices as Berkeley Prep each week. Because of the leader he is, this came as no surprise to Leftwich when he heard about it.

Bucs QB Tom Brady – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

“That’s what you get when you bring Tom Brady in,” Leftwich said. “He’s about excellence, he’s trying to do everything possible to make sure we’re as successful as possible, we as coaches are doing the same thing. It’s great to have a guy like that to come in and lead the guys and get as much participation as he’s gotten from the guys, it’s just a sign of where we think the maturity of our team is, I think we got a lot of players that are willing to do everything possible to become a better football team and win football games.

“I tell you guys all the time, I got a lot of respect for the guys that we have in this locker room because of the way they go about football. Me being the guy that has been in that locker room, you appreciate when you have these types of guys that is willing to do whatever possible to win football games and to put us in the best position possible, so as a coach you appreciate that. We see it every day, it doesn’t surprise us that we just got a team that is willing to do whatever it can to win football games.”