I have been asked 100 times since the Buccaneers signed Tom Brady if I am excited to cover the best to ever play quarterback in the NFL.

Maybe more than 100.

My answer is usually the same.

“Sure, I guess. It is kind of cool to be covering a player like Brady.”

But honestly, it doesn’t matter if I am excited. My job is the same, whether it be Brady, or Jameis Winston or even if Tampa Bay roused Mr. Sleep-In-Late, Josh Freeman from his slumber and stuck him under center in 2020.

The job itself doesn’t change.

However, maybe it will be more exciting than I originally thought.

Bucs QB Tom Brady – Photo by: Getty Images

After listening to Brady being interviewed by Howard Stern on Wednesday morning for more than two hours, it opened my eyes a little bit. It made me realize Tom Brady is a bona-fide superstar. And not just in the NFL, but in all of the sports world.

He is the Michael Jordan of the NFL.

He is the Tiger Woods of the NFL.

He is the Cristiano Ronaldo of the NFL.

He is the Wayne Gretzky of the NFL.

He is the Babe Ruth of the … okay that’s a little bit of a stretch. Or is it?

Every fan of the NFL knows who Tom Brady is when you bring up his name. Even those who don’t follow sports probably know who Tom Brady is.

Maybe it is from his six Super Bowl rings. Or maybe it is from “Deflate-Gate.” Some might know the name because he is married to former Victoria’s Secret Angel and supermodel Gisele Bündchen.

Regardless, Brady is a name that is recognizable and transcends sports.

He is an American icon.

And he is now the quarterback of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Say it again, and let that sink in.

That’s right, Bucs fans. It isn’t a dream. Tom Brady is now your quarterback.

And I get to cover him. Along with probably an entirely new crew of national media members that will converge on Tampa Bay in late summer. But I will be right in the middle of that media gaggle.

The Bucs’ failed attempt at drafting Bo Jackson was big in 1986. The Keyshawn Johnson trade in 2000 was big. Jon Gruden hire in Tampa Bay was really big. The drafting of Winston as the overall No. 1 pick in 2015 was also big.

But it doesn’t come close to the magnitude of having Brady in Tampa Bay.

With the COVID-19 crisis that has turned everyone’s world upside down, I suppose it hadn’t really sunk in yet for me. There hasn’t been an in-person press conference with Brady and the Bucs – just a conference call. But after hearing Brady on Stern’s national Sirius XM radio show that brings in upwards of 30 million listeners daily – that was star power versus star power.

Radio host Howard Stern – Photo by: Getty Images

While Stern is still handcuffed for his raunchy middle school humor reputation from his past – and he still throws in boob and fart jokes on a regular basis – there is no denying Stern is still a star and one of the most recognizable names in radio history.

And something Stern has done over the years is evolve into the country’s best interviewer.

On Wednesday, Stern and Brady didn’t disappoint.

Which is a long way of saying, we finally got a glimpse of Brady from behind the curtain. And that made me think, what else is there about him we should know off the football field?

In The Hook column a couple weeks ago bidding farewell to Winston, I mentioned I didn’t know if Brady was a generous person. Is he someone who will get involved in the community and would he be part of the Pediatric Cancer’s Cut For A Cure each spring in the auditorium of the Advent Health Training Center?

I genuinely didn’t know who Brady is as a person. As Scott Reynolds points out from time to time, we are so hyper-focused on covering the Buccaneers that our attention to the rest of the NFL is sometimes lacking. Certainly I know about his six Super Bowl wins. I know the passing yards and multiple records he holds. But as far as I was concerned, Brady may as well have been a robot living on Mars – with a very attractive wife.

I just didn’t know a thing about him personally, but after listening to the Stern interview I have a better grasp of who Brady is now.

Bucs QB Tom Brady – Photo by: Getty Images

First of all, he is in fact not a robot, but a human. A person with fears and highs and lows like the rest of us.

Brady even revealed he cried when telling the organization he was ready to move on.

“I called Mr. [Robert] Kraft and I went over to his house and I just said … and it was a funny time because we’re all dealing with this current corona situation that we’re in and I went over and I said ‘Look, I just want to say how much I love you and I appreciate what we’ve done together, and I know we’re not going to continue together, but thank you,” Brady said. “Thank you for providing what you have for my family and for my career and I was able to call Coach [Bill] Belichick at the same time and thank him and it was great. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

“Yeah, I was crying, I’m a very emotional person. I would say I’m very emotional because I have a deep caring for the people that I’ve worked with and I wish nothing but the best for them. I have a lot of friends there, I want them to do great.”

.@TomBrady talks his relationship with Bill Belichick and rumors the @Patriots coach wanted to replace him with a younger Q.B.

Watch and listen to more @HowardStern for FREE on the @SIRIUSXM app through May 15: https://t.co/uYGxSKgsKz pic.twitter.com/cTbxduEV2Z

— Stern Show (@sternshow) April 9, 2020

Brady even humanized himself further when he revealed his fairytale marriage to Bündchen hasn’t always been rainbows and unicorns.

“There was a couple years ago where she didn’t feel like I was doing my part for the family and she felt like I would play football all season and she would take care of the house, and then all of a sudden when the season would end I’d be like ‘Great! Let me get into all my other business activities, let me get into my football training,'” Brady shared. “And she’s sitting there going ‘Well when are you going to do things for the house? When are you going to take the kids to school and do that?’ It was a big part of our marriage where I had to check myself because she’s like ‘I have goals and dreams, too. It’s not just this, do these things either, you better start taking care of things at the house.’

Bucs QB Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen – Photo by: Getty Images

“So two years ago as it related to football even for me I had to make a big transition in my life to say I can’t do all the things that I wanted to do for football like I used to. I knew I got to take care of things in my family because my family situation wasn’t great. She wasn’t satisfied with our marriage, so I needed to make a change in that.”

Brady sharing this story of his life was refreshing to see from a figure that so many have put on a pedestal. It was refreshing to me to see someone of his stature reveal failures even with his seemingly perfect professional and personal life. Yet behind the scenes there were things Brady realized he needed to deal with in order to make his marriage work.

“She actually wrote me a letter and it was a very thought out letter and I still have it. I keep it in a drawer and I read it. It’s a very heartfelt letter for her to say this is where I’m at in our marriage and it’s a good reminder for me that things are going to change and evolve over time.”

It’s a great reminder for anyone who is married or in a committed relationship, and proof Brady isn’t invincible after all.

What else is there to know about Brady? I spoke with former Patriots employee and Boston sports media personality Andy Hart, who knows Brady well including working for the Patriots from 2002-2018.

Hart said Brady is more guarded now than he was early in his career and some of that coincided with his son being born and then settling down with Bündchen in 2007. Hart also explained that Brady was involved with a number of community endeavors in the Boston area, including the Best Buddies program where he was the face of the organization for 16 years. Brady had done numerous Make-A-Wish appearances, and Hart added the following details that will make Bucs fans happy:

Bucs QB Tom Brady – Photo by: Getty Images

“Whenever Tom does these types of things, he is invested fully,” Hart said. “Sometimes you see players who make appearances like this … but the families and kids who had Tom come and visit knew he was there for the right reasons. He was personable and engaging and the families knew it was genuine.”

Does any of this behind the scenes stuff translate to winning?

Maybe.

Like all of us, what happens to us at a young age, greatly affects how we turn out as adults. Brady’s relationship with his father helped mold him into the man and player he became. Brady relayed a story about his dad, who would work all day and come home and take his son to the ballpark to hit fly balls and field grounders. Brady called it “their time” when reminiscing about it with Stern.

He was also a man Brady didn’t want to let down. When Brady was in high school he did his share of running around, partying, drinking and even admitted to smoking weed. But Brady said he often felt guilty and didn’t want to disappoint his father. For the most part, those things stopped in high school.

Brady said he was probably a better baseball player than football player in high school, but loved football more. The former MVP told Stern the struggles of being a backup, first at Michigan and then later after being a sixth-round draft pick in New England. Brady told Stern he even enlisted a sports psychologist while at Michigan who helped him tremendously.

Again, another glimpse of Brady – the human being.

Stern seemed somewhat surprised that a player of Brady’s stature and accolades would want to keep playing and risking injury at age 42. But Brady explained the love for the game still fuels him and led him to walk away from the Patriots and start fresh in Tampa Bay.

“I think if you’ve learned anything from what’s going on this day and age, even as it relates to (former Lakers star) Kobe Bryant, Kobe thought he had a long life, too,” Brady said. “I loved watching Kobe play. I think in a lot of ways, he and I had the same mentality. And we had a great connection because of our mindset. And as I look at his life, we all think we’re going to live forever, but the reality is we don’t know when our day is going to come.

“I could sit here and say, ‘Stop playing football and worry about what’s going to happen or worry about this or that.’ Instead of saying, ‘Why don’t I live my life the way I want, the way that will be most fulfilling to me?’ You don’t tell a musician stop singing at the age of 42. You don’t tell a great painter stop painting at 42. Now if you want to stop, stop. Go ahead.”

Clearly Brady doesn’t want to stop, and that is good news for Bucs fans – hopefully.

Tom Brady – Photo by: Getty Images

Tampa Bay will look to continue to upgrade its roster but clearly with the addition of Brady, the expectations are the playoffs – or further. To win a championship lots of things have to go right for a team, and the Buccaneers are banking on their defense to continue to develop, to have a better running game in 2020, and to stay relatively healthy. If those things happen, who knows what the next two years might hold?

The Buccaneers feel they have the right guy under center, and listening to Brady on Wednesday, you could feel his desire to be the best in football hasn’t wavered at all.

“I wanted to make a decision (on where to sign) where I thought I could really excel as a player,” Brady said. “That’s what it came down to. Where could I really excel and achieve and bring my best out? I chose this one and time will tell what kind of decision that was made. All I know is what I can put into it.”

Bucs fans, you are getting a highly competitive player who doesn’t lack any confidence, but you are also getting a real human being. Someone a lot like you and me, except he can throw a football a heck of a lot better than all of us, has a supermodel wife and a much bigger bank account.

So now when radio hosts, friends and family or even the clerk at the gas station asks me if I am excited to cover Brady my answer will be a little different than it was a couple of weeks ago due to the human side of himself that was revealed on the Howard Stern Show.

I am excited – as excited as a journalist can be. Brady will bring some much needed juice to the Bucs locker room and maybe to some of us old guys in the media room.

C’mon September. You can’t get here soon enough.

CANNON BLAST

Cook’s musings and ramblings about the Buccaneers, pop culture and the NFL. Good stuff. Check it out.

Bobby Brady and Joe Namath

• I mentioned in my column how Tom Brady was a megastar in the sports world, but now that I am thinking he might not even be the best football player named Brady. Who is to say that if Bobby Brady of the hit TV show The Brady Bunch hadn’t gotten involved in a bad 70’s singing group with his family that he wouldn’t have went onto stardom on the gridiron?

I mean, Bobby was mentored by Joe Freaking Namath. And talk about commitment, Bobby faked a serious illness to convince Namath to come visit him. Quite possibly marking the very first Make-A-Wish visit in history. For now I will go with Bobby Brady as my favorite Brady, followed by Tom Brady, who narrowly beats out game show host and entertainer Wayne Brady.

• As a nearly 25 year listener, I can attest to how good Howard Stern has become as an interviewer. He just has a way of getting things out of people that others can’t. You don’t score long, in-depth interviews with Hillary Clinton, Paul McCartney, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Robert Duval, Francis Ford Coppola, John F. Kennedy Jr. and a myriad of other mega-stars if you aren’t talented. Part of his ability to conduct such great interviews is the format on SiriusXM allows him to go a long time. The Brady interview went for over two hours without a commercial break.

And those who remember Stern from his glory days on terrestrial radio – there is still plenty of off-color juvenile humor and things that would get most of us dragged down to H.R. if we talked like that at our jobs. Brady mentioned a number of times what a fan he was of Stern and how he listened every morning on his drive into the Patriots facility. Brady even mentioned Beetlejuice being his favorite whack packer. Good call on that Tom, although I am still a big fan of Bobo and Jeff The Drunk. Chellllooo!

• I think I will nominate ESPN’s Jenna Laine to explain to Brady that Tampa is not South Florida, as he called it during the interview with Stern on Wednesday. I’ll defer to Laine since she is a former cheerleader and USF grad, and she can explain why it is called the University of South Florida – even though it isn’t in South Florida.

Plus, I don’t want to make Brady mad at me when we finally get to meet him in person. I don’t care if Jenna gets on his bad side. I’m hoping to get to know Tommy, as I plan to call him once we are bros, so I can get the invite to the Victoria’s Secret Angels reunion pool party I hope will be happening at the Derek Jeter estate my T-Dawg now rents.

I have my new Bucs speedo on order from the team store. See you soon, TB12.

LAST LAUGH

Stern started the Brady interview on video and planned to do the entire thing this way, but technical difficulties (who is the internet provider on Davis Island?) prevented it and Brady ended up doing the last two hours via the phone. With the pandemic wreaking havoc on New York City, Stern and his crew are all working from home. Here is the first part of the interview that was captured on video.