Tom Brady calls out a problem with modern parenting: ‘Every time they mess up, we send them to an easier place to succeed’

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Here's the article in it's entirety:

Tom Brady speaks at Fortune Global Forum in New York on Tuesday November 12.
Rebecca Greenfield for Fortune
Tom Brady—who was a sixth-round NFL pick, at number 199—is a strong proponent of failing in order to succeed. He’s perhaps the best-known football player past or present, and is the winningest player in the league’s history, holding a record seven Super Bowl titles.

At Fortune’s Global Forum in New York on Tuesday, Brady—a father of three—extolled the virtues of letting your kids fail, even if that’s no longer the norm.

“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, 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 years 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.”

The value of being uncomfortable
Few young athletes these days are forced beyond their comfort zones, he said. “They’re told they’re great; people coddle them; they never have to push beyond their limits. Even some of the best athletes in the world never have to go outside their comfort zone.”

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.”

“I was always focused on ensuring they were working harder than they ever thought they’d have to work,” Brady added. “They had to show up every day with a good attitude, humble when things go well, curious to learn more when they don’t go well.”

As a parent, Brady is trying to emulate his own parents, who were supportive and dependable but never gave him the easy way out.

“The blessing my parents gave: When I was that long-shot as a kid who was a backup quarterback, they never said, man, don’t do that, it’ll be too hard, think about another backup plan,” Brady said. “They said, go for it—that’s probably my parenting style.”
 
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Someone needs to tell Tom Brady that not very many high schoolers transfer on the whole
 

Some guy said:
Someone needs to tell Tom Brady that not very many high schoolers transfer on the whole
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Definitely happening a lot in college now, but it doesn't seem like that's what he was talking about.
 

Experiencing adversity and figuring it out on your own rather than running from it is an essential part of developing as a human being and teaches you a hell of a lot about yourself and everyone else. Think Brady is just approaching this from the thing he knows best which is sports, but applies in many realms.
 


Counterpoint: There's a good chance that if Drew Bledsoe never got injured, Brady would have puttered around New England's bench and practice squad for 2-4 years. Regardless of how he looked in practice or how hard he worked.

He then would have been released in favor of the team's next developmental prospect at QB without ever seeing the field in a NFL game. He would have been the potential GOAT that nobody ever knew about.

There's probably a handful of guys who could have been HOF QBs but they ended up on the wrong bench behind the wrong guy and it simply never happened for them.

Sometimes there isn't an opportunity and you need to find someone to give you a chance to show what you can do.
 

fmlizard said:
Counterpoint: There's a good chance that if Drew Bledsoe never got injured, Brady would have puttered around New England's bench and practice squad for 2-4 years. Regardless of how he looked in practice or how hard he worked.

He then would have been released in favor of the team's next developmental prospect at QB without ever seeing the field in a NFL game. He would have been the potential GOAT that nobody ever knew about.

There's probably a handful of guys who could have been HOF QBs but they ended up on the wrong bench behind the wrong guy and it simply never happened for them.

Sometimes there isn't an opportunity and you need to find someone to give you a chance to show what you can do.
Click to expand...
Anything is possible but don't think there was a "good chance". Generational ability to win. It would have come out. It always did eventually, I'm high school, college and pros.
 

Word said:
Definitely happening a lot in college now, but it doesn't seem like that's what he was talking about.
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The article makes it sound like Brady is addressing highschool athletes and it could be moving in that direction. I tend to believe he's referring to college athletes and the transfer portal.
 






Greatest of all time thinks if you just do what he did ... you'll be good. 🤔

And ... let's say that was true?

Who cares?

Most players aren't going to the NFL, playing sports is sometimes just about having a good time, getting a scholarship, and not about getting your ass beat for a pro career.

This story has a little bit of the "NFL GMs upset that college teams aren't handing them drop in / NFL ready Quarterbacks, so colleges must be doing something wrong ..."
 

fmlizard said:
Counterpoint: There's a good chance that if Drew Bledsoe never got injured, Brady would have puttered around New England's bench and practice squad for 2-4 years. Regardless of how he looked in practice or how hard he worked.

He then would have been released in favor of the team's next developmental prospect at QB without ever seeing the field in a NFL game. He would have been the potential GOAT that nobody ever knew about.

There's probably a handful of guys who could have been HOF QBs but they ended up on the wrong bench behind the wrong guy and it simply never happened for them.

Sometimes there isn't an opportunity and you need to find someone to give you a chance to show what you can do.
Click to expand...
New England coaches saw him every day and Drew Bledsoe was not playing good. Going into the 2001 season, Bledsoe had two of the worst years of his career (1999 and 2000) and the team was 6 games under .500. Additionally, a lot of people at the time liked Michael Bishop (KState great and 2000 patriot draft pick). He actually got some run in 2000. Brady immediately leap frogged him.

My whole point is that the QB situation in New England was kind of volatile prior to Bledsoe getting hurt.
 



fmlizard said:
Counterpoint: There's a good chance that if Drew Bledsoe never got injured, Brady would have puttered around New England's bench and practice squad for 2-4 years. Regardless of how he looked in practice or how hard he worked.

He then would have been released in favor of the team's next developmental prospect at QB without ever seeing the field in a NFL game. He would have been the potential GOAT that nobody ever knew about.

There's probably a handful of guys who could have been HOF QBs but they ended up on the wrong bench behind the wrong guy and it simply never happened for them.

Sometimes there isn't an opportunity and you need to find someone to give you a chance to show what you can do.
Click to expand...
Yes. My guess is that Joe Burrow is glad that he transferred from Ohio State. You are only in high school and college once, so if the coaching staff decides that you belong on the bench, why not try somewhere else. It's easy for Brady to say what he did because it worked out for him.
 

A_Slab_of_Bacon said:
Greatest of all time thinks if you just do what he did ... you'll be good. 🤔

And ... let's say that was true?

Who cares?

Most players aren't going to the NFL, playing sports is sometimes just about having a good time, getting a scholarship, and not about getting your ass beat for a pro career.

This story has a little bit of the "NFL GMs upset that college teams aren't handing them drop in / NFL ready Quarterbacks, so colleges must be doing something wrong ..."
Click to expand...
I don't agree. I think his statement is applicable to people outside of sports too. I work in software and sometimes things can be difficult as stuff doesn't go as planned.

Us engineers can just give up and do something easier or we can work through it and finish our project. I think Brady is saying not enough people are willing/taught to do the latter nowadays
 

I get the point he is making and think there's some truth to it. But it isn't the case for everyone. I know this is NFL related, but KOC earlier this year talked about how much coaches fail young QBs just as much as the QBs fail themselves. I think that's true of all athletes sometimes. If it's a bad situation, bad fit, getting a fresh start somewhere else might help. Some guys just need an opportunity to prove themselves and they may not get that where they're currently at.
 

Some guy said:
Someone needs to tell Tom Brady that not very many high schoolers transfer on the whole
Click to expand...
I have no idea what is going on in the 2024 high school landscape...but 10-15 years ago
kids in sports were transferring at a fairly feverish pace for exactly the reasons he states.
Parents pay for a weekend camp, think their kid is going to skip college and go right to the pros.
Coach is an idiot for not playing their kid at all or enough and the parents say we'll go to a school that appreciates us.
From my experience, Tom Brady is dead on target.
 

He was the GOAT as QB who was making one size fits all comments that are very appealing psychologically until you think about them. That's not how life works. Each kid, each family, each situation and each outcome is unique. As a parent, sometimes you have to pull a kid out of a situation and sometimes you have to make the kid hang in there. Sometimes the right decisions are made and sometimes you screw it up. There are a million variables.

We have no idea how Tom and his wives have guided their own kids. We do know that they've had every possible advantage and privilege. So failure might mean something different than than it would to kids without those benefits.
 

I'm not a parent, but to me he's making way too broad of a statement. It's a balance, as with everything.

I think a good analogy here is lifting weights. If someone never faces any adversity in their life, it's like only lifting 5lb weights and never any heavier. Maybe you get lucky and never need to lift anything heavier, but odds are you will and maybe that's a manageable 10lbs or maybe it's 100 lbs. You likely won't be prepared, and you may fail spectacularly in the process.

On the flip side, if you start out at 150lbs, you'll never make any progress (or if you do it will be VERY slow) because it takes so much effort just to lift the weight that you can't think about proper form to avoid injuring yourself or to maximize the benefit.

But if you start at 15lbs, and then progress to 20lbs, then 25lbs, etc you will find yourself able to handle 100lbs, 150lbs, etc in the future.


Furthermore, while not a perfect analogy, I view transferring like so: say you can lift 80lbs, but the 80lbs weights are always being used by someone else, which is better: Waiting until that person is done and hoping someone doesn't grab them before you and that you don't have to leave before that happens, or lifting the 65lbs weights that aren't being used? Sure, 65lbs might be easier, and you won't have to push yourself as hard, but if the alternative potentially is not lifting at all? Seems like an easy choice in my head. Obviously this glosses over a LOT of nuance.
 


GopherTheJugular said:
I don't agree. I think his statement is applicable to people outside of sports too. I work in software and sometimes things can be difficult as stuff doesn't go as planned.

Us engineers can just give up and do something easier or we can work through it and finish our project. I think Brady is saying not enough people are willing/taught to do the latter nowadays
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I got no reason to keep less good coders failing constantly.

I'd rather give them some tasks to accomplish for a while before they take another run at something they failed at again.
 

Wally said:
I would be more curious to hear what made him want to grind so hard.
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It’s like michael Jordan saying nobody works as hard as him

There are literally people who work just as hard as Michael Jordan did. There are actually people who worked as hard but didn’t stay out late drinking, gambling, and smoking cigars
 

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