One would be forgiven for thinking that Urban Meyer, a coach who won three national championships at the college level, doesn’t need many lessons on sparking a competitive fire within his team. But during his appearance on Peter King’s podcast, Meyer relayed an anecdote from a time he attended a New England Patriots practice and learned from legendary quarterback Tom Brady.
“Well, Tom Brady — I got to witness Tom Brady, firsthand, and it was the last day of minicamp in June and I had been to a few of those,” Meyer said. “Usually, people have one foot out the door because they just got done with a very long seven, eight weeks in the offseason and you’re talking about the greatest quarterback of all time.
And it was (linebacker) Mike Vrabel was there, (linebacker) Tedy Bruschi was — back in those days — and I was blown away. It was the last day of minicamp. They’re in shorts, helmets and they’re doing a two-minute drill and Tom Brady is treating it like it’s the Super Bowl. He goes down and he scores with two seconds left to win that scrimmage or whatever they had, and ran around that field like a child who just won the Super Bowl. That’s how competitive he is.”
For those who’ve witnessed Brady’s time on the field personally and have been lucky enough to cover him, this isn’t the slightest bit surprising when considering he has six rings. That’s not to say Meyer shouldn’t have been amazed, however, especially when considering the effort it took not to get complacent with an organization like New England.
Meyer continued to share another encounter he witnessed that involved Brady, who he saw going over the film with the whole offense as an offensive coordinator would.
“And by the way — I went into the offensive meetings with (offensive coordinator) Josh McDaniels and Tom Brady, and Tom Brady’s actually the one who had the clicker in his hand,” Meyer said. “I mean, Peter, it was amazing. He was in there running the film. And he had the offensive line sitting there, running backs, receivers, and Tom Brady was running the clicker and watching practice film dissecting the offense.
Think about that for a minute. That’s — you can say he throws a great pass, but people that really understand the game, I mean, there’s much more than that that makes him the greatest of all time.”
*Quotes transcribed by 247sports
Though it’s unfair to expect any quarterback to be like Brady, who is arguably the greatest to ever do it, Meyer and the Jaguars hope they will be drafting a similarly transcendent player in Trevor Lawrence next month. Lawrence is considered to be the best quarterback prospect in years, and if he lives up to that billing, perhaps future coaches will be watching his practices to learn the tricks of the trade.
