Tom Brady reveals one of his biggest regrets from his legendary NFL career: ‘What the hell happened to me?’

It’s hard to fathom that Tom Brady has any regrets about his NFL career. Brady, after all, is the only player in league history to win seven Super Bowls and five Super Bowl MVP awards. Brady also won three league MVP awards (tied for the second-most in league history) and is the NFL’s all-time career leader in career passing yards and touchdown passes. 

Brady, however, wishes he would have gone about his craft a little differently. That, he said, is one of his biggest regrets when he looks back on his 23-year career. 

“What I would have changed was … when I see these young players, I see Patrick (Mahomes) out there at quarterback, running around, having fun, I’m like, ‘I used to be like that! What the hell happened to me?’” Brady recently said on “The Pivot” podcast. “I just got too serious. 

“But again, I can only look back and think, ‘OK, if I do it again — which I’ll never do it again — I would be different, but the reality is that you can’t. So you just learn from it and go, ‘OK, in the next phase of life, enjoy it a little more.’” 

Brady possibly taking the game too seriously is one regret he has from a career that is considered to be the greatest in NFL history. Perhaps Brady’s other big regret from his career is the Patriots’ 17-14 loss to the Giants in Super Bowl XLII that prevented New England from becoming only the second NFL team to go undefeated. 

“We were crushed,” Brady said on Apple TV’s documentary on the Patriots dynasty. “I was crushed. That was our history-making game. That would have been everything. … We were as devastated as you could be. There was no sleep. There was no sleep for a long time.” 

Brady and the Patriots didn’t win that game, but the Patriots would go onto win three more Super Bowls during Brady’s run in New England. Brady would then win a seventh Super Bowl win as a member of the Buccaneers at the end of the 2020 season. 

Ironically, one of Brady’s most enduring moments as a Patriot occurred at Mahomes’ expense, when Brady flipped off his helmet and jumped into his teammates’ arms when New England defeated Kansas City in overtime of the 2018 AFC Championship game. While he may have taken the game too seriously, Brady was fully in the moment that night after he and his teammates delayed Mahomes and the Chiefs’ impending dynasty.