Tom Brady, Tampa Bay Buccaneers. (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)
Tom Brady may have played his first season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on a torn MCL.
While everybody knows that Tom Brady had surgery to repair an injured knee during the offseason, apparently, he played with a torn MCL throughout his first season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times reports Brady had a partially torn MCL last year but played through it. The injury supposedly first surfaced during spring practice, but there is a chance it may have come about during Brady’s final season with the New England Patriots in 2019. Regardless, Brady battled through a major knee injury to win the seventh Super Bowl of his illustrious career.
This injury information makes Brady’s first season with the Buccaneers all the more impressive.
Buccaneers: Tom Brady played through the 2021 NFL season with a torn MCL
In Brady’s 21st professional season out of Michigan, he completed 65.7 percent of his passes for 4,633 yards, 40 touchdowns and 12 interceptions. He led Tampa Bay to an 11-5 record and the Buccaneers’ first playoff appearance since 2007. Not only did he do all this with a new team, but he did this in his age-43 season and during a COVID year. This is absolutely mind-blowing stuff.
While there have been infinitely more physically gifted quarterbacks in NFL history than Brady, none have been more resilient. Most former quarterbacks his age have long since hung up the spikes. Instead, he continues to build his legacy as the undisputed greatest quarterback of all time. The only thing he has yet to do is navigate a perfect season. He almost did that just back in 2007.
Brady playing through an entire year on a torn MCL is another example of his mental toughness.