Throughout his career, Tom Brady has credited positive thinking and an upbeat mentality for a measure of his success. In the buildup to Super Bowl LV, he tried to instill that in his team with some timely reminders.
Following the Buccaneers’ 31-9 win over the Chiefs on Sunday — in which Brady earned his seventh Super Bowl title — it’s clear that the former Patriot’s methods paid off.
Part of his approach was simple: daily text messages.
As Buccaneers running back Leonard Fournette noted in his postgame press conference, Brady used repetition to help create a positive mindset.
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“It felt great,” Fournette said of having Brady as a teammate. “Just knowing his resume and understand why he wins. All week he made us believe we were going to win. He was texting us at 11 o’clock at night, ‘We will win this game.’ We believed in him. We believed in the play-calling, what the coaches were calling and we just ran with it.”
“Tom preached all week, [the Chiefs] were 31st in the league in yards after [contact], yards after the catch, too,” Fournette added. “Their run defense wasn’t that good. I take pride in that knowing those guys don’t want to tackle. Sometimes you make a guy miss, but at the same time, punch them in the mouth and then at the end of the game they are not going to want to tackle and that is exactly what happened.”
With Fournette — who signed in Tampa partly because of Brady — rushing for 89 yards (including a touchdown) alongside fellow running back Ronald Jones II adding 61 yards of his own, the Buccaneers dominated the ground game.
Brady added three touchdown passes and 201 yards in the air, winning his fifth Super Bowl MVP.
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