On a recent, sun-splashed day in Tampa, Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski sat in red Adirondack chairs at the edge of the Buccaneers’ practice field to film a brief show for the team website. They were wearing oversize sunglasses and surrounded by a collection of knickknacks that even a garden gnome might find tacky.
Several plastic pink flamingos had been jammed into the grass. A small fake cannon was flanked by fake cannonballs. And a kiddie pool was filled with floating rubber ducks, with a ‘No lifeguard on duty’ sign resting on its edge.
It didn’t exactly look like one of Brady’s Aston Martin ads. Or the trappings of a zillionaire athlete and entrepreneur who is known to walk the Met Gala red carpet with his supermodel wife.
“It’s so nice to be back with everyone,” Brady said, as Gronkowski pulled a fan’s question from a mailbox.
The query, unsurprisingly, was about whether Brady could play until he is 50 years old. The answer, unsurprisingly, was yes. After more questions and some awkward banter, Brady read a final one for Gronkowski, his former Patriots teammate who reunited with him in Tampa last year and won another Super Bowl.
But the card in Brady’s hand had two questions on it.
“I think I could go for the predictable one or the fun one,” Brady said. “Would you like predictable or fun?”
Predictable or fun. If this was the choice for Brady after he left the Patriots two years ago, it seems clear where he has come down. In New England, Brady was so often private, calculated, guarded, and formal. But now, as he prepares to make his return to face his former team Sunday night at Gillette Stadium, the 44-year-old quarterback seems interested in letting his well-groomed hair down a bit.
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Whether hurling the Lombardi Trophy from one boat to another during a Super Bowl celebration (he blamed the tequila he’d imbibed) or taking jabs at himself in more humanizing ads and social media posts, Brady has begun to portray the personality of an everyman — someone it might be fun to grab a beer with, or at least sit in Adirondack chairs, goofing off on the edge of a football field.
No longer operating amid the watchful eyes — and snowbanks — of Patriot Place, Brady seems to be enjoying himself as much as ever.
“I have to say, I love what I’m seeing from Tom Brady right now from a personal standpoint,” said Brady’s former Patriots teammate, Rodney Harrison, who’s now a commentator for NBC. “He’s happy. He’s joking. He’s a smart-ass like we all know he is, and you see that through social media. He’s calculated. Throwing shots at people. I love it. I just love that people get a chance to see the real Tom, and for Brady to want people to see that.”
Former Patriots linebacker Rob Ninkovich said he’s noticed Brady’s public persona shift, too. He thinks Brady is at a point in his career where he does not feel a need to be as guarded.
“My grandmother’s 90 years old and sometimes she says things and we say, ‘Gram, you can’t say that.’ And she’d say, ‘I can say whatever the [heck] I want, I’m 90 years old,’ ” Ninkovich said. “I think age comes with a little bit more of, ‘I don’t care, and I enjoy what I’m doing, and I don’t have that many bites of the apple left.’ And I think Tom now is enjoying his time, he’s enjoying being in Florida, and also not having to deal with frozen winters.”
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He also does not have to deal with the Patriots, one of the more buttoned-down franchises in professional sports, so perhaps that enabled him to show more personality, too.
Former Patriots quarterback, and longtime radio commentator, Scott Zolak said New England has always been reluctant to treat any one player as bigger than the team, and that generally breeds a more businesslike culture.
“I just think it’s a thing if you walk around Gillette Stadium, there’s no single player they blow up where it’s, ‘OK, we’re going to put this guy all over the side of it,’ ” Zolak said. “You go to Tampa, you see Tom and [wide receiver] Mike Evans plastered all over the stadium. They don’t do that here. That’s just the standard.”
The Patriots’ militantly ordered approach resulted in six Super Bowl wins during Brady’s time in New England, so it was hard to quibble with it. But it’s easy to see how Brady could view Tampa as an escape.
“The thing is, when you’re with the Patriots, it’s serious,” Harrison said. “It’s serious. It’s football. It’s all the time. You might be 12-0, but you feel like you’re 2-10 because of the way you’re being coached. You might win and make one mistake, and instead of highlighting the 10 great things that we did, the coaches will highlight the three bad things that we did. And that’s just part of Coach [Bill] Belichick’s process, and it works.”
Steve Rosner is the founder of 16W Marketing, a firm that represents former NFL players such as Howie Long and Phil Simms, and he used to often be asked why Brady didn’t have more sponsorship deals. He said it was not from a lack of interest on Madison Avenue.
“It was that Tom Brady seemed to be focused, seemed to want to put football first, and maybe it had a little bit to do with that he didn’t want to seem like he was spending his time not preparing in the world of Bill Belichick,” Rosner said. “But obviously those reins have loosened. He not only is more comfortable, but I think you’re seeing a little bit of another side of him in these spots.”
‘“It was that Tom Brady seemed to be focused, seemed to want to put football first, and maybe it had a little bit to do with that he didn’t want to seem like he was spending his time not preparing in the world of Bill Belichick. But obviously those reins have loosened.”’
Steve Rosner, founder of 16W Marketing
Brady did pitch products while a Patriot, everything from Uggs to TAG Heuer but as a Buccaneer his sponsorship roster has diversified a bit. And part of his new pitch is . . . the easier-going Tom Brady.
In a new Subway commercial Brady makes light of the fact that he does not even eat bread. In an ad for a cryptocurrency exchange platform, Brady calls a Boston bartender who has stored Brady in his contacts as “traitor” and the bartender tells him Patriots fans would not even take Brady back if he wanted to return.
“Yes, you would,” Brady says, before the bartender acknowledges that he’s right.
This newly humanized Brady is undoubtedly more fun, but skeptics will wonder how much of this metamorphosis is real and how much is a calculation, like every other meticulous move that preceded it.
Are there, for example, business motives at work? Brady has given no reason to believe he will retire in the near future, but he will retire eventually. He could simply be setting up the next phase of his career. He will soon launch his personal clothing line, he helped create a nonfungible token platform (a cryptocurrency variant), and he remains heavily involved with his lifestyle brand, TB12.
“He could just be at a point,” Rosner said, “where he’s saying, ‘I’ve got a life after football, what am I going to do with myself?’ ”
Chad Finn of the Globe staff contributed to this report
Adam Himmelsbach can be reached at adam.himmelsbach@globe.com. Follow him @adamhimmelsbach.