Tom Brady Saw Cleveland Celebrating Like They Won A Super Bowl

Every morning, the fine folks at Sports Radio Interviews sift through the a.m. drive-time chatter to bring you the best interviews with coaches, players, and personalities across the sports landscape. Today: Tom Brady on getting mollywhomped by the Browns.

Tom Brady joined WEEI in Boston with Dennis Callahan to talk about losing yesterday against the Browns, what went wrong that contributed to them losing so bad, why he thinks he struggled against Eric Mangini's defense, and whether or not he had an issue with how the Browns celebrated afterwards.

Which is less distasteful for you this morning: admitting to being physically outplayed and dominated by an opponent, or perhaps being psychologically lulled into some false sense of security and you watched the entire Browns coach staff doing back flips with every play on the other sideline?
"Well, I think they deserved to be doing back flips yesterday. I don't think we did anything well, in any phase of the game. I don't think it's one of those games we took lightly. Believe me, we knew we were in for a dogfight. Just the way the game started, after the first three or four minutes of the game, we knew what kind of game it was going to be for the rest of the day, and we just didn't do enough in any phase of the game and offensively to put drives together and sustain drives to eventually get the ball in the end zone.

It's a frustrating day, there's no doubt about it. I feel like we're a lot better team than the way we played yesterday, but we've got to go out there and prove it on a week-by-week basis. It's unfortunate because it was a great opportunity for us [against] a team that had been struggling this year, but we just couldn't do enough out there in any phase to play well. That's what happens when you don't play well. I'd love to think you could have 22 minutes time of possession, lose the turnover battle and think you can go out there and win, but you can't. You can't play poorly and expect to win, and we played poorly yesterday."

After the game, Mangini said that they went with an entirely different game plan defensively from the first half to the second, because they knew you would adjust. Is that unusual?
"That's what they choose to do. They've had two weeks to prepare. They put a lot into the game. Coach said at halftime, ‘Believe me, all the stuff that we couldn't stop in the first half, don't worry, they've got a lot more stuff in the second half.' So, he told us. He's been telling us all week. We as players, we just, we just - there were too many plays out there that were just bad plays, in all phases of the game. That's tough to overcome, us making bad plays. At some point, we've got to make plays. You've got to make plays that will help you win the game. That's what it comes down to, in all phases."

So, you feel like you were prepared. You knew they were capable of this.
"Oh, yeah, we were prepared. We were plenty prepared. We were forewarned 50 times last week. We've got to take the coaching a lot better and get back to playing the way we need to play. If we don't, then that's the outcome. I don't think we sit here and sulk and say, ‘Man, we can't do anything, we suck.' We don't suck. If we play like we played yesterday, we suck. We know we're capable of playing better than that, but we've got to go out there and do it. There's a lot of pressure that our coach puts on us on a weekly basis to perform better. We're going to go out there and try to do it this week. And it starts in practice, having good practices, with good tempo and a good understanding of what we're doing, so that when we go out in the game we can play with anticipation and play with energy and excitement that we know what we're doing and that we're going to go out there and play well."

Did you watch the sideline celebration with Mangini and [Brian] Daboll and Rob Ryan, and do you think they went a little overboard?
"I know each of those guys well. They were celebrating like that when they were coaching for us and winning games. It's just their personality. That was a big win for them yesterday, just in terms of the history of the teams. When you play well, you can do whatever you want, as far as I'm concerned. If we wanted to kind of calm them down, we could have done that by playing a hell of a lot better. They deserve it. They won. They did the right things. They did what they needed to do to win. We didn't. It's a long season. We've got a lot more football to play. We've got to make a commitment to get better out there on the practice field so that it can carry over to the game fields."


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