Tom Brady Throws “A Friendly Ball”
June 27th, 2021
Not everything about a quarterback shows on film and on the stat sheet.
Tampa Bay offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich played QB for 10 years and was coaching for three before Tom Brady became his student.
Leftwich saw impressive subtleties in person that he didn’t pick up on until Brady arrived.
“You watch the tape of him and I knew his arm was still live; you know, you can tell he’s still got a live arm. But then you get around him and you’re like, ‘Look at that ball.’ It’s the type of ball that he throws. It’s a friendly ball. It’s a penetrating ball,” Leftwich described during an NFL.com interview.
That Brady arm talent and effectiveness is a mind-blower, per Leftwich, a culmination of a 20-year process. And it’s never lost on the 41-year-old offensive coordinator.
“It’s amazing to see the commitment that it takes to make sure you’re capable of playing this long,” Leftwich said.
June 27th, 2021 at 8:09 am
My wife and I were blessed to be able to go this past SB; and what an amazingly wonderful experience. I highly recommend to anyone they should go.
I watched TB and Gabbert warming up before the game. TB was throwing what one would call normal passes, nothing extraordinary – it was just warmups.
Gabbert on the other hand has a bazooka for an arm. I don’t know that I have ever seen such velocity throwing a football. They were the type of throws where one can see where they get that expression “throwing a rope”. And I was thinking if you are a WR, that is a tough catch when you are also thinking about getting popped after you catch it.
June 27th, 2021 at 8:30 am
Once is never enough. GO BUCS!
June 27th, 2021 at 8:41 am
In the practices after the championship, it’s a whole lot better to hear chatter of “A friendly ball” than it is to hear “Your ball spins funny.”
June 27th, 2021 at 10:29 am
I played with a big, strong young guy from a small college who had a monster arm with a ball with a lot of spin. It was really hard to catch, and he had a lot of dropped balls in practice and games, and threw a lot of picks because he believed he could throw the ball into the tightest of windows. (No, not Winston 😉 )
On the same team was a smaller veteran guy without a cannon, but his ball was soft when it got to your hands. He didn’t overthrow, and he didn’t take risks. He also wan a championship.
The NFL graveyard is littered with QBs with monster arms.
June 27th, 2021 at 12:55 pm
Actually I think that’s what’s wrong with Winston. He throws everything with the same velocity. That’s why he would struggle with the short to short intermediate passes but could throw a 40 yard frozen rope. Winston was accurate throwing to a stationary target or a stop and go but struggled with a moving target unless it was thrown deep with arch and let the receiver run under it but more times than not he would overthrow because there was no real arch. I attribute his throwing motion to his college baseball pitching.
June 27th, 2021 at 3:34 pm
All lives I agree with you winston has the talent. He just needs to hone in on mechanical things. Better pocket awareness and decisions situational football. Do that sky’s the limit!
June 27th, 2021 at 4:41 pm
Really good takes and a key point on Winston I have always thought was true.
Thats why his deep ball is so terrible.
He tries to throw it easier instead of up in the air.
Never really turns over right.
Thats why Brady wants to throw a spiral, but who cares if he doesn’t.
June 27th, 2021 at 10:07 pm
@Youngbucs: if you haven’t figured it out by your sixth pro year, the same mechanical errors over and over, you will never figure it out.
I can assure you every coach he ever had was all in his ear and grill about mechanics. And it didn’t work.
June 27th, 2021 at 10:24 pm
All Lives Matter: totally agree with your analysis.
June 28th, 2021 at 5:35 am
Yep no matter how accurate you are if you just make the ball difficult to catch you know there’s going to be throws in traffic too that are bobbled and picked off etc.