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Mike Reiss, ESPN Staff Writer
What was billed as “the greatest roast of all time” turned out to be anything but for Tom Brady, who expressed regrets at the impact it had on his three children.
“I loved when the jokes were about me,” Brady said Tuesday on “The Pivot” podcast with Ryan Clark, Fred Taylor and Channing Crowder. “I thought they were so fun. I didn’t like the way it affected my kids.
“So it’s the hardest part; the bittersweet aspect of when you do something that you think is one way and all of a sudden you realize ‘I wouldn’t do that again’ because of the way it affected, actually, the people I care about the most in the world.”
Brady’s comments came at the end of the 56-minute podcast, when he was asked by Taylor — his teammate with the New England Patriots in 2009 and 2010 — if he learned anything about himself from the roast.
Taylor’s question was delivered more in the context of his connection with teammates and how it seemed to reflect their bonds formed in the locker room over years, but Brady instead focused on his children Jack, Benjamin and Vivian.
“It makes you, in some ways, a better parent going through it,” he said. “Sometimes you are naïve. You don’t know, or you get a little like, ‘Oh s—.’
“I love when people were making fun of me. … I just want to laugh, so I wanted to do the roast. You just don’t see the full picture all the time. So I think it’s a good lesson for me as a parent. I’m going to be a better parent as I go forward because of it.”
Brady added: “At the same time, I’m happy everyone who was there had a lot of fun. And I do think for me, outside of that, it always is good ‘if we’re not laughing about things, we’re crying.’ I think we should have more fun. We loved laughing in the locker room. Let’s do more of that and love each other and celebrate other people’s success. That, to me, gives everyone a lot of hope.”
Part of the podcast focused on how May is Mental Health Awareness month, with Brady acknowledging how he is doing in that area.
“I’m just doing my best to check in with myself as often as possible — with my physical health, my mental health, my emotional health,” he said. “It’s something I’m working on. Every year I think I start something a little different.
“I think this last year I wanted to kind of rebuild my body because I lost a lot of weight in my last season. It was challenging. This year is a lot of work stuff. I think next year I’m really going to settle in to a better, more sustainable rhythm to life between all of our responsibilities. When is it too much? When is it not enough? You’re juggling all these balls in the air, and certainly for former athletes, we never know how it’s going to go when we retire.”
Brady revealed another aspect of retirement that has challenged him.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m a little bit in a washing machine right now, not quite sure where you’re going, what the schedule looks like. The structure, the habits, are positive for us at different times; when you don’t have that, you bounce around – you’re like a ping-pong ball, too,” he said, acknowledging he is “not really in my center right now.”
“I feel like, naturally as a quarterback, I was in control. I loved flying the plane, being the operator. I think what you realize in life is that you’re not in control that much. What do I need to do more in my life? I need to be better with less control. I need to be better operating in that gray area. I can’t be so anxious when things aren’t going exactly the way that I want.”
