Tom Brady has accomplished a lot in his long NFL career. On Sunday night, he won his seventh Super Bowl crown which is more than any single team has accomplished. And he did so at the age of 43 by when football players usually are long retired. And against Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs, who are considered the “next great dynasty” no less. So, there was no passing of the torch on Sunday. That will have to wait.
But while most of America (outside of KC) has a great deal of respect for the “GOAT,” military working dogs don’t have a lot of respect for goats.
And one such military working dog took a chunk out of Brady several years ago.
Prior to New England’s Super Bowl against the Philadelphia Eagles, who liked to wear dog masks, Steve Burton, the excellent sports anchor for WBZ Boston, asked Brady during the Super Bowl Media Day, if he’d ever been bitten by a dog. For those who aren’t familiar with the NFL, Super Bowl Media Day is almost like going to Comic-Con: you never know what you’re going to find. Players can be and have been asked everything. One media-credentialled presenter from Mexico asked Brady several years ago if he’d marry her.
But obviously, Burton had been leaked the story, and his connections to the Patriots run deep. His father, Ron, was the very first draft pick of the Patriots back in 1960. Steve was a pretty fair QB himself at Northwestern. So, he popped the question to Brady.
Brady relayed that Patriots’ owner Robert Kraft had allowed the military to use Gillette Stadium for some of its training and had invited military members to watch the team practice during the training camp that takes place every summer. When the players were done with their meetings at the end of the day, Tom Brady, Jerod Mayo, and Vince Wilfork went to the middle of the field to greet the vets. In the darkness, Tom Brady didn’t see there were also dogs present and raised his arms up in a greeting. The troops loved it. The dogs? Not so much…
“We were in the stadium, this was, I don’t know how many years ago, there was some military training going on in our stadium. Mr. Kraft had allowed the military to do some training they needed to do, and I was able to witness it at night in training camp. We got a chance to go on the field after and meet a lot of the guys… I walk onto the field and there are helicopters flying and everyone’s lined up, and some guys were excited to see us walk out,” Brady said.
Tom Brady has accomplished a lot in his long NFL career. On Sunday night, he won his seventh Super Bowl crown which is more than any single team has accomplished. And he did so at the age of 43 by when football players usually are long retired. And against Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs, who are considered the “next great dynasty” no less. So, there was no passing of the torch on Sunday. That will have to wait.
But while most of America (outside of KC) has a great deal of respect for the “GOAT,” military working dogs don’t have a lot of respect for goats.
And one such military working dog took a chunk out of Brady several years ago.
Prior to New England’s Super Bowl against the Philadelphia Eagles, who liked to wear dog masks, Steve Burton, the excellent sports anchor for WBZ Boston, asked Brady during the Super Bowl Media Day, if he’d ever been bitten by a dog. For those who aren’t familiar with the NFL, Super Bowl Media Day is almost like going to Comic-Con: you never know what you’re going to find. Players can be and have been asked everything. One media-credentialled presenter from Mexico asked Brady several years ago if he’d marry her.
But obviously, Burton had been leaked the story, and his connections to the Patriots run deep. His father, Ron, was the very first draft pick of the Patriots back in 1960. Steve was a pretty fair QB himself at Northwestern. So, he popped the question to Brady.
Brady relayed that Patriots’ owner Robert Kraft had allowed the military to use Gillette Stadium for some of its training and had invited military members to watch the team practice during the training camp that takes place every summer. When the players were done with their meetings at the end of the day, Tom Brady, Jerod Mayo, and Vince Wilfork went to the middle of the field to greet the vets. In the darkness, Tom Brady didn’t see there were also dogs present and raised his arms up in a greeting. The troops loved it. The dogs? Not so much…
“We were in the stadium, this was, I don’t know how many years ago, there was some military training going on in our stadium. Mr. Kraft had allowed the military to do some training they needed to do, and I was able to witness it at night in training camp. We got a chance to go on the field after and meet a lot of the guys… I walk onto the field and there are helicopters flying and everyone’s lined up, and some guys were excited to see us walk out,” Brady said.
As Brady raised his arms, one of the dogs leaped up and tried to bite at his neck. The animal’s handler was able to pull the dog back. However, the dog sunk his teeth into Brady’s thigh.
“I was standing there with a bunch of tough guys and they all saw it. They asked if I was OK and I said, ‘of course I’m OK.’ But I could feel the cut. Obviously, I couldn’t say anything because I was with the toughest guys in the world. So I just sucked it up,” he said laughing while retelling the story.
It wasn’t until later that evening that Brady told the Patriots’ team trainer he had a problem. The trainer sewed Brady up and he was on his way. For the GOAT, it was quite the learning experience in dealing with dogs.
“It was probably 10:30, 10:45 when I went back into our training room and I called up Jim Whalen, our trainer. I said, ‘Hey Jim, I have a problem.’ He’s like, ‘What is it?’ I was like, ‘I just got bit by a dog.’ He was like, ‘What do you mean you got bit by a dog?! What are you talking about?!’ So I had to come over and get it taken care of so I have a nice little scar on my quad thanks to that night. I learned a very valuable lesson,” Brady added.
But if you were to think that this would have turned Brady away from dogs, you’d be mistaken. Tom Brady and his wife Gisele own four rescue dogs. Lua, a Pitbull mix, was the first to come along and has been featured in Brady’s Uggs commercials, a company he’s endorsed. They also have adopted a Beagle named Scooby, a black and white furball named Fluffy, and finally Onyx who Brady calls Lua’s boy toy.
The video of Brady relating the dog biting incident can be seen here, courtesy of Sports Illustrated:
SOFREP has always been covering the great work that our military working dogs do in service of our country. But even they have off-days and make mistakes. Or it was just that that particular dog was a fan of the Chiefs or Broncos.
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