Tom Brady was requested by Shaquille O’Neal who he sees as his NFL successor

As Tom Brady seems again on his 21-year NFL profession — a run that included an unprecedented seven Tremendous Bowl wins — he may be moderately assured that nobody will have the ability to absolutely replicate his exceptional story.

However when requested to establish “the following Tom” throughout a current episode of his “Let’s Go!” podcast, the previous Patriot had a transparent alternative in thoughts.

The query was posed to him by NBA Corridor of Famer Shaquille O’Neal, who appeared within the episode as a visitor. O’Neal, noting that basketball followers regularly ask who the following Michael Jordan or LeBron James is likely to be, reframed the query for Brady.

“Good query,” Brady replied. “I believe after I’m taking a look at guys in professional soccer, quarterbacks, you understand, Patrick [Mahomes] is the one that actually stands out. They’ve performed an amazing job since he’s actually taken over. He’s bought a very nice coach — like [how] I used to be lucky, like the way you have been lucky — that helps you and is there for you when issues are going good, and never good. Provides you the common-or-garden pie when issues are going good, and is aware of find out how to decide you up when issues aren’t good.

“But it surely’s going to be attention-grabbing,” Brady added. “Individuals must do it for a very long time. I did it for a very long time. Once I have a look at my profession, I used to be capable of do it each single yr for principally each single sport.”

Noting that he solely missed time twice — one of many events being his four-game NFL suspension following the “Deflategate” controversy in 2016 — Brady distilled his quarterbacking philosophy right down to a single piece of standards.

“Each sport wasn’t good, however each sport was fairly good, and more often than not I by no means put our workforce able to lose,” he defined. “There are only a few guys like that, that I’m watching again and again and over.”

Except for the standard metrics, Brady additionally emphasised the way it may turn out to be even more durable to keep up his stage of sturdiness (as a participant who stayed within the NFL till age 45).

“I believe sadly, the way in which the sport’s going, quite a lot of the fellows are operating the ball much more. It simply makes for a shorter profession,” he stated.

Granted, the league has added extra guidelines through the years to assist defend quarterbacks from being on the receiving finish of an excessive amount of contact. Nonetheless, Brady thinks the rising prevalence of signal-callers who scramble will in the end make it harder to chase his information.

“Working quarterbacks don’t final that lengthy,” stated Brady. “I don’t know who can play 21 years, I actually don’t. I do know what it took, and it took so much. I’m positive a number of the individuals have ambitions to strive, however there are quite a lot of issues that have to go your means. The one cause that I used to be capable of do it was as a result of I had so many individuals there to assist me.”

But ought to somebody in some way match his stage of accomplishment, Brady acknowledged that they’d have his “respect.”

“I imagine that if somebody does make it so long as I made it with the diploma of success, then I give them quite a lot of respect,” Brady concluded. “It might be an unbelievable accomplishment for them to try this, particularly in immediately’s day and age.”