Former Patriots quarterback Tom Brady gave a commencement speech Saturday to business school graduates at Georgetown University, urging them to fight through adversity as he often did on the gridiron.
Brady, speaking at the McDonough School of Business commencement ceremony, recalled the most celebrated comeback of his legendary career, when he led his squad back from a 28-3 deficit to beat the Atlanta Falcons at the Super Bowl in 2017, one of six championship rings he earned with the Pats.
“When the odds are stacked against you, when you’re facing your own 28 to 3 moment — and believe me, it’s coming — you will have a choice to make: to quit or to fight your ass off,” Brady said, according to a transcript of his speech posted to the Hoya website.
Success in those tense moments comes down to preparation, Brady continued.
“You better have prepared yourself in advance to deal with the adversity you’re gonna face in order to give yourself the best chance to succeed,” Brady said. “Down by 25, in the biggest game of my life, do you think I just stumbled randomly into my decision to keep fighting?”
That resilience was built up over decades, he stressed.
“The previous 25 years of my life had prepared me for that moment,” Brady said. “Just as you guys have been meeting the daily challenges of being a student, I’d been meeting the daily challenges of being an athlete every day, just for a chance to do something special.”
But you can’t win the day if you’re too busy making excuses, he said.
“Every hard choice is a brick in the path toward the life you want,” Brady said. “But every excuse is a brick in the wall that will stand in your way.”
He warned the graduates that they may feel a little overwhelmed at that first big job, surrounded by new hires who have just as much mettle as they do.
“You’ll be up against a lot of people from equally great schools who are just as smart and talented as you, and they want it as much as you do,” Brady said. “You’ll be asked to do things you’ve never done before. To work long hours, harder than you ever have, with people you might not like — like guys from Duke.”
(Brady’s head coach in New England, Bill Belichick, now coaches Duke archrival UNC.)
Belichick, famously tight-lipped with compliments, got some ribbing during the speech as well, when Brady told the crowd that “I had a coach for 20 years that told me how [expletive] I was every day,” using a word that rhymes with city.
Brady added that it’s important for the graduates to surround themselves with people who push them to excel, “even if one of those people is a cranky old coach who cuts the sleeves off his sweatshirt and screams at you all day, ‘do your job.’”
And Brady seemed to channel Belichick’s “no days off” mantra during his speech, telling the graduates that a demanding work environment is the right one.
What makes a workplace “too hard is exactly the thing that makes it the perfect place for you, because it will offer you the greatest opportunity of all: the opportunity to face your own fears and doubts and develop the skills and abilities necessary to overcome any obstacle you’ll face on the path to being successful in life,” he said.
Brady is currently a part owner of the Vegas Raiders and also has a lucrative NFL commentary deal on Fox.
Material from prior Globe stories was used in this report.
Travis Andersen can be reached at [email protected].
