The lead up to the Super Bowl is unlike any other game in the NFL season.
Both teams get an extra week off after the conference championship games before heading down to the city where the Super Bowl is being played a week before the game. Once there, it’s a media frenzy, with Opening Night taking place on Monday and other obligations occurring throughout the week.
No one has more experience in dealing with the uniqueness of the Super Bowl leadup than NFL on FOX lead analyst Tom Brady. He played in over a half season’s worth of Super Bowls in his career (10), winning in seven of his trips.
Tom Brady’s favorite off the field Super Bowl story
As Brady is a seasoned veteran in Super Bowl preparation, he was asked in the most recent version of his Verizon mailbag about his off-field Super Bowl memories. Instead of picking one, Brady detailed what the two weeks ahead of the big game are like, giving pointers on how to handle it.
“These two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, from the time you win your championship game to kickoff in the Super Bowl, are two of the most exciting weeks of your life,” Brady said. “There’s so many fun things you get to do. You obviously have the normal week of preparation. You have to decide which of the 5,000 ticket requests you’re gonna deny because you only get a limited amount of Super Bowl tickets. So, you’ve got to decide who’s coming to the game. You’ve got to help with all the logistics in the first week.
“The goal of the first week is to get a lot of the game planning done, get a lot of prep done, but also get the logistical things handled for your family and friends as you do down to the site of the Super Bowl. I was very fortunate because I played in a few of them. I got pretty good at that late in my career. A lot of people could help me in those situations. But when it’s your first time, it’s really tough because people are coming from everywhere to try and be involved in the Super Bowl.”
After preparations and logistics are set, both teams typically travel to the site of the Super Bowl on the Sunday before the game. Brady said those first couple of days at the Super Bowl location were some of the most enjoyable of his career.
“When you get down to the Super Bowl site, you arrive there and you have the media night, which is so much fun,” Brady said. “They give you all the Super Bowl swag. Usually, on your first one or two nights you get to go out with your buddies and go to dinner. We would always kind of have like a team dinner and someone would pick a restaurant and we would make the younger guys pay. We had a blast.”
The seriousness of Super Bowl preparation begins to ramp up later in the week, with Brady noting that there are still other obligations players have to deal with along with other off-field matters.
“It got into the production meetings and dealing with the different crews on Wednesday or Thursday of Super Bowl week,” Brady said. “That’s when people started to come in for the game and see your family on the Friday night before the game. Then, on Saturday, you have a big photo, media day on the field of the Super Bowl site.”
As those days align with the final practices of the season, Brady preached that remaining focused on the task at hand was imperative, noting it can be easy to be distracted by all the hoopla.
“When you look at the combination of all those things, it’s unlike any other game that you’ll play in,” Brady said. “There’s so much attention every time you turn the TV on. On any of the sites, you’re going to see your name, your team’s name, all the matchups and it’s important not to get caught up in those distractions. So, you really gotta try and focus on making that game as normal as you can from a preparations standpoint so you’re not distracted by the time the game comes around.
“I think the ability to limit distractions during the week, even though these things are really exciting and really fun, that goes a long way to determining who the winner of that game is.”
If that is the case, the Kansas City Chiefs have done a fine job at limiting the distractions in recent years. They’ve won the Super Bowl three times in four trips since 2019 and are seeking to become the first team to ever win three straight Super Bowls. The Philadelphia Eagles aren’t strangers to the Super Bowl stage, either. They lost to the Chiefs, 38-35, in Super Bowl LVI two years ago.
As Brady will be on the call for Super Bowl LIX (Sunday, 6:30 p.m. ET on FOX), he thinks the team that handles all of the distractions the best will have a strong edge.
“I think we’re going to see on Super Bowl Sunday who handles the distractions the best and goes out there and plays the best,” Brady said. “If they win that game, there are plenty of more distractions to come.”
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