Lifelong Teammate: Tom Brady Wrote Foreword For Troy Brown's Book During DeflateGate Hysteria
By Michael Hurley, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- It's now mid-November, and Tom Brady is currently dominating the NFL. He's the league leader in passing yards and touchdowns, and he's been the MVP for the 9-0 Patriots.
Given the current run of success, it might be easy to forget just how insane Brady's offseason was, thanks to the never-ending saga known as "DeflateGate." It started, of course, in January, when the Colts accused the Patriots of using illegally underinflated footballs, it dominated the national news cycle for the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, it ballooned after several false leaks from the NFL office made the "offense" look worse than it actually was, and it truly exploded as a story when Roger Goodell and the NFL issued a four-game suspension to the Super Bowl MVP.
After all of that, Brady had to ready himself for two fights -- first an appeal hearing, which was overseen by Goodell himself, and later in a federal court. He lost the former (no surprise) but eventually won the latter, allowing him to play this season, which may be the best in his Hall of Fame career.
Though Brady leads a charmed life on and off the field, it was without a doubt the most frustrating offseason he's ever had to endure in his 15 years in the NFL.
Yet amid it all, Brady managed to make time for a former teammate.
Troy Brown sat down with Toucher & Rich on Tuesday morning to discuss his new book, co-written with Mike Reiss, "Patriot Pride: My Life In The New England Dynasty." For that book, Brady wrote the foreword, and Brown revealed that the quarterback did so during the hysteria that was "DeflateGate."
"The biggest thing is just, I didn't want to ask him because he was smack dab in the middle of the whole 'DeflateGate' stuff. I don't think he had even been to New York yet to have the hearing [with Goodell]. I didn't want to ask him at that particular time," Brown said.
Despite the circumstances, once again, Brady delivered for one of his all-time favorite receivers.
"To have him do it, when he was in the middle of all of that, when he needed to be preparing to go down there and face Big Roger The Duke, and do his thing down there, I felt bad about asking him to do it," Brown said. "But you know Tom, he stepped up and did it, man, and he wrote some great stuff. He wrote it from his heart, some heartfelt words in there almost drove me to tears."
Brady's and Brown's time as teammates may have ended in 2007, but it's clear that being a part of three Super Bowl wins is something that will keep the two as teammates for life.
"It wasn't a pain to ask him at all. He's a great friend and obviously a great teammate, so I wanted him to be the one to do it," Brown said.
Listen to Brown's full interview with Toucher & Rich below: