Brady Says He Still Has 'Great Amount Of Respect' For Commissioner
BOSTON (CBS) -- Mothers often say, 'If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.'
One would have thought that would be Tom Brady's approach with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, the man who tried to suspend Brady for four games for the recent DeflateGate mess.
But believe it or not, Brady had something nice to say about Goodell when he broke his silence on Sunday.
Brady didn't say much about his four-game suspension, which was vacated in federal court by Judge Richard Berman last week after a lengthy battled between the NFL and NFLPA, while standing at his locker in Gillette Stadium, saying he has lots of personal feelings on the matter that he would like to keep to himself.
You would think that one of those "feelings better left unsaid" was Brady's opinion of Goodell. But on a conference call with the Pittsburgh media on Sunday, he took the high road when asked about the NFL commissioner.
"I certainly have a great amount of respect for the commissioner and what his job is," said Brady. "My job is to be the best quarterback I can be. That's what I'm going to try to be on Thursday."
In typical Brady fashion, he tried to steer the line of questioned away from deflated football talk and towards Thursday night's NFL opener against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
"I've been dealing with that for seven months," he said of the DeflateGate mess. "I'm really at the point where I'm focused on the Steelers.
"Anything that has happened over the last seven months really hasn't been my job," he said. "This is what my job is -- to go out there and try to be a great leader for our team, to try to go out and execute the plays that are called and execute them at a high level. So, that's where my focus has been. There has been a lot of studying, a lot of trying to figure out how they are going to play."
With his suspension thrown out, Brady will be under center for the Patriots against the Steelers. That's great news for the Patriots but not so much for the Steelers, who Brady is 5-2 against with 18 touchdowns and just three interceptions throughout his career.
Fellow quarterback Ben Roethlisberger had a feeling Brady would be out there in Week 1, but he's glad that he and his team will have to face the best in the business to start the season.
"I guess it was maybe just more of a feeling or inkling in knowing that the Commissioner jumped to a pretty harsh punishment," Roethlisberger said Sunday on a conference call with the New England media. "I still have a ton of respect for Tom. I think he is the best in the business. If you want to be the best you have to beat the best. Yeah, of course one part of you doesn't want him out there because he is the best in the world, but a bigger part of you as a competitor wants him out there because he is the best."
Tune in to Patriots-Steelers Thursday night on 98.5 The Sports Hub -- the flagship station of the New England Patriots! Pregame coverage begins at 5:30pm with Patriots Preview, kickoff is set for 8:30pm and stay tuned after the game for full analysis on Patriots Postgame! You can also catch Patriots 5th Quarter on myTV38 immediately following the game!