Baker Mayfield: Tom Brady played mind games, led to high-strung, stressed-out team

Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield says he’s a different kind of leader than Tom Brady was.

Mayfield said on the Casa de Klub podcast that he and Brady have “very different personalities” and that he thinks it’s a relief to some in the locker room that they’re not dealing with Brady’s intensity anymore.

“The building was a little bit different with Tom in there. Obviously, playing-wise, Tom is different. He had everybody dialed in, high-strung environment, so I think everybody was pretty stressed out,” Mayfield said. “They wanted me to come in, be myself, bring the joy back to football for guys who weren’t having as much fun.”

Mayfield says Brady would make it clear that it was his offense even if he had to demonstrate it by throwing an incompletion on a play call the coaches liked better than he did.

“You hear some of the stories about if he didn’t like a certain play call and he didn’t like it throughout the week and they still call it in the game, there might have been a throwaway on purpose or throwing it at the running back or receiver’s feet,” Mayfield said. “There were a lot of mind games going on.”

Brady showed that his methods worked by coming in to Tampa Bay and winning a Super Bowl in his first season. But Mayfield’s way is working in Tampa Bay, too, and he thinks his teammates are enjoying it even more.

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