‘Sky is the limit’: Tom Brady explains why he mentors Deion Sanders’s son Shedeur
Shedeur Sanders led a 98-yard touchdown drive to send ESPN’s fifth-most watched college football game of all-time into overtime on Saturday night.
Then, he threw the game-winning touchdown pass in double overtime, leading Colorado past rival Colorado State for a 43-35 win.
Sanders called the performance “Brady mode.” As in, Tom Brady mode.
Brady has mentored Sanders for years. He also signed Sanders to an NIL with his apparel company, Brady Brand.
During a recent appearance on the Let’s Go! Podcast with Jim Gray and Larry Fitzgerald, Brady explained why he took an interest in the Colorado quarterback.
“I’m always here for him,” Brady said. “Because in him I see someone who has a great work ethic but wants the knowledge too. I think all of us on this call had so many people in our lives which allowed us to be successful. Obviously having great parents, but having these other instrumental people that come in at the right time when you’re open to learning.
“People always ask me,” Brady continued. “How good do you think this guy is going to be? And I always say, it depends on who he surrounds himself with. It depends who mentors him. Because even you, [Deion Sanders], weren’t a finished product at 21 or 22. I certainly wasn’t. I had the right people come into my life and I was open to learning from them.”
Patriots coach Bill Belichick was one of the people who helped Brady early in his career, Brady said.
“Man, when I learned from Coach Belichick … when I learned from my boy Alex [Guerrero], that’s when it kept going and going and going,” Brady said. “So, the sky is the limit when you have the opportunity to learn. When you’re hard headed, and you think you know everything, there’s a lot of kids out there who think they know everything and they don’t know [expletive] and that’s the problem.”
Gray asked Brady to explain what he saw in Sanders that convinced the seven-time Super Bowl champion that the college quarterback would be worth his time.
“Naturally, he’s very proactive,” Brady said. “We had a conversation, then phone calls, then then text messages, and then him making the commitment to say ‘all right, this is what I want to do, I’m very serious about it.’ A lot of it is you want to see what their intention is too because when you see someone that’s really open to learning and has a thirst for knowledge, you want to be able to support that.”