Brady meets with AB, says plenty of work ahead - 3 minutes read
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- Tom Brady and Antonio Brown spent part of Monday together, taking the initial steps toward building more on-field chemistry.
"Antonio, meeting him today, I really enjoyed being around him," Brady said in his weekly Westwood One interview that aired Monday night. "He's a very smart football player, knows how to play the game. He's been extremely productive."
But the New England Patriots quarterback said that alone won't be enough for them to succeed.
"The only thing that I know what we can do is to go out there and work at it, to meet and to communicate, and get on the practice field and go through things," Brady said on Westwood One. "I'm not buying into any hype or potential. I'm into work. He's into work and our entire offense is into doing what's in the best interest for the team. I'm really excited to get to practice on Wednesday."
Brown spent his first day with the Patriots on Monday, with the club officially announcing the signing of the wide receiver in the late afternoon. His contract includes an option year in 2020 at $20 million that becomes guaranteed if executed, a source told ESPN's Adam Schefter. It was done to help for salary-cap-proration purposes this season.
Brown posted a picture on Snapchat that indicated he arrived at Gillette Stadium at 6:58 a.m. ET on Monday -- just hours after New England beat his former team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, in its season opener. He also knows he has an open invitation to stay with Brady.
"You know, I have asked a lot of guys over the years to stay at my house," Brady said. "Some have taken me up on it and others haven't. I just want this transition for him to be really smooth. It's been a lot of travel for him to go from the West Coast to the East Coast. Learning the playbook. I just want him to be comfortable. Whatever's up to him, I'm totally cool with."
Brady spoke about urgency.
"We're going to meet as much as we possibly can," he said. "I think that quarterback-receiver relationship is so important. The more you know each other, the more you know what each other's thinking, the faster you can accelerate the trust and confidence in one another when you get on the field. I have that with a lot of guys that I played with; certainly with the guys that are on the roster now, Julian [Edelman], Phillip Dorsett, Josh [Gordon] -- you saw that last night. But when you haven't played with guys, you got to try to do it as quickly as possible and the clock is ticking on us right now. This is not the offseason program. This is about real games that count, and we are going to try and spend as much time as we can together and really get up to speed and lock in with what [our] roles and responsibilities are."