The top quotes from Bill Belichick’s appearance on Tom Brady’s podcast

The first edition of Tom Brady’s Let’s Go! podcast since his retirement was, for lack of a better word, a doozy. Guests included his parents, former teammate Rob Gronkowski, and two of his toughest quarterback competitors in Peyton Manning and Patrick Mahomes, the later of who is preparing to play the Super Bowl this Sunday.

Yet the guest that got the most attention – and really surprised a lot of people – was his long-time head coach and the man who drafted him, Bill Belichick. Brady and Belichick’s relationship has of course been a point of fascination for years now. That was addressed, as well as Brady’s retirement and more.

• Belichick began by sharing how he recently had reflected on Brady’s career while coaching the Shrine Bowl, which Brady played in in 2000.

  “Tom’s had just a tremendous career. It was funny, I was out at the East-West Game last weekend and Tom’s picture is up there everywhere at the game…that’s kind of where it all started – Michigan, the Orange Bowl, the East-West Game,” Belichick began. “The greatest player, the greatest career. A great, great person. It was such an opportunity and an honor for me to coach Tom. I guess it’s gotta end at some point. But it’s the greatest one ever. So, congratulations, Tom.”

  “Appreciate it,” Brady responded, sounding a bit emotional.

• Host Jim Gray then asked Brady what he thought Belichick did to bring out the best in him. “I think it’s more what did he not do to bring out the best in me,” Brady began. “I was just very lucky. I think part of it – I came into my career and got drafted by the Patriots…it was Coach Belichick’s first year there. We came in together. I always think, for so many young players – anybody could get drafted to a place. Who’s gonna be there to turn you into something? Who’s gonna develop you? Who’s gonna take you under their wing? And sometimes it’s a player that does it and I definitely had a lot of players do that and obviously I had someone that really saw something in me that not a lot of other people did.

  “I think Coach Belichick and I developed an amazing relationship, really from the moment I was draft,” Brady continued. “Really, we spent a lot of time together. He started to begin to teach me really what football is all about, how to study defenses when I started to play. We’d have weekly meetings, sometimes once, sometimes twice, and I couldn’t imagine a better teacher to say ‘hey, this is how you’re going to play quarterback in the NFL,’ and ‘this is the nuances of the game.'”

  “He could be retired years ago,” Brady added. “The reality is he loves the sport, he loves teaching, he loves coaching, he loves competing, and nobody’s done it better than him. And I think what a blessing for me – there’s no way I have the success I’ve had personally without him, and I’m very grateful for that.”

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  FOXBORO, MA – JANUARY 16: Tom Brady #12 and head coach Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots shake hands at the start of the AFC Divisional Playoff Game against the Kansas City Chiefs at Gillette Stadium on January 16, 2016 in Foxboro, Massachusetts. (Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)

• The conversation then turned back to Belichick, who was asked what he saw in Brady at the beginning that others didn’t. Belichick called naming Brady the starter once Drew Bledsoe was healthy in 2001 “the smartest decision I ever made, maybe other than drafting him,” then got more into the relationship between the two.

  “Tom talks about how much I taught him in those meetings, but I learned so much from Tom,” Belichick said. “I never played quarterback and I never saw the game through the quarterback’s eyes, I saw it through a coach’s eyes. What Tom would tell me that he saw and how he saw it, it was incredible how during the game he’d come off and I’d say ‘what happened on that play’ and he’d go through eight things that happened…and then you go back and look at the film and every one of those things happened in the exact sequence that he explained it to you on the field coming off. I’m like, ‘this guy sees everything.'”

  “We had a really good relationship, especially in the film room and talking football and all that, that I’ll always treasure. And I learned so much from him, because nobody sees the game better than Tom Brady sees it or saw it, and I was so lucky to learn from him and his vision that – no other coach will get that experience. It’s incredible.”

  Gray then got into Brady and Belichick’s legacies being “intertwined” with one another. “There’s nobody I’d rather be associated with,” Brady said. “From my standpoint, I think it’s always such a stupid conversation to say ‘Brady vs. Belichick’ because in my mind that’s not what partnerships are about. Coach couldn’t play quarterback and I couldn’t coach…I think it’s such a stupid – in my view it was just people always trying to pull us apart, and I don’t think we ever felt that with each other. We never were trying to pull each other apart, we actually were always trying to go in the same direction. I think when we were in New England for 20 years together, they get tired of writing the same story. So once they write all the nice things, championships, and this, they just start going ‘well this works, let’s start trying to divide them.'”

  “I never really appreciate those ways that people would try to do that. He and I always had a great relationship,” Brady added. “We met all the time. Did we always see everything exactly the same way? Who does in life? What close relationship can you have where everything goes like a bright, sunny day? No. There were moments that – it was never intolerable, it was always just I would say healthy debates about certain things. We always talked about them face to face. If there’s one thing I appreciate about Coach Belichick in life is he’s not afraid to have a hard conversation too.”

  “We didn’t always agree but we always respected each other,” Brady concluded. “I know he always respected me for the job that I did and I certainly did the same. And I think that when you go away from each other you respect each other probably that much more. I certainly did, because I realized the commitment he was trying to make to get our team to win.”

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  ATLANTA, GA – SEPTEMBER 29: Tom Brady #12 of the New England Patriots converses with head coach Bill Belichick during the game against the Atlanta Falcons at Georgia Dome on September 29, 2013 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)

• “The one thing about Tom that was always impressive is that he was always the target every week, he had the bullseye on his back every week, and every week he came through and delivered,” Belichick responded. “Tom always found a way to make his players productive. So it didn’t matter who the receiver, who the tight end was. He could understand what would make Rob [Gronkowski] more successful, what would make Troy Brown more successful, what could Wes Welker do? Not ‘what did I do with Troy that I want to do with Wes Welker’ but ‘how do I make Wes Welker successful?’ ‘How do I make Randy Moss successful?’ Those players were all great players but they were all very different, and they had different skills, and Tom could always bring out the best of their skills.”

  “I think of all the things that Tom was great at, which is a long, long list, his ability to make players around him better and more productive was ultimately his greatest skill,” Belichick concluded.

  In total, Brady and Belichick spoke for about half an hour. The full podcast can be heard here.

• Alex Barth is a writer and digital producer for 985TheSportsHub.com. Any opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of 98.5 The Sports Hub, Beasley Media Group, or any subsidiaries. Thoughts? Comments? Questions? Looking for a podcast guest? Let him know on Twitter @RealAlexBarth or via email at abarth@985TheSportsHub.com.