Tom Brady knows a thing or two about criticism.
The retired NFL great spent the majority of his career under New England Patriots legend Bill Belichick, a coach renowned for being incredibly blunt and straight-talking.
Belichick was famous for his tough love approach to Brady and often ripped him during Patriots’ film sessions.
It obviously worked on the naturally thick-skinned Brady, who took Belichick’s criticism on the chin and won six Super Bowls with him and one more in Tampa Bay.
The 47-year-old Brady has always been an advocate of the old school way of thinking where facing up to criticism is part and parcel of NFL life.
“If the coach was gonna be hard on me, I was gonna accept the difficult coaching, because I need to hear it,” Brady told the Pat McAfee Show back in January. “It motivated me.
“That is what accountability looks like. You can’t have your ego so big that any criticism is gonna lessen your confidence.”
“You better be tough at that point [reaching a Super Bowl],” he went on.
“You better not go in there with a weak attitude. You gotta go in there embrace the challenge, embrace the opportunity. You’re going to be tested and if your coach tests you and your teammates test you then you can go and beat your competition.”
It’s a philosophy that may have helped Tua Tagovailoa during his early years in the league, when former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores essentially drained the quarterback of all his confidence with his brutal honesty.
The 26-year-old, who recently signed a four-year, $212.4 million deal, told ‘The Dan LeBatard Show’ this week that his first two seasons in the NFL (2020-21) were incredibly difficult because he was constantly beaten down by Flores’ criticism.
“To put it in simplest terms, if you woke up every morning and I told you [that] you suck at what you did, that you don’t belong doing what you do, that you shouldn’t be here, that this guy should be here, that you haven’t earned this right, and then you have somebody else come in and tell you, ‘Dude, you are the best fit for this,'” Tagovailoa said in the interview.
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“How would it make you feel listening to one or the other, you see what I’m saying.
“And then you hear it, no matter what it is, the good or the bad, you hear it more and more, you start to believe that.
Flores spent 11 seasons in New England working under Belichick before being hired as the Dolphins head coach in 2019, so it’s pretty clear where he learned many of his coaching cues from.
Tua was selected by Miami fifth overall in 2020 and endured a tumultuous two-year relationship with Flores who benched him for Ryan Fitzpatrick and was fixated on trading for Deshaun Watson.
Tagovailoa was eventually promoted to QB1 but even then it was slog to continually prove himself to Flores.
Brady could clearly handle the tough love approach as it brought out the best of him. But it had the opposite effect on Tua who instead went inside himself.
“I don’t care who you are. You could be the president of the United States, you have a terrible person telling you things that you don’t want to hear or probably shouldn’t be hearing, you’re going to start believing that about yourself,” Tua continued.
“And so that’s what sort of ended up happening. It was, it’s basically been what two years of training that out of not just me but a couple of guys as well that have been here my rookie year all the way until now.”
Mike McDaniel took over as head coach in 2021 after Flores was fired.
41-year-old McDaniel has proved to be a polar opposite to Flores and instead of outright critique opted for positive reinforcement and arm-around-the-shoulder coaching.
It’s a style that’s been hugely positive on Tua, who became the Dolphins’ primary starter in 2021 and led the league in passer rating in 2022.
He followed that up with a Pro Bowl campaign in 2023 that saw him throw a career-high 29 touchdowns and a league-leading 4,624 yards – with Jaylen Waddle and Tyreek Hill giving him an electric presence downfield.
He was rewarded with a new contract this offseason that will pay him more than $53 million per year in new money.
“There’s been a lot of growth between Year 2 and then going on to Year 5 now,” Tagovailoa said, saying that he didn’t think he was “mature” enough when he was a rookie to be as blunt as he is now.
“I’m not the same person I was last year,” he added.
Flores, meanwhile, returned to assistant coaching in 2023 when he became the defensive coordinator of the Minnesota Vikings.