Tom Brady is not about to make excuses for some of the miscues in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ overtime loss to the Cleveland Browns on Sunday, which dropped the team below .500.
Brady was 29-for-43 with 246 passing yards and two touchdown passes – one to Chris Godwin and the other to Ko Kieft. He had a chance to give the Buccaneers the lead or the win in overtime, but the team failed to muster up any points. All it took was a long Nick Chubb run to help set up the game-winning score.
In the latest episode of the "Let’s Go!" podcast Monday, Brady told legendary sportscaster Jim Gray he had not slept well after the loss.
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"Been obviously a long night. I have not slept great, as you can only imagine," Brady said. "And I think one important thing we talked about today was just a 24-hour rule in sports – when things don't go your way and you don't win the game, deal with it for 24 hours and then move on.
"I'm just about to that 24-hour mark and after that I'll start thinking about what this week is about to bring. It was a tough loss for our team. We did a lot of good things and obviously there were plenty of things we did poorly. And ultimately it just leads to a very difficult road loss. No one can afford road losses this time of the year. We certainly can't. But we're gonna keep fighting our tails off like we have all season."
Brady and Gray talked about the lack of consistency with the offense. While the defense is top 10 in points and yards allowed, the offense is only 27th in points scored and 18th in yards gained.
"Well, I think it's a consistency for, you know, so many positive plays and then undone by kind of untimely mistakes by our team. And it's not one player, it's not one position," Brady said. "Football's the ultimate team sport and I've always believed as a leader you always take the blame and you always give the credit. And that's just, I always feel like that because really that's what leadership is all about. I always look at what I need to do better.
"I had a chance to hit Mike [Evans] down the sideline in overtime to win the game and I didn't get it done. … You can give in to the outside noise and everyone telling you, ‘Oh, it's not your fault, it's someone else's fault.’ I think that's BS. It is your fault when you lose and you take it personally when you lose. And you shouldn't sleep at night when you lose. And you should only think about what you need to do to help the team more. And that's what I lay in bed at night after games thinking about. It's a tough situation to be in, have a losing record, but that's our reality and we haven't done anything to earn more than that. And if you wanna win games, if you wanna win a fight, if you wanna win a golf match, if you want to win your Monopoly [game], you gotta earn it. No one's gonna hand it to you. You gotta go out there every day and try to earn it through the process of improvement."
When asked about whether everyone shares the same responsibility in the loss, Brady was "absolutely" sure his teammates felt the same as him.
The Bucs are 5-6 and enter a key divisional game Monday night against the New Orleans Saints.
