For those of you who don’t like change, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady likes it less. Especially when talking about his shoulder pads. On Wednesday, we learned that Brady has been wearing the same set of shoulder pads since his first year at Michigan. Indeed, that’s his freshman year at Michigan. Now, stop and think about what you were doing in 1995.
For one, Brady’s reasoning is simple.
“Once you find something you like, you stick with it,” Brady said.
Fair enough. Moreover, this cool little story about things we never knew comes to us from Mike Reiss who cover the Patriots for ESPN.
ESPN NFL Nation reporters highlight some of the best rituals and superstitions from each team (https://t.co/kp8Y4Zks0C). For the Patriots, I wrote about Tom Brady's shoulder pads, which he's worn since his first year at Michigan in 1995. https://t.co/aq0Una2oJs
— Mike Reiss (@MikeReiss) October 2, 2019
Within the story, Reiss took the time to talk to Brady’s former equipment manager. This snippet from the story is important.
Brady said he has experimented with other shoulder pads, but has always come back to what he wore at Michigan, mainly because he has gotten used to the shape and feel.
“It becomes a personal thing and you never want to mess with that. So as long as they’re happy, I’m happy,” said Falk, who retired as equipment manager in 2013 but has returned to the school as a special assistant to coach Jim Harbaugh. “Quarterbacks always want to get their arms up, so we had to get special caps on their shoulder pads, and special epaulets. They were smaller, so you could raise your arm up and the flexibility was just unbelievable.”
Equally important, Brady likes these shoulder pads because despite their age; they allow for greater range of motion and raising of his arms. Of course, it says within the article that the pads are checked and cleaned every year. Therefore they’re not quite the cobweb set you picture like the ones your older brother kept hanging on the basement wall during childhood.
Finally, the model of pads that Brady has made famous today are known as ‘Douglas 25L’. A fun fact is Brady was wearing the shoulder pads before five of his current teammates were born. Tell me that this story isn’t insanely cool for several reasons – and that we can’t learn something new about a guy as famous as Brady each day.
