Bill Belichick Says Tom Brady Is So Competitive He Almost Died Playing Golf At Pebble Beach: He Was Standing ‘Literally on a G*ddamn Ledge’
New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick told a crazy story about how his former quarterback Tom Brady almost died during a round of golf at Pebble Beach.
On Wednesday, Brady announced his retirement from the NFL again — one year to the day when he announced his first retirement. On Monday, Brady hosted his Let’s Go! podcast for the first time since he announced his plans to call it a career. In the episode, many guests who impacted the seven-time Super Bowl champion’s life stopped by — most notably, the man he won six of those championships with, Bill Belichick.
As the head coach’s segment ended, Brady’s co-host Jim Gray asked Belichick if he wanted to give the newly retired quarterback any advice. Belichick, in response, brought up the time he says Brady almost met his demise at Pebble Beach.
“I think if I can sum up Tom Brady in one picture, it would be on the 6th hole where he drove the ball to the right,” Belichick said. “It looked like he was going to be; it looked like he was over the cliff when he teed off. It’s way to the right.”
The sixth hole at Pebble Beach Golf Links that the Patriots’ head coach talked about sits on a cliff with a massive drop-off, so in most cases, when a golfer hits a ball that way, it usually runs off the side of the cliff, and out of play. Brady decided to play the ball after he found it.
“We get down there, and he’s standing over the cliff, and he’s like, ‘I think I see it,’ and he takes his club down there, and he climbs over the cliff,” Belichick said. “I can only see like from about his shoulders up. Now it’s 200 feet down into the rocks, and there’s no way he survives this fall.”
“And I’m looking at the greatest quarterback, our star player, I mean, Tom Brady’s standing there literally on a Goddamn ledge, hitting the ball off the ledge up the hill to the sixth green,” Belichick said. “This is Tom Brady, number one super competitor, is trying to hit this impossible shot. Comes pretty close to honestly dying and landing in the God damn rock 200 feet below, all in the name of competition.”
During his playing career, Brady prided himself on his health and even started the TB12 Diet, so Belichick never doubted the quarterback’s health until that day at Pebble Beach.
“I was never more worried about Tom physically when I saw him standing on that ledge trying to hit, not trying, hitting the ball up to the sixth green at Pebble,” Belichick said. “With a 25-mile-an-hour wind, too, I mean, just to make it interesting.”
Brady put that incident at the top of the list of “dumb things” he has done in his life.
On Monday, Brady announced that he will not start at Fox Sports as their lead analyst until the fall of 2024. He signed a lucrative 10-year contract worth up to $375 million to broadcast games alongside play-by-play announcer Kevin Burkhardt, which was supposed to kick in the season after he retired.
Listen above via the Let’s Go! podcast.
