Mayfield revealed during a podcast appearance that the Buccaneers were "pretty stressed out" and "weren’t having as much fun" when Brady was on the team from 2020 through 2022.

"I thought stressful was not having Super Bowl rings," Brady said. "There was a mindset of a champion that I took to work every day."

He studied the Philadelphia Eagles defense in the dark, the only illumination coming from the monitor of his Microsoft Surface computer. His wife, Emily, and 5-month-old daughter, Kova Jade, lay asleep next to him in a hotel room at the Renaissance International Plaza hotel.