Retired Buccaneers Coach Shares Inside View Of Tom Brady Divorce, Says QB Was Blindsided

Buccaneers Coach Clyde Christensen talks to Tom Brady

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Back during when quarterback Tom Brady decided to take a 11 day leave of absence right in the middle of Tampa Bay Buccaneers training camp, very few people knew exactly what was happening.

All most people knew was that Brady “looked miserable” and frustrated.

Then, when he returned to Bucs training camp, Tom Brady looked like he’d lost a bunch of weight as his face appeared rather gaunt at a couple of press conferences.

Now, we know that Tom Brady was going through the finalization of his divorce from his wife Gisele Bundchen and dealing with the stress of the financial issues caused by the FTX scandal.

Brady reportedly lost 15 pounds during the season while dealing with those issues on top of being a 45-year-old quarterback in the NFL.

One of the people who had a front row seat to all of the Tom Brady divorce drama was now-retired Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterbacks coach Clyde Christensen.

“To watch Tom have to leave training camp for 11 days to take care of some personal problems, it was heartbreaking stuff,” Christensen told the Tampa Bay Times this week. “A divorce. Worrying about his kids. Hard stuff. But then you’re still expected to do your job when you get back. No one cares. And you’ve got a team. You have everyone depending on you. The show goes on.”

Christensen said Brady was somewhat blindsided a few days into training camp when he learned his wife, Gisele Bündchen, had decided to end their marriage of more than 13 years. Brady took off for “personal reasons” on his birthday. The next week, Bowles announced that Brady would be away from the club until sometime after the second preseason game.

“Yeah, I worried about him,” Christensen said. “He lost that weight. It was very stressful. And he battled and he hurt, but he put on the brave face and did it again. You’ve got a bunch of folks depending on you. I have an unbelievable respect for what Tom did this year. Off-the-charts amount of respect for him just managing things.”

Even with all that was going on in his life, Christensen said Tom Brady, even at 45, was still magical on the field.

“There’s not one practice I watched that I didn’t go tell somebody, ‘How does a guy that age throw a football like that at 45?’ It’s a Picasso,” he said, adding, “It’s amazing to watch Tom Brady, in the middle of going through all those tough times, somehow keep it in the lane and get to the playoffs and win a division. People don’t see that side of it. Wins and losses are really, really important, but it’s a much bigger picture than that.”