New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is a very busy man—which makes his new UGG For Men campaign with Jeff Bridges that much more hilarious. In the ad, the quarterback is taking a light snooze to the soothing sounds of Bridges on the guitar…until the iconic actor suddenly amps up the volume, nearly scaring the UGGs off Brady’s feet. The campaign came about after Brady posted a photo of himself watching football on his couch during some must-deserved R&R time at home, but the irony, of course, is that he rarely gets to have those quiet moments.
Brady sat down with DuJour to talk about what he does when he doesn’t have to do anything at all, what he loves about his fans and the one place where he can find a moment to relax each day.
How did your relationship with UGG For Men start?
It’s been six years, so we’ve been working together for a long time. I’ve always been a fan of the brand. I grew up in California and that’s kind of where it started, in Santa Barbara, but I grew up in Northern California. I remember my mom got me my first pair of UGGs when I was in high school, and then I brought them to college in Michigan, so it was pretty cool how it ended up working out.
What’s your perfect ‘Do Nothing’ day?
Oh man, perfect do nothing weekend! It’s hard to do nothing, but it’s so important too. I was talking with a friend the other day and he said, ‘You don’t really want to be overwhelmed but you also don’t want to be underutilized,’ and it’s such the right balance. If you’re going to work really hard, you’ve got to find ways to really relax and do nothing, and I think that’s where this campaign really started and stemmed from.
On your busiest days, how do you find a zen moment and relax after you’re really wound up from doing so much for so long?
That’s a good question—it’s a challenging thing for everybody. Sometimes you don’t have, in a day, those moments. I actually have a car ride home that’s always pretty important for me at the end of the day. I’m going pretty hard from the moment I get up in the morning and I feel like I’m always in my job—part of your role on Sunday is to go out and play a good game, but it’s also over the course of the week keeping everyone going and enthusiastic. To be a good leader you really can’t have a down day, so you always have to put out a lot of energy. So on the car ride home, whether it’s listening to music or just having some quiet time, I like to sit in the car before I walk in my door to my kids, just to take a deep breath and think, okay, this is going to be a little more energy output. For parents, or just for everybody who works hard, I think it’s a little challenging to find that right balance, but you gotta work for it. And some days it’s better than others, some weeks are better than others, and some months better than others, but you definitely have to find time to relax and enjoy these moments. If you’re just going to go, go, go, you’ll crash at some point.
Do you have any do-nothing family days?
Yeah, with kids, man, they do everything! [Laughs.] So you’re like an observer to all those moments. But there are definitely times where you have to have nights where you’re finding times for yourself, just to mellow out and rest and do nothing.
Can you ever imagine yourself retired and not doing a million things a day?
That’s tough right now, because I’m in the mode of doing so many things. But I’m really blessed to love what I do, so it never feels like work for me. And then being with my kids and my family, I love that, I have such great friends and support for what I’m doing, and so many people love coming to games and they love to talk about sports and football, and I get to travel a lot. I’m very blessed.
It seems like you’re close to Julian Edelman (who will also star in an UGG For Men campaign video) off the field, does it help you on the field to have such respect for the people you actually work with day-to-day?
Absolutely—because it’s all about trust. Ultimately, I find that my sport is about trusting the people that you work with, believing in each other. You have to trust that they’re going to work as hard as you’re going to work, and that you believe in them and they believe in you. You have to work at that on the practice field, but a lot of the time you work on that when you’re out to dinner or spending time in off-season, because you need to develop that chemistry. You’ve got to look at the other person that you work with and know that they’ve got your back, and that you’ve got their back, and that’s how teams work. It’s cool that [Edelman] was a part of this [campaign], it was such an easy day for me because he’s doing all the work so I got to sit back and watch! But I think he really enjoyed it and it was fun having him out there.
What do you love most about New England sports fans?
Wow. Well, they’re into it every week. And I think they have really high expectations, and that’s a great thing because you want to do your best every week too. I’ve learned a lot over the past few years about being a fan and watching, because I went to more events than I’d even been to before, and I always tell my teammates, you go to see a great movie and you pick your favorite actor to go watch, you invest your time into seeing that movie. You don’t want to walk out two and a half hours later and go, man that movie sucked! You want to walk out blown away by what you saw. And I say: that’s us! You go to a concert and you go to watch U2 or Coldplay and you go, that was unbelievable! So I say: that’s us! This is what [fans] are spending their hard-earned money on. They’re taking their kids, saving up all year, to come to one game that we play. You want them walking out of the stadium going, they were awesome! That was just what we expected! So I think that’s a good perspective to have. We’re in sports, but it’s also entertainment. People are investing their time and hard-earned money to come watch us play, and you want to give them the best that you’ve got because that’s what they deserve. So that’s kind of the commitment that the fans make, and that’s the commitment that I make as an athlete to try and give back to them.
