What Jameis Winston said when he finally got to meet Tom Brady
Jameis Winston has won a national championship and the Heisman Trophy, but he was positively giddy about the chance to meet Tom Brady.
Winston talked about the opportunity earlier in the week and Jim Nantz reported during the CBS broadcast that it did not happen on the field before their game Thursday night. The two quarterbacks did meet after the Patriots escaped with a 19-14 win against the Buccaneers in which neither quarterback played particularly well.
“I just said, ‘It was an honor.’ I told him thank you. A lot,” Winston told ESPN. “That’s a blessing, man, to meet someone like that. I dream to be able to be the type of quarterback he is for his team to our team.”
Winston and Brady took drastically paths to the NFL. Brady was famously a late-round pick after a largely unremarkable career at Michigan, while Winston was the best player in college football — and its top villain because of sexual assault allegations and immature stunts like yelling a vulgar phrase in the middle of campus and stealing crab legs.
The Bucs made him the No. 1 pick in the 2015 draft, and HBO chronicled his quest to bring the franchise back to Super Bowl contention this training camp on “Hard Knocks.”
The Buccaneers, now 2-2, were done in by Nick Folk missing three field goals in the close loss. Maybe meeting Brady will provide more education for Winston in his NFL development.
“Utmost respect for him,” Winston said. “He’s definitely an inspiration to me and the quarterback position, definitely. Like every young kid growing up with a football in their hand aspiring to be like Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Joe Montana — guys of that nature. It was a privilege and an honor to meet him, to look him in his eye, to shake his hand. It felt good. That was another highlight of my night.
“I hate that he beat me, but he beats a lot of people.”
Brady has been the starry-eyed kid meeting NFL legends before. Now it’s his turn to repay the favor.
“When I was young, I learned from the older guys,” Brady told ESPN. “And now that I’m older, I’m trying to learn from the young guys.
“He’s a great young player and he obviously led the team back tonight, and they were very close. He’s got a great future.”