Tom Brady played in more than 300 NFL games over a 23-year career. Seven ended up with a Super Bowl ring — more than any player in league history — cementing their place among football’s greatest quarterbacks.
But the mindset that drove his success had less to do with titles and more to do with preparation: He approached every game as if it could be his last — and every opportunity as something he might never come back to.
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In his first commencement speech this month, Brady highlighted one of the most difficult moments in his career: Super Bowl 51, in 2017. At the end of the third quarter, the New England Patriots trailed the Atlanta Falcons 28-3, and probability models gave just a 0.3% chance of victory. Most people would have given in to the pressure.
“When everything seems to be against you, when you are facing your own 28-3 moment — and believe me, it will come — you will have a choice to make: give up or fight with everything you have,” Brady told the graduates of Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business.
For Brady, the lesson goes far beyond American football. It may seem like the cards are stacked against your career, but decisive opportunities can come without warning and may not come a second time.
“Well, sometimes there isn’t another day. In Super Bowl 51, there wasn’t another day. It was that opportunity and that was it,” he said. “In many of life’s most important moments, when you get the chance to do something really special, it happens the same way. You might just have one chance to impress your boss or get a promotion. Or close a deal—or not. So what?”
According to Brady, the answer is preparation. Preparation not to give up.
“It is better to have prepared yourself in advance to deal with the adversities you will face and thus increase your chances of success,” he added.
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And Brady was successful. The Patriots completed the biggest upset in Super Bowl history, defeating the Falcons 34-28 in overtime.
His net worth is US$350 million, but his success was far from guaranteed
Brady grew up in San Mateo, California and played football, basketball and baseball in high school.
Even after being recruited to play football at the University of Michigan, he wasn’t seen as a sure-fire star.
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Unlike rival quarterback Peyton Manning — first overall pick in the 1998 draft — Brady fell to the sixth round of the 2000 NFL draft, being chosen only in 199th position.
This underdog mentality is especially relevant in the business world — where success is far from guaranteed.
“History is full of companies — including established giants — that underestimated the competition and were then overtaken by young, ambitious entrepreneurs,” Brady told the business graduates.
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“Do you remember Blockbuster? Kodak? Nokia? BlackBerry? I didn’t think so. Maybe some of your parents do. The thing is: nothing is guaranteed.”
For the class of 2026, Brady acknowledged that entering the job market can seem intimidating. Competition is intense, expectations are high, and the temptation to give up can seem easier than moving forward amid uncertainty.
“Wherever you choose to work may also seem too difficult,” Brady said. “You’re going to be competing for space with a lot of people from schools that are just as good as yours, as smart and talented as you are, and who want this as much as you do. They’re going to be asked to do things they’ve never done before. To work long hours, harder than they’ve ever worked, with people they might not even like — like the people at Duke.”
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According to the former player, what makes difficult moments seem impossible is often exactly what makes them transformative. The most demanding environments can become the proving ground where people develop resilience, improve skills and learn to overcome their own insecurity.
“And here’s the bottom line: You don’t give up and you don’t make excuses. Every difficult choice is a brick on the path to the life you want. But every excuse is a brick in the wall that will block that path.”
Today, Brady has an estimated net worth of US$350 million — thanks, in part, to his career on the field and also to his new phase as a sports commentator and partner for companies like Delta Air Lines.
Jamie Dimon and Jeff Bezos highlight the importance of resilience to achieve success
Across corporate America, many of America’s most successful executives echo Brady’s message: Resilience—not just raw talent—is often what separates those who succeed from those who fall by the wayside.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has argued for years that hard work is practically a rite of passage for ambitious professionals.
At a time when younger workers are often stereotyped as people who quickly leave difficult or unrewarding jobs, Dimon said discomfort is part of the process.
“There will always be a heavy part to any job. Accept that,” Dimon said at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, in January.
“Work hard. There is no substitute for that,” he added. “I still see a lot of people thinking that there is a shortcut to achieving something great. It’s almost never true.”
Similarly, Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, argued that resilience is often built through lower expectations and discomfort. In a talk at the Stanford University School of Business in 2024, Huang said that one of the biggest disadvantages of privileged graduates is expecting success to come easily.
“People with very high expectations have very low resilience — and, unfortunately, resilience matters for success,” Huang said. “One of my biggest advantages is that I have very low expectations.”
The same mentality extends to entrepreneurship. Before founding Amazon, Jeff Bezos had a stable, high-paying job at a hedge fund in New York when he began considering opening an online bookstore — a risky bet in the early days of the internet.
According to reports, his boss encouraged him to think carefully, suggesting that this might be a better idea for someone who didn’t already have an established career to put on the line.
“It was a really difficult choice. But in the end, I decided I needed to try,” Bezos recalled to Princeton University graduates in 2010. “I didn’t think I would regret trying and failing, but I suspected I would be forever haunted by the decision to never have tried.”
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