Tom Brady’s legacy is set. No matter what happens for the rest of his career, he’ll go down as one of the best quarterbacks (or possibly the single best quarterback) of all time. Until he retires, though, Brady’s job is as a starting quarterback in the NFL. Some fans may speculate about the jobs he held before he became a six-time Super Bowl winner. In a recent interview, Tom Brady gave some more insight into his pre-NFL life. He held one job that may have helped him later become an NFL QB. 

Tom Brady’s current career

There’s no questioning Brady’s level of success. Though he may be closer to the end of his career than the beginning, he’s still playing quarterback in the NFL at a high level. Tom Brady has won more Super Bowls than any other quarterback in history, with six. And he’s attempting to prove his doubters wrong yet again, leaving the New England Patriots as a free agent to play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. 

He has also become something of a lifestyle expert. His TB12 brand helps encourage and motivate people to adopt better dietary and exercise habits. In short, Tom Brady is a modern Renaissance man who excels in pretty much anything he does. What’s interesting is that a strong foundation from his younger years supports his current success. 

What was his job in college? 

Tom Brady recently appeared on Dax Shepard’s podcast, Armchair Expert. He talked a lot about his career, but he also spoke about where he began. He discussed jobs he held when he was in college and even before that. Brady said that when he was at the University of Michigan, he had a job he didn’t really care for: 

“In college, I worked in cleaning industrial manufacturing plants in Michigan, Bloomfield Hills. I was scrubbing ceilings, and I kept thinking at the end of the day my shoulders were done, my elbows, thinking, This is the worst job I’ve ever imagined.”

How his job as a paperboy helped prepare him for NFL greatness

Though Tom Brady’s college job left him cold, he loved his childhood job: a paper route. He told Shepard he enjoyed the gig and even had some help from one of his parents: 

“I had a couple really great jobs. My first job was a paper route … In elementary school and then sorta high school, I had a paper route. I made 25 bucks a month. I was actually talking about that with one of my coaches yesterday because we were talking about our first jobs. I think it was my job and my mom’s job too. She would drive me around, and I would throw the papers out of the side of the car. She helped me a little bit.”

Tom Brady also noted that the throwing element of the job helped him get ready for playing NFL quarterback, even if he didn’t know at the time that’s what his future held: 

“I didn’t realize it was maybe career training … We had one of those vans where the side door slid open, so I could literally ride sidecar, then like fire them over the top of the car to get to the other side of the street. In high school, I didn’t do as much because I was playing a lot of sports.”

Brady stopped his paper route in high school to focus on football, but his future may have already been set by then. Surely, the hard work he put in after that helped as well. But the throwing practice and the work ethic required to star as an NFL QB definitely began when Tom Brady started that paper route.