Bucs Assistant Tom Moore Details Tom Brady’s Post-Divorce Struggles In New Book

Longtime NFL assistant Tom Moore has a book coming out on Sept. 3, which recounts a 46-year NFL coaching career that continues to this day.

The 85-year-old offensive assistant for the Buccaneers is best known for coaching Peyton Manning, but he also spent three years with Tom Brady in Tampa Bay from 2020-2022.

In The Players’ Coach, Moore recounts how taxing the 2022 season was on Brady, who was in the midst of a high-profile divorce from Gisele Bundchen.

“I was very worried about him,” Moore says in the book. “He was losing weight. I think he lost about twenty pounds. His face was drawn. … Football is a tough business, and even tougher when you have family strife. There wasn’t anywhere Tom could really be happy and where things were going well.”

The Buccaneers won their first two games that season but then lost five of six, including a pair to the Panthers and Ravens within a four-day stretch.

Moore remembers a jarring image of Brady in wake of the 27-22 loss to Baltimore on October 22, 2022.

“Everything was coming to a head,” Moore says in the book. “We didn’t know it at the time, but the next day his divorce would be announced in a joint statement. Brady sat facing his locker in full uniform with his head between his legs for about twenty minutes after the Ravens game. He didn’t move. He didn’t acknowledge anything being said to him by Blaine Gabbert, our backup quarterback, who tried to console him.”

Moore believes a lesser person would have thrown in the towel.

“Tom did a fantastic job of functioning at all,” Moore said. “A lot of guys would be knocked to the ground. You’d have to be a Tom Brady-type guy to do what he did that year. All of a sudden, you’re going home to an empty house. Every day you pick up the paper and they’re writing about you and Gisele. You might not read it, but you know the whole world is reading it. It was tough.”

The Buccaneers lost to the Cowboys in the wild card round that January, which was the last time Brady stepped on the field as a player.

“Tom’s parents were waiting for him in the tunnel as we walked off the field,” Moore said. “For all that he had been through, he had every reason to hold his head high. One year to the day after he announced his first retirement, he retired again. This time, I had a feeling it was for good.”