TAMPA — Tom Brady believes the NFL season really begins after Thanksgiving, and the Bucs are still more than a week from that important date.But Brady said the next two games — against the Rams on Monday Night Football and versus the Chiefs on Nov. 29 — will go a long way in deciding whether they have a seat at the table for the playoffs."They are huge games,” Brady told Westwood One radio Monday. "Every one at this time of year is very important. It’s not that they’re not important early in the year, it’s just that things crystallize as you get closer to the end of the season and every game becomes more important because there are fewer of them. This one in particular, the Rams, this is a very difficult opponent.“... I’m happy we have the extra day to prepare. We’re playing at home and we’d like to go out there and play a lot better on prime time than we played ... when we got our butts kicked against the Saints.”The Bucs were blasted 38-3 by New Orleans on Monday Night Football Nov. 9 and are 1-2 in primetime television games this season.Brady was pleased by the way the Bucs rebounded at Carolina, beating the Panthers 46-23. Brady passed for 341 yards and three touchdowns while rushing for a score, and running back Ronald Jones rushed for a career-high 192 yards, including a 98-yard touchdown run.“RoJo had a great game. He broke off a 98-yard run, which was incredible,” Brady said. “When you can do that, you force them to defend all the throws. Intermediate, short, deep as well we the run game, in and outside. You’ve got to believe that’s going to be the best way to play the game on offense. I thought we did a good job of proving that yesterday.”Brady ran the length of the football field to celebrate with Jones in the end zone, a departure from his sometimes sullen sideline demeanor.“I guess my body language is pretty predictable,” Brady said. "My daughter says at times, she goes, ‘Daddy, you know you don’t have a very happy face out there very often.’ I said, ‘I’m going to try, (Vivian). I’m going to try to do a little bit better.'“I just felt just so excited for RoJo and for our offense. There’s not many runs that goes the distance. I’ve never been part of anything like that so I was pretty fired up. That’s probably the longest I’ve run on a football field ever so I was having a great time with that one.”The Bucs improved to 7-3, matching their win total from 2019. But the season hasn’t really started yet, according to Brady.“I’ve learned that football season always starts after Thanksgiving and we’re not quite there yet,” he said. “We got one more game to go and we’ll really see where we stand. This is when teams really start to rise to the occasion. This is where you see the commitment, the discipline, the hard work. This is where you really see how things pay off.”
![Rick Stroud - Bucs Reporter](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 50 50"/%3E "Rick Stroud - Bucs Reporter")