By Tom E. Curran
FOXBORO - During a recent OTA practice, Tom Brady was tinkering.
With a video camera trained on him from about 8 yards away, Brady threw to a coach standing next to the cameraman.
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Every so often, he'd beckon to offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels and exaggerate a position in his throw.
His lead foot. His knee (one of Brady's keys is to make sure his left leg is bent at release). His body tilt at his release point (Brady sometimes gets too bent to the left, causing the ball to come out a little high).
It was like watching Tiger Woods on the driving range.
For almost his entire quarterbacking life, Brady was mentored by Tom Martinez, a coaching legend in Northern California and a throwing guru.
Martinez passed away during the offseason and on Wednesday, his student discussed how his teaching still resonates in his head every time Brady focuses on his mechanics. Which is almost all the time.
"I had a great level of comfort with Tom over the years and he was always someone I could call on to rely on him," said Brady. "But I know hes watching down with every throw and I hear his voice in the back of my head after every throw. Throwing the football is about mechanics. Theres nothing special, its just a matter of doing it the right way and the better mechanically you are, the more accurate youre going to be able to throw the football. When youre not accurate, theres a reason for it."
Brady is as fundamentally sound as any quarterback that's played. From snap to throw, it's a clinic in moving economically and with precision.
"Its not like, Hey, you just have to throw the ball more accurately. Theres a reason, what are you doing?', Brady explained. "So Im constantly evaluating every throw. I watch every throw in practice, every rep that I take in practice I have someone film and I watch it after practice. I just make sure that Im continuing to work on the right things because ultimately when youre under pressure, your body is going to revert to what it knows.
"Muscle memory is a very important thing for a quarterback and hopefully you train your muscles to react the way you need them to react when the pressure is on the most," he continued. "That allows you to throw the ball with velocity and accuracy and the tougher the games get, the closer the coverage is and the more accurate you need to be."
One of the last times Brady worked with Martinez was during the Patriots bye week in the 2011 playoffs. Brady threw a record six touchdown passes against Denver soon after that session.
Though Martinez is gone, Brady has reference points from all their time spent together.
"Ive got to rely on what hes taught me over the years," he said. "Ive got a lot of stuff written down, of things that we talked about and things that Ive learned. I have a great understanding mechanically of what I need to be able to do, its just a matter of seeing it and being able to correct it. Hopefully you can correct it between series sometimes because you dont always have the fortune to wait until Monday to figure things outsometimes you have to figure them out in the middle of the third quarter. Thats something where Ill have to rely on everything hes taught me over the years."
Without Martinez watching every throw and breaking down games with Brady afterward, the 2012 season will be an interesting one for Brady. But, as he says, the information and teaching is all there. Now it's a matter of self-diagnosis.