TAMPA – They collided near midfield, with the quarterback trapped in the linebacker’s inescapable embrace.

“Lavonte!” Tom Brady shouted. “Good job, honey! Nice work. Unbelievable.”

Lavonte David squeezed Brady as confetti fell after the Bucs’ 31-9 victory over the Chiefs in Super Bowl 55.

“That’s how you should take it, honey!” David said.

A similar scene will play out on Sunday, 190 weeks after Brady hoisted his final Lombardi Trophy. He will walk out of the Raymond James Stadium tunnel to a hero’s welcome, returning the prodigal son to his adoptive home of three years.

He greets former Bucs teammates and coaches as cameras focus on his face and fans chant his name. And, like so many of Brady’s 23 seasons in the NFL, this one ends with him in the Super Bowl.

“I just feel like he brought what we needed,” David said of Brady, who arrived in 2020 and led the Bucs to a championship in his first season. “At the time, our organization was trying to get over the hurdle. We’re trying to compete with the rest of the league when we had all the talent in the world.

“… And then when you bring in a guy like Tom who had been there and knows how to do it, even though we had the talent, it elevated the level of play of the talented guys that we had.”

For Brady, Sunday’s game against the Eagles will be the first Bucs game he has attended since they were defeated 31-14 by the Cowboys in an NFC wild-card game on Jan. 16, 2023. About two weeks later, Brady announced that he was retiring for the second and final time.

Another rookie

Now Brady is another newcomer, providing analytics for Fox’s top broadcast team with play-by-play man Kevin Burkhardt and serving the first season of a 10-year, $375 million contract.

Despite being the greatest quarterback of all time, Brady is not above criticism as a rookie broadcaster.

He took a year away from football to reconnect with his family and study for his new career, doing mock games with his new partner.

But in Week 1, when he called Dallas in Cleveland, Brady sounded like a man who is learning on the job. His delivery was a bit choppy and there were too many moments of dead air. The following week, Brady was more relaxed and showed improvement.

“In my experience watching, I thought he made a lot of progress between Week 1 and Week 2, just in terms of his comfort level, of his interaction with Kevin Burkhardt, of how he described the things he saw on television. field,” said Richard Deitsch, The Athletic’s sports media reporter.

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Sunday should be Brady’s best game, and not just because it’s his next game. Ten of his former teammates from the Bucs’ Super Bowl team are still playing, including Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, Tristan Wirfs, Vita Vea, Antoine Winfield Jr., Jordan Whitehead and Jamel Dean.

Brady knows them all incredibly well, as well as Bucs head coach Todd Bowles and his defense, which he faced every day in practice for three seasons.

But due to his upcoming bid to become part owner of the Raiders, Brady will not be allowed to attend in-person or online production meetings and may not have access to team facilities, players or coaches.

Of course, it’s not like he can’t just pick up the phone and call almost anyone in the NFL.

“I think it’s going to have to impact you a little bit, but the reality is Tom Brady has relationships around the league,” Deitsch said. “If Tom Brady wants to talk to CJ Stroud, he’ll get CJ Stroud. He doesn’t have to be in a hotel room with CJ Stroud on Saturday.

“But these meetings are important for the broadcasting team, because coaches sometimes give them insights that are really useful to them. It’s less about, “I’m going to tell you what they told me.” It’s more of a warning that this is going to happen. They know this information and are definitely better prepared.”

Extremely focused

No quarterback has ever been better prepared than Brady, and his arrival in Tampa Bay, along with tight end Rob Gronkowski, brought an increased attention to detail, propelling the Bucs to three straight playoff appearances and two division titles.

“Guys were more cooped up just because you knew with a guy like Tom you kind of had to do your best when you went out,” David said. “You didn’t want to let someone like him down.”

Expect Brady to be similarly focused on becoming the best NFL analyst in the business. He has seen the evolution of the game from the quarterback position like no other player. And because he played 23 seasons, many players at his position are retired.

“I think he’s pathologically obsessed with being great,” Deitsch said. “It doesn’t matter if you like his voice or think he’s this or that, the one thing you can’t say after watching the first three weeks is that he’s not prepared. Because he’s prepared over the top.

“And that’s a good sign, because the best people in the industry approach their jobs as if they have to be great this week to keep it, rather than, ‘This company should be lucky to have me.’ ”

The ‘Tom Brady Business’

In Brady’s case, the company is paying for more than just his commentary.

“The reason Fox did this is they wanted to be in the Tom Brady business, and with the Tom Brady business you can introduce Tom in a stadium to advertisers,” Deitsch said. “Tom pre-handles Fox’s activities to sell products to media buyers. It connects you to someone whose brand is really positive. … The way I would look at it is they’re more in the Tom Brady business than, ‘We hired Tom Brady as an analyst.’ ”

What’s interesting is that Brady is guaranteed to finish the season at Super Bowl 59 in New Orleans because Fox has the rights to the game this year. He played in 10 Super Bowls and won seven, but a game of that magnitude could make or break his broadcasting career.

“If Tom Brady had a very mediocre season and playoffs, but an incredible Super Bowl? That’s what you would remember if the broadcast was out of sight,” Deitsch said. “Nobody cares what happens in Game 3 or 4. It’s a very big problem. … That’s the play that matters most to these companies.

“It will be interesting, given how much success he had at Super Bowls, how he approaches it as a broadcaster.”

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