Buccaneers' Tom Brady would rather lose than not play at all

It turns out there's at least one football-related thing Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady considers worse than losing games. 

"Look, losing is hard for all of us, but I’d rather lose and play than not play at all," Brady explained during this week's edition of his "Let’s Go!" SiriusXM show and podcast, as shared by Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk. 

"I love playing. I love competing. I love trying to be a little bit better every day. I love going out there with a sense of purpose to try to get better. And ultimately, I love trying to play at a championship level for my teammates. . . . And obviously there are challenges every year. Everybody has unique challenges, you know, on and off the field. You work as hard as you can with the circumstances that are presented before you. We’re just going to keep fighting ’til the end and we’ll be measured by, again, by what happens over the course of a long season." 

Brady offered his comments after the Buccaneers suffered a 23-17 overtime loss at the Cleveland Browns this past Sunday that dropped them to 5-6 on the season. Despite that disappointing record, Tampa Bay remains in first place in the NFC South standings, as the second-place Atlanta Falcons are 5-7. 

"It’s a tough situation to be in, have a losing record, but that’s our reality and we haven’t done anything to earn more than that," Brady added, per Jenna Lemoncelli of the New York Post. "And if you wanna win games, if you wanna win a fight, if you wanna win a golf match, if you want to win your Monopoly [game], you gotta earn it. No one’s gonna hand it to you. You gotta go out there every day and try to earn it through the process of improvement." 

There were whispers that Brady could retire for the second time in 2022 during the middle of the ongoing season because of the Buccaneers' woes and also due to off-the-field issues related to his divorce from Gisele Bündchen. Since Brady and Bündchen confirmed their split, however, the 45-year-old signal-caller has been linked with a return to the Buccaneers for another campaign and also with a possible offseason move to a contender such as the San Francisco 49ers.

For now, it seems the seven-time Super Bowl champion is concentrating only on the upcoming "Monday Night Football" matchup against the 4-8 New Orleans Saints held at Tampa Bay's Raymond James Stadium.