Tom Brady: Buccaneers 'learned a lot from' loss to Bears last season

Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady was able to joke during the team's summer visit to the White House about how he infamously forgot the down in the closing seconds of what became a prime-time loss to the Chicago Bears during the 2020 NFL season. 

"We had a game in Chicago where I forgot what down it was," Brady said at that time. "I lost track of one down in 21 years of playing, and they started calling me 'Sleepy Tom.' Why they do that to me?''

The seven-time Super Bowl champion had more of a "game face" on when speaking with reporters Thursday ahead of this Sunday's home matchup against Chicago. 

"It seems like a long time ago, but actually it wasn’t that long ago," Brady explained, per Michael David Smith of Pro Football Talk. "That hasn’t happened very often in my career, but for some reason that happened at that moment. That was a tough loss, and I think we learned a lot from that loss last year. There was a lot of self-inflicted issues, there was a lot of penalties, there was a lot of miscommunication, there was a lot that wasn’t clean. We had a chance to win the game in two minute by going down and kicking the field goal, and we didn’t get the job done." 

This edition of Buccaneers-Bears will be memorable for at least one reason, as it will set an NFL record for the largest age gap between starting quarterbacks in the history of the league. 

Brady may break that mark in January, but such discussions can wait until then.