Tom Brady Revealed That a Play Peyton Manning Taught Him Helped Turn Rob Gronkowski into a Hall of Fame Tight End

Via NESN:

As we learned during the “NFL 100 All-Time Team” finale, Brady years ago made a trip out to Tennessee for an offseason meeting with Peyton Manning. Brady learned quite a bit from his longtime adversary, and one specific lesson he brought back to Foxboro helped produce the legend that is Gronk.

“They had a protection, the counter hot protection. It was basically a trap pass,” Brady said on NFL Network. “Sometimes they would pull the front-side guard, sometimes they’d pull the center and sometimes they’d pull the off-side guard. They would run a play-action and they would throw a couple combinations off it. Well, after this meeting I had with him (Manning) down in Tennessee, I came back — Bill O’Brien was the coordinator — and I said, ‘Billy, we got to put this protection in.’ It was the lockout year, we ended up putting this protection in and I swear to God, off of that action we do a lot things. We absolutely call that protection at least one or two times a game against them and Rob Gronkowski has probably 50 percent of his offensive production on that play.

“So to use that play against him (Manning) as well as to have basically Rob become a dominant player in the league off of that particular play is thanks to Peyton Manning.”

Yes, @tombrady got and emulated something from Peyton Manning and used it to help make ⁦@RobGronkowski⁩ a Hall of Famer and win a ton of games for @patriots

Amazing story. pic.twitter.com/NBJhFcEhFo

— Rich Eisen (@richeisen) December 28, 2019