Tom Brady played in more than 300 NFL games over a 23-year career. Seven ended with a Super Bowl ring—more than any player in league history—cementing his place as one of football’s greatest quarterbacks.
But the mindset that fueled his success had less to do with championships than preparation: He approached every game as if it could be his last—and every opportunity as one that might never come again.
In his first-ever commencement address this past weekend, Brady pointed to one of the bleakest moments of his career: Super Bowl 51 in 2017. Late in the third quarter, Brady’s New England Patriots trailed the Atlanta Falcons 28–3, with win probability models giving them just a 0.3% chance of victory. Most people would have folded under the pressure.
“When the odds are stacked against you, when you’re facing your own 28 to 3 moment—and believe me, it’s coming—you will have a choice to make: to quit or to fight your ass off,” Brady told graduates of Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business.
For Brady, the lesson extends far beyond football. The deck might feel stacked against your career, but defining opportunities might come without warning and may not come twice.
“Well, sometimes there isn’t another day. Super Bowl 51, there was no other day. That was it,” he said. “With a lot of the most important moments in your lives, when you have a chance to do something truly special, it’s going to be the same way. You may only get one chance to impress your boss or land a promotion. Or to close a deal or not. So what then?”
The answer, according to Brady, is preparation. Preparation that you won’t give up.
“You better have prepared yourself in advance to deal with the adversity you’re gonna face in order to give yourself the best chance to succeed,” Brady added.
And succeed Brady did. The Patriots went on to complete the largest comeback in Super Bowl history, defeating the Falcons 34–28 in overtime.
Brady grew up in San Mateo, California, and played football, basketball, and baseball in high school. And even after being recruited to play football at the University of Michigan, he wasn’t considered a surefire star. Unlike rival quarterback Peyton Manning—the No. 1 overall draft pick in 1998—Brady slid to the sixth round of the 2000 NFL draft, selected 199th overall.
That underdog mentality is especially relevant in the world of business—where success is far from guaranteed.
“History is littered with businesses—mature ones—that took their competition for granted, and then got disrupted by ambitious, young entrepreneurs,” Brady said to the business school graduates. “Do you guys remember Blockbuster? Kodak? Nokia? BlackBerry? I didn’t think so. Maybe some of your parents do. The point is, nothing is guaranteed.”
For the class of 2026, Brady acknowledged entering the workforce may feel intimidating. Competition is fierce, expectations are high, and the temptation to quit can feel easier than pushing through uncertainty.
“Where you choose to work might also seem too hard for you,” Brady said. “You’ll be up against a lot of people from equally great schools who are just as smart and talented as you, and they want it as much as you do. You’ll be asked to do things you’ve never done before. To work long hours, harder than you ever have, with people you might not like—like guys from Duke.”
What makes difficult moments feel impossible, the 48-year-old argued, is often what makes them transformative. The hardest environments can become the proving ground where people develop resilience, sharpen their skills, and learn to overcome self-doubt.
“And this is the key: You don’t quit and you don’t make excuses. Every hard choice is a brick in the path toward the life you want. But every excuse is a brick in the wall that will stand in your way.”
Today, Brady has an estimated net worth of $350 million—thanks in part to his time on the field, as well as his newfound career as a sports commentator and partner with companies like Delta Air Lines.
Across corporate America, many of the world’s most successful executives have echoed Brady’s message: resilience—not raw talent alone—is often what separates those who succeed from those who flame out.
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, has repeatedly argued that hard work is simply a rite of passage for ambitious professionals. At a time when younger workers are often stereotyped as quick to abandon jobs that feel difficult or unrewarding, Dimon said discomfort is part of the process.
“There’s going to be a grunt part to every part of a job. Get over it,” Dimon said at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, in January.
“Work hard. There’s no replacement,” he added. “I still see a lot of people who think they can make a shortcut to a heroic ‘something’. It’s almost never true.”
Likewise, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has argued that resilience is often forged through lowered expectations and discomfort. Speaking at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2024, Huang said one of the biggest disadvantages facing privileged graduates is expecting success to come too easily.
“People with very high expectations have very low resilience—and unfortunately, resilience matters in success,” Huang said. “One of my great advantages is that I have very low expectations.”
The same mindset extends to entrepreneurship. Before founding Amazon Jeff Bezos had a stable, high-paying job at a New York hedge fund when he considered launching an online bookstore—a risky bet in the early days of the internet. His boss reportedly encouraged him to think carefully, suggesting it might be the kind of idea better suited for someone without an established career to lose.
“It really was a difficult choice. But ultimately, I decided I had to give it a shot,” Bezos recalled to Princeton University graduates in 2010. “I didn’t think I’d regret trying and failing, and I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all.”
Fortune wants to hear from the class of 2026—how are you feeling entering the job market? What have you done to prepare? And what are you looking for as you enter the world of work? Email preston.fore@fortune.com.
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