One March morning, a man who had recently moved from Foxborough to the Tampa area took a leap of faith. This was before Tom Brady decided to sign with the Buccaneers.
“In anticipation of Brady’s signing with Tampa Bay,” Jack Clagg wrote in an email in March, “I bought 6 seats !!!”
The news was met with some skepticism among Jack’s four children. Would Brady really end up in Tampa or would they find themselves watching Jameis Winston from the seats near the 22-yard line on the Bucs sideline? It wouldn’t take long, however, for Jack’s impulse to prove prescient.
The Claggs would not be able to attend any of these seats this season – during the COVID-19 pandemic, Raymond James Stadium admitted a limited-capacity crowd of season ticket holders. But Brady’s move to the south started another chapter in his family’s unique connection to the highest QB of all time. Mark Clagg, Jack’s youngest son, was once Johnny Foxborough in real life.
That was the motivational tactic invoked by Bill Belichick with his quarterback during his 20-year marriage, which became well known among Brady’s teammates: During film reviews, the coach pulled a misstep that Brady had made and said : take Johnny Foxborough from the end of the street to make a better shot than this one. ”The year Brady and Belichick won their fifth Super Bowl together – and when SI wrote a story narrating that training device – Mark was that QB down the street, the captain and proprietor of Foxborough High.
Mark Clagg, with his coach Jack Martinelli a few years ago. And Tom Brady, with his trainer Bill Belichick, from a few years ago.
Courtesy of the Clagg family; USA Today Sports
The Claggs lived practically in the shadow of Gillette Stadium, and the twists and turns of the NFL neighborhood franchise served as a kind of marker for their own life events. In January 2002, the Patriots won the Tuck Rule Game, putting them on the road to their dynasty’s first Super Bowl victory. That game was also the last one that Jack watched with his wife, Nancy, who died in November of that year after a recurrence of breast cancer that she fought several years earlier. The seats that Nancy’s family had at the old Foxboro stadium moved to Gillette that fall, and her husband and children would continue to practice the Patriots fandom that she shared with them so fervently.
For Mark, who was born in 1998, Brady was the Patriots’ quarterback for most of his life. His sports model worked on the same street. You can imagine his surprise when he heard that he, Foxborough High’s QB, was being used to motivate Brady.
This created a great story that Mark would later tell his girlfriend’s parents when he met them – and at many subsequent dinner tables with them since – but there was a lesson in humility and a willingness to be trained hard that stayed with him. He started playing for the Salve Regina football team III in 2017, which was a big difference from his experience as a top athlete and son of the community in Foxborough. “It was not so easy to win the coach’s respect,” recalls Mark. “You had to be very humble and keep that advantage in your head in order not to lose confidence.”
After Mark left for college, Jack decided to move. He was tired of the New England winters, and the automotive group of which he was general manager had just started an operation in Florida. A year later, Mark joined him. He was buried in the depth chart and decided to move from football to concentrate on his studies. He moved to the University of South Florida, where he is studying finance, and he and his father now live as close to Raymond James as they once did to Gillette. It was the perfect time for a new start – for them and for Brady.
Mark has gotten used to the response from people he knows in the Tampa area, when he says he’s from Foxborough: “Oh, that’s where the Patriots play.” If they really start talking, sometimes he will tell the story of Johnny Foxborough, or how, a week before the Super Bowl LI in Houston, Robert Kraft invited him to Gillette Stadium. Kraft showed Mark the trophy room, which had four Lombardis, and Mark told the team owner that he would need a bigger table. Kraft laughed and replied: “I didn’t think about it. The team was still in the field of practice during his visit – no doubt trying to exceed Johnny Foxborough’s standard – but Clagg found Rob Gronkowski, who was then on the injured reserve, in the locker room. “Wait until Tom knows that Johnny Foxborough is here!” Gronkowski chuckled.
Much has changed since then. The Patriots added two more trophies. Brady and Gronkowski are now in Tampa, going to a Super Bowl with a different team. And Bruce Arians, who told NBC Sports that he allows Brady to be a coach, unlike New England, is probably not invoking Johnny Foxborough. It occurred to Clagg that he was one of the last Johnny Foxboroughs – he thinks Foxborough High had only two other starting QBs before Brady left.
“Brady was everything I knew while growing up,” he says. “Watching him go was like the spirit of the Patriots leaving.”
The Claggs still pull the Patriots – and stay in the seats that Nancy’s family has had since the 1970s – but “Tom has been a constant for our family,” explains Jack. So now they are fans of Bucs and have seen him bring that spirit to his new city. Some friends informed Jack that after Brady signed, Bucs’ phone lines were jammed for hours while trying to order tickets. Your guess was worth it. Over the years, good-natured brothers argued over who could use the family’s two Patriots tickets, so Jack made a point of buying six Bucs seats. They hope the stadium will be able to safely return to full capacity this fall, so that everyone can go together to watch Brady next season, and maybe the next season, and maybe another …
The Clagg family, now in Florida.
Courtesy of Jack Clagg
Mark is 22 now, and although he once sought to follow Brady’s example as an athlete, he is now focused on the lessons he can apply to his future business career.
“Since I’ve been out of sports for three years, I haven’t really competed,” says Mark. “So, now I’m looking more at Brady to see how he leads and trying to implement it in my life and take it forward in whatever I choose to do in my career. He’s a very charismatic leader and leads by example, and you can say that everyone on that team admired him and knew that a guy’s energy could change the whole result of an entire season. The Buccaneers had been a franchise lost for a while. Seeing them do a full 180 just because he joined the team is a factor in their leadership ”.
Mark recently bought a red No. 12 Bucs shirt that he will wear at the Super Bowl on Sunday, but he is planning to buy a Super Bowl shirt as well. “Just to have it,” he says – but it means something more than that. Johnny Foxborough was once a reference for Brady, and Brady’s career in the NFL remains a reference for Johnny Foxborough in real life.