TAMPA, Fla. — Father time is undefeated, but it hasn't defeated Tom Brady.
At least, not yet.
On Sunday, the age-defying 43-year-old leads the Tampa Bay Buccaneers into Super Bowl LV against the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs.
It will be Brady's 10th Super Bowl appearance -- an NFL record. Win or lose, he still has six Super Bowl rings glimmering at home, the most in NFL history.
If you're still arguing Brady isn't the greatest football player of all time, re-read the last three sentences.
While much of Brady's success is a result of insane discipline and routine, there have been key people along the way to constantly get him a cut above.
One of those men is Brady's throwing coach Tom House.
"You might laugh, but I think of myself as the Forrest Gump of sports," joked House. "I just happen to stumble into places where good things happen."
In 1974, House was standing in the Atlanta Braves left-field bullpen when his teammate Hank Aaron belted his 715th home run to pass Babe Ruth for most all-time.
The ball landed in House's glove.
Fans ran onto the field to congratulate Hammerin' Hank as he rounded second base.
Meanwhile, House sprinted from left field to home plate to give Aaron the ball.
"Catching his home run was the highlight of my major league career," House asserted.
House was a middling pitcher in the big leagues but found great success as a coach.
Fifteen years after catching Hank Aaron's iconic home run, House became the pitching coach for the Texas Rangers when he crossed paths with another Hall of Famer.
Nolan Ryan.
"I was very fortunate to have a pitching coach by the name of Tom House," Ryan said in his Baseball Hall of Fame speech in 1999.
When Ryan joined the Rangers, he was expected to last one season to close out his career.
He lasted five.
And according to Ryan, he "was in the best shape of his career" because of House.
"Tom is a coach who is always on the cutting edge," Ryan noted.
Thanks to House's unorthodox training methods (at the time), Ryan defied expectations for a pitcher in his 40's.
"I hit the crease between old school and new school," House explained. "We had science. We had some new things. We threw footballs. We did towel drills. We lifted weights."
While some coaches rely on the eye test, House relies on motion analysis technology. He favors real data, which shows that even the world's greatest athletes have microscopic inefficiencies.
If you've ever met a pro athlete -- especially the elite ones -- they're always looking for any way they can improve to be the best version of themselves.
"They try to get better at anything they can get better at," House said. "Even [Tom] Brady, today, is hungry for that 1%."
Recently, House helped found Mustard, it's an app-based company that makes his data and analysis universally accessible to coaches and athletes who want to improve their mechanics.
House holds a pair of degrees from the University of Southern California and a Ph.D. in sport psychology from Alliant International University.
The now 73-year-old went all-in on the new wave of technology, so he moved back to SoCal in the 90s and set up shop as a coach and consultant for athletes of all types.
He mortgaged his house to pay for the equipment.
In the early 2000s, a young NFL quarterback walked through Tom's door.
Drew Brees.
The former San Diego Chargers and New Orleans Saints star came to House to be his throwing coach.
Soon after, another future Hall of Famer did, too.
Tom Brady.
The undisputed greatest player in football history turned to Tom House for help.
And House has done for Brady what he did for Nolan Ryan -- preserve the right arm and fine-tune it into a lethal weapon.
"It's very humbling, but I'd much rather live in the shadows," House said of all the attention he's received over the last month, following Hank Aaron's death and Tom Brady's return to the Super Bowl. "I have no idea how these guys do it."
House wears modesty with the same charm as his slightly weathered mustache.
The same fella who's repped by baseball mega-agent Scott Boras and is longtime friends with Dr. James Andrews.
"I'll be forever grateful to have been a Forrest Gump type of guy when all the good stuff happened," House smiled.
On Sunday, House will watch his most famous client plant his lead foot, torque his body, take a figurative bite of a sandwich with his left hand and drop dimes all over the football field.
Father time hasn't defeated Tom Brady.
Tom House is a big reason why.
