Below is a full transcript from Tom Brady’s interview with Dennis & Callahan Wednesday morning. To listen, click here.

How are you feeling?

After a few months off I’m feeling great. I think over the years you find different ways to train and get work on your body and so forth, so I’m feeling really good. Every day that goes by gets you one day closer to football season, so I’m feeling pretty excited about that.

Tom, can you talk about the process of reconciling your new life as a father and a husband and your old life as just a football player?

There is a lot to that question. It is something that is tough for me because part of being a great player, quarterback and leader is participating. There is obviously a conflict when I’m not able to be who I once was, which was being here pretty much for every workout. Now I’m here for significantly less than that. But I have a son who lives out in LA, so I don’t think I’ll ever regret spending the time with him. He was born in August of 2007 and I didn’t get to see him much for the first six months of his life, so there is some months there in the offseason that is a really important time for me. You aren’t going to remember much of it, but I sure will. I’m still doing what I need to do to be ready. There is no doubt about that. It’s not that I’m not here working out so I’m not working out period. I’m still working out, preparing and I’m always in contact with my coaches and teammates and so forth. And then I do come back and work on throwing the football with those guys. It’s not as easy as an hour flight coming from the West Coast to the East Coast. I’ve tried to do it, but you can really work out well in both places. It is hard to do that every week because you can really wear yourself down, which is not what you are trying to do in the offseason.

Is it difficult in your new life, traveling everywhere, to get the work in that you need to get in?

The times this offseason that my wife has had to work, whether it was Brazil where she worked for two weeks or Paris, it is actually pretty nice because I have had the whole day to myself. So I’m working out two sometimes three times a day. I’ve never minded working out, thank god for that. Because that’s what we do as athletes. So when she is working all day it actually gives me a lot of time to do exactly what we need. I always find that whenever we travel I do work out and do what I need to do. There is plenty for me to do and I’m always finding ways to do it.

Do you grab some waiter out of the local cafe to throw with?

Not as much throwing. That is the one thing when you travel that you can’t do much of. These little French guys, I don’t think they know what football is.

They all look like Wes Welker, and we hear you are throwing to him. Can you give us Welker’s status?

He does a little of both. He does whatever he can do. I love being with Wes; Wes is an old throwback. He is so mentally tough and physically he is tough — to play the position at that size and take the hits he has taken. He is a great teammate; everyone that has played with him, he works harder than anybody on the team. When you are faced with what he has been faced with this offseason, it is pretty much how he has approached it.It has really been fun for me to see him and the improvement that he makes on a daily basis when pretty much I was going through he same thing he as going through. He has made me look like I was a year behind schedule. He has worked really hard, so it has been great for me to see.

Do you think you’ll be on the field with him at some point in this upcoming season?

I hope so. The ACL surgery, at this point you can get pretty good at it. He’s had great surgery and great rehabilitation and he has worked his butt off. There is nobody that would work as hard as Wes to get back from an injury. Because of that it always gives you great confidence in anything that he is doing because he is prepared to put the work in, and that is what rehabilitation is all about. I can’t sit here and say this is what it is going to be because he doesn’t know that. Nobody knows that. Obviously when you plan for the season, I think we plan for everything. We have some great depth at the receiver position now and hopefully Wes is right in there with the pack.

Tom, you said to Peter King that one of the problems with this team was some guys didn’t listen to Coach Belichick. We were hoping you could be more specific. Were there just guys out there who were ignoring your coach and trying to do it their way?

Well, I don’t know if I’d put it exactly that way. Regardless of what I said, I think the point is we do have the best coach probably in the history of the NFL and he’s got the answers. When he comes in on a Monday morning and says this is what we need to do to win and then he comes back the next Monday morning talking about the game and says, ‘I gave you six things, and we did one of them,’ obviously it is very frustrating for everybody. Me included. There is games where he says, ‘They are a turnover driven team. We can’t have turnovers  because they are going to capitalize and they’ve done that all season long. They are plus 12 on turnovers, they’ve scored this many point off of them, if this is what we do we are going to lose.’ And of course, I go out there on the first drive and fumble the ball. I always include myself, and I’m at the top of the list. I’ve got to have a great season in order for our team to be productive, along with everybody else. But the only person I can really control is myself. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about the way the season ended last year and obviously the goals that we set at the beginning of every season. So we’ve got a tough road ahead, like we always do. We’ve got three weeks of practice in June, we’ve got six weeks of practice in July and August to get to the point where we are ready to play in September. And we’ve added plenty of new people and new coaches, like we do every year. Everyone needs to come together and it takes every single guy on the team. We need to do a better job at leadership — and believe me, I was one of the leaders last year and obviously I sucked at doing that. So I’ve  got to do a better job at that and I’ve got to do a better job at quarterback, so that is what I’m prepared to do.

Was there a leadership void in that locker room?

You can’t have enough guys who are leaders. And obviously there are many ways to do that. There are Rodney Harrison types and Troy Brown types, guys who just show up to work and put the work in every day. Larry Izzo, he was a great leader for us. You can never have enough of those guys who really are selfless guys. I was talking to Torry Holt yesterday and we were talking about some of the Rams teams that he played on and he said, ‘You know, we had a lot of great guys on the team.’ And my comment to him, what I said was to me that is the only way. Because playing with a bunch of guys that you really don’t enjoy spending time with, that doesn’t last very long. And really when it comes down to it games that we lose in the fourth quarter, games that we lose in the second half or losing on the road like we did, that could be lack of trust, that could be lack of confidence. There is a lot of issues that you have when that repeats itself time and time again over the season. Coach always used the words mentally tough to us, and I agree with him. When the going got tough, we didn’t get going. We weren’t really a mentally tough team last year and I think that has been a point of emphasis for coach this offseason. Hopefully we found a way to address it with each other and with coach bringing in different players to see if they can bring a little of that to our team.

Tom, we always talk about the tight end position and obviously you guys drafted two in Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez. Is there any inclination that there might be a slight shift philosophically to provide for Tom Brady, Steve Grogan’s Russ Francis or Drew Bledsoe’s Ben Coates?

Well, we’ve had some great tight ends since I’ve been here. Winning the Super Bowl even with Jermaine Wiggins, who was a big part of the offense. Dan [Graham], there is not a better tight end that I have played with and even Ben Watson had some big years for us. So we’ve had some good players. I think Alge [Crumpler], throwing with Alge and watching him run and move, he has been really impressive. And to hear that he is a great guy on top of that, that gets me really excited. And the two guys who we drafted, obviously rookies, it is hard to count on any rookie to tell you the truth. I can think on one hand over the years of playing of rookies who have made a huge impact on the team. Deion [Branch] was our third receiver his rookie year and he did a great job. Jerod [Mayo], he was a great rookie for us, Richard [Seymour], Logan [Mankins]. It is hard to make an impact, and the tight end position is an extremely difficult position on our offense, both physically and mentally. You are involved in the passing and the running game, all the line calls, formation adjustments, protection calls, the audibles. And physically you have to get geared up because you are playing on the line of scrimmage. I dont want to put too much on those guys, but I will say I heard they had really great mini camps and they are really excited about being here. That is definitely something that we could use more of. Guys who are productive at that position. Having a good tight end position creates a lot of mismatches for a defense because if a safety chooses to cover a tight end and you have a really physical tight end, you are going to be able to complete the ball. And if you have a linebacker covering and you have the athletic ability – the speed and the quickness — you should get open on a linebacker every team if you are a good tight end, like Tony Gonzalez. So hopefully our offense can evolve to that a little bit and use the guys skill sets that we have and create some mismatches.

All offseason we’ve seen guys like Anquan Boldin go to the Ravens, Brandon Marshall to the Dolphins, Antonio Cromartie to the Jets and others. We know you think you have the best coach in the conference, but do you still feel like you have the best players?

I love our receiver position. With Randy [Moss], and Wes and Julian [Edelman] and David Patten and Brandon Tate, the way he has been working he has had a great offseason so far. We have a lot of speed at the position right now and a lot of veterans guys that have played and that know what it takes in terms of running routes  and getting open and being in the place they need to be. With our tight end group and a veteran group of running backs, I love our offense. Believe me, all these other personnel moves that these teams our making, our coach is monitoring those as well. It is not like those are like, ‘Wow, I had no idea that would happen.’ When Santonio Holmes is getting ready to be traded I’m sure there are a lot of people that know that. These teams that add them, good for them. They obviously are looking for osmeting else at that position and if we were looking for something at that position we would be in the middle of things too. So obviously our coach feels pretty comfortable with how our team is right now.

You said you spoke to Torry Holt. I’m curious to know how much he has left, and how about David Patten?

They are both outside guys; they really don’t play where Wes plays. They both have very good speed and both are really precise route runners. In our offense, especially at the position, it requires more route running technique. There are a lot of different styles that guys have from Randy to Wes to Troy to Branch, the way he was for us. Both guys are very smart players and they know how to set up their routes. I love having David back; he is one of my favorite teammates with his work ethic. He produced a lot in some really big games for us. He was out last year with an injury that has healed at this point and he looks great running routes and so forth. And Torry, it has been nice to see him around. I always enjoy having veterans out there who are really mature and just show up and know what to do. So hopefully they add a lot to this offense. And we can use a lot of that veteran presence they are going to bring.

I know you are used to the suffocating paparazzi. Does it bother to see, as an example, aerial photographs of your new house with graphics saying that is this room and all that? Does that wear on you?

It is kind of the way it is out in LA. That is what they do. I would have really been worried if they got some of that stuff right, but they didn’t. That’s just the way it is. I’m probably more comfortable now than I have ever been and it is much less distracting for me. Certainly my wife dealt with it longer than I have, but you just make your plans with what you anticipate outside of your house. We don’t go out very much anymore and when we do it is kind of like, ‘ OK, this is what we expect.’ When there are four cars waiting outside your house and you have to get things done, just do it. I used to drive 70 miles per hour down Sunset trying to get away, but that is probably not the smartest thing to do. Now I say, ‘Screw it, I’ll deal with it.’ And hope it is not too invasive.

We won’t see you pull a Sean Penn and slug one of these paparazzi guys? You’re not at that breaking point?

I got pretty pissed off at them a few weeks ago, so I am glad there was no camera there at that point. And then I got pretty frustrated at myself for getting angry. It was just one of those moments where I was probably stressed out about something else.

Was that when you and David Beckham were at the UCLA football game with your kids?

I met him out here when he came out for a game when he first got here. So he has always kind of kept in touch. And his sons are really interested in football and my son says, ‘Daddy, I want to go to a football game.’ I work out at UCLA all the time and knew that they had a spring game, so I was going to take my son and his sons wanted to go, and we figured it would be a good opportunity. We get there and my son the whole way was like, ‘Daddy, we’re going to a football game,’ and we get there and he is like, ‘Daddy, I want to go home.’ So he was there for about five minutes and I called my wife and said, he’s coming home. I don’t know what it was, maybe it was the crowds or something.

Do you worry about what your friends back home and your friends you grew up with think when they see these photographs. Are you afraid they are going to say he forget where he came from?

No, it is hard to worry about a lot of that. You know Gerry, I think people who know me, they know who I am and what I am all about. Especially my teammates and a lot of my friends from growing up I am still friends with. I obviously don’t have as much time as I used to and I don’t get home as much as I used to. But my family, I really care about what they think because those are the people that know me better than anybody other than my wife. I’ve been blessed with a lot of opportunities in my life and building a home for my family that hopefully we are in for a long time, and however exaggerated that story is — which it was quite exaggerated — it is part of what I wanted to do for myself and for my family. So hanging out with different people, I’ve had that opportunity for a long time. I always just look at people for who they are and David is a nice guy, so I don’t get caught up in a lot of the other stuff.

Did you watch the Super Bowl and root for New Orleans and the hope to see Peyton Manning go down in flames like most people did? Or did you feel bad for him that day?

To tell you the truth, I did. And I like Peyton a lot. He is a guy I have watched over the years and always admired how he plays. His style of play is my style of play, so I can always understand what he is looking and and why he is doing the things he is doing. He had an incredible year and Drew Brees had an incredible year – the best year of his career — and both guys to me were neck and neck for the most valuable player in the league. So when they got to the Super Bowl I did watch the game — I wanted to see those offenses play. Drew had an incredible game and the way it ended with Peyton, I don’t know how it ended with him and Reggie [Wayne] there at the end. I couldn’t imagine that Peyton thought he would stop running the route either. And obviously Reggie is a great player and there was just a miscommunication between the two of them, which happens when you have little option routes like they did there. When it works great it looks beautiful and when it doesn’t work out you see stuff happen like it did there. I felt bad just because I never like seeing that happen to a quarterback. I know how it feels and it feels pretty shitty, especially when it happens in the Super Bowl.