Tom Brady reveals thumb injury: 'I thought, this is the way the season ends'

In the final installment of “Tom vs. Time,” the Facebook Watch documentary series about Tom Brady, the quarterback finally revealed the extent of the right thumb injury he incurred at practice just days before the AFC championship game.

And it really was bad.

Take a look for yourself:

The skin at the base of Brady’s thumb on his throwing hand ripped open, and his first thought was, “This is it. This is the way the season ends.”

“I’m looking down at my thumb because it’s split open and I’m thinking, ‘I really don’t know what happened to my thumb, but I know it doesn’t feel good’,” Brady said. “And I have a real hard time believing I’m going to be able to go out and play well against the No. 1-ranked defense in the league in four days.”

Brady is shown getting treatment from his body man and friend, Alex Guerrero; Guerrero massages the muscles and tendons around the thumb, and it’s clear there are several stitches in the hand. Guerrero also performs acupuncture on the joint, and we hear Brady wincing, over cuts of sports pundits debating whether Brady’s injury is worthy of concern.

It’s clear the injury wasn’t a small thing, though Brady realized it wasn’t as bad as he feared.

On Thursday, the day after the injury, he was already thinking he had a shot to play, and by Friday it was, “Wow, maybe I can go out and do this.”

Brady started and finished the game, against Jacksonville, leading the Patriots back from a 10-point, fourth-quarter deficit; he calls it “one of the great wins we’ve ever had.”

New England wasn’t so lucky two weeks later against the Eagles in the Super Bowl.

Brady said it was the first time he really saw his children with wife Gisele Bundchen, Benjamin, now 8 years old, and Vivian, 5, upset over a loss (Vivian wasn’t born the last time the Patriots lost in the Super Bowl), but the parents were able to use it as a teaching tool.

“They were sad for me, and sad for the Patriots,” Brady said. “But I just said to them, I said to ’em, ‘Look this is a great lesson: we don’t always win. We try our best, and sometimes it doesn’t go the way we want.’

“That’s probably one of the best moments I’ve had as a parent, because you really feel like you’re parenting, you know? And it speaks to, you know, growing up. You wake up the next day, and your life moves on. The kids are on their iPad and they need to be fed, and you get on with your life.”