When Matt Cassel was with the New England Patriots, he wasn’t just backing up Tom Brady. No sir. He was locked in a full-blown prank war with him. It started with Cassel’s habit of swinging the quarterback-room door open, something Brady warned him about, saying it would eventually nail him. Cassel ignored it. Which is exactly why Brady braced his foot behind the door the next time Cassel tried to walk past. Cassel’s lunch went flying, and the situation with the hungry and annoyed backup QB escalated fast.

In revenge, Cassel dumped protein powder in Brady’s sneakers and rubbed muscle balm into his underwear. A few smaller pranks followed until Brady had enough. The seven-time Super Bowl champ then fired a protein shake at Cassel, who, in return, answered by dumping an entire trash can onto Brady’s car. That’s when the NFL legend raised the stakes and gave Cassel a clear warning, which Cassel recalled years later.

“I dumped a trash can on his (Brady’s) car, and he had a nice car. I had a piece, I don’t even know what I was driving at the time,” he said on the Centered On Buffalo Podcast. “Well, the next day I show up, and he starts saying, ‘Dude, you better say I’m sorry and call me Daddy Longshanks’ or something like that. And I was like, “Daddy Longshanks? I’m not calling you anything.’ He’s like, ‘Dude, you got until the beginning of practice.'”

When Cassel walked into the building the next day, he was still bracing for fallout after dumping a trash can on Brady’s car. The morning meetings were awkwardly quiet. But the real moment came as they headed out to the field. Brady gave him a straight-faced warning: either call him “Daddy Longshanks,” or things were going to get a lot worse. But Cassel shrugged it off. Again.

And just like Brady promised, ignoring the warning only made the situation blow up even more. The NFL legend revealed that after he refused Brady’s demand, the quarterback removed all four tires from Cassel’s car. He put three in front of his locker and hid the other somewhere around Gillette Stadium. And that’s how Brady made Cassel get a ride to work until he fulfilled his demand.

“He’s got my three tires sitting in front of my locker; he hid the final one. He made me get a ride to work for the next week and a half. And I was like, ‘Bro, okay. Daddy Longshanks. You won. You got me.'”

Matt Cassel learned a lesson that day, as he recalled back in 2020: “You don’t mess with people that have more money than you, and particularly, you don’t mess with Tom.”

Looking at it all together, one thing was pretty clear: the prank war ended with Tom Brady on top. Still, Matt Cassel wasn’t even the ultimate prankster in the Patriots’ locker room. It was a different Matt.

Matt Cassel was blamed for not even pranking Tom Brady

Former Patriots tackle Matt Light built quite a reputation during his 11 seasons in New England, especially as the undisputed prank king of the locker room, something even Matt Cassel admits. So after Cassel finally gave in and called Tom Brady “Daddy Longshanks,” Light wasted no time turning that moment into the perfect setup for a sequel to the prank war. Light filled Brady’s car with packing peanuts.

“Light’s the ultimate prankster,” Cassel added. “The next day we’re going up for a walk-through, and we used to go when it was really cold up into the third floor of Gillette Stadium, and they’re looking down like, ‘Oh, Cassel, you got him (Brady) good.’ They filled his entire car up with those foam peanuts to the brim, and they tried to blame it on me. And Brady looks at me, I’m telling you, he goes, ‘Dude, I’m going to kill you.'”

Cassel swore he wasn’t the one who went after Brady this time. Instead, he was just the unlucky victim. Eventually, things got so out of hand that Bill Belichick himself had to step in and shut the whole operation down. But even now, whenever Cassel is asked about his prank history with Tom Brady, this is always the story he leads with. He said it back in 2020, and he’s telling it again now.

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