When the fourth-string quarterback came out on the field, a new rookie donkey cut under the silver helmet, his teammates on the visiting band begged him to end his misery. The Silverdome had become a stadium-sized sauna one August night in Pontiac, Michigan, which was later described by a sweat-soaked reporter as “hot, humid and air-conditioned.” The Patriots and Lions tied at 10, and with less than a minute on the game clock, the nightmare of all NFL veterans rose: the preseason overtime.
For Tom Brady, it was a dreamlike opportunity to impress. The ball was seen in New England 31 after a Lions kick. Two modest gains brought the Ducks closer to the middle of the field, but not across the middle of the field, and every tick of the clock made the delayed flight home more likely. Just when the team’s fate seemed secure, however, Brady stepped back and hit receiver Sean Morey between safety, a 47-yard connection. Adam Vinatieri managed to make a chip shot on the next play, hitting the net with two seconds left, ensuring the escape of the Detroit suburbs.
Second, Brady left the field when five high and slapping parties were expected on his back The Boston Globe. He also made a gesture of gratitude from a teammate to the latest in portable technology.
“Those guys didn’t want to keep playing,” Brady told al Globe. “One of the guys allowed me to use his DVD player because he said, ‘At least you didn’t keep me for half an hour anymore.’ So it was nice.”
Bill Greene / The Boston Globe / Getty Images
When it comes to everything Brady has done in the next two decades since that night — his first prolonged action in the NFL after making a small cameo at the Patriots’ preseason opening against his favorite Niners of childhood—, the rear view is 20/20. (Devotees of his performance supplements and “recovery pajamas” may prefer TB12 / TB12.) He is now 44 years old and is the only NFL quarterback toward the 2021 season, the last in such an absurdly long career that all of his current teammates minus 16 on the Buccaneers ’80-man list are as close or closer to Brady’s 14-year-old son Jack (who has been tagging along with Pops to practice as a guest ball boy at the Tampa Bay training camp this summer) who are his quarterback.
Ten Super Bowl appearances and seven increasingly ringed rings, Brady’s usual narrative picks up in 2001 when he takes over from Drew Bledsoe and puts the Lombardi Trophy, among other things, under his arm; the 2000 season is a forgotten footnote in its arc. And for good reason: aside from his winning union in Detroit, Brady did almost nothing more memorable on the field as a rookie, squeaking on the active roster when coach Bill Belichick made the unusual decision to keep four quarterbacks. As Brady finished the season as a backup for Drew Bledsoe, he completed a single 6-yard pass in his only regular-season appearance: Week 13, a mop service during a disproportionate loss at the Silverdome.
Even its culminating moment, Morey’s dart, is lost mostly in the story; requests to survive footage of the Lions, Patriots and NFL Films were left empty, while Brady “didn’t really remember much” of the 13-10 victory, according to a Bucs spokesman.
But bits and pieces of this memory — of Brady’s first NFL heroics — linger for some former teammates. Among them is Eric Bjornson, a tight end who was watching from the sidelines when Brady hit Morey in the seam. “It just seemed like such a mature shot for a kid in his first year,” Bjornson says. “At the end of the game like this, the boys don’t usually take risks … He shot this thing down the throat of the defense. Five-step drop, no mix, nothing, just … BANG! As you have seen him do a thousand times, but this was the first sign of the calm, freshness and confidence he had that we would win ”.
As he passed, Bjornson had no reason to believe Brady’s throw signaled anything but an opportunity for the rookie to play college ball at the nearby Ann Arbor, a sixth round and seventh draft of the era. of Belichick, then buried at the depth table behind Bledsoe, Michael Bishop and John Friesz, to include some quality NFL gameplay. “I don’t remember much, but I remember being happy that this opened a door for him to land somewhere else,” Bjornson says. “I didn’t think about the 8 million years that the team would form.”
More than two decades later, perhaps it is a measure of Brady’s status that Bjornson and other members of the 2000 Patriots, all of whom have long since retired from football and moved to other lines of employment (Bjornson works in consulting employee benefits) – you can remember anything from your rookie season. But yes. Like the way he handled the task of representing skits during the training camp. “One night, Tom was up there doing stand-up, telling jokes,” Bjornson says. “It was pretty damn.” And how he looked with that shaved head. “Completely ridiculous,” says Chris Eitzmann, who is also a finalist on that 2000 team.
And its relative lack of fame, even among locals. “He would try to talk to the girls in the bars and they wouldn’t give him the time of day, and we would all laugh about it,” says defender David Nugent, who was with Brady for three years this preseason. “Viously, obviously that changed.”
Above all, they recall the obsessive work ethic Brady wore every day, beginning when the rookie pulled out his yellow, “ugly and shiny” Jeep Wrangler, as Eitzmann describes Brady’s gift from a car dealership. the area when forming the team. parking before sunrise.
It was the same approach that Brady summed up in Globe that preseason, the week after the Detroit game, “I’m going to go out every day to try to improve and see how good I can be because there are a lot of great quarterbacks here,” he said. “It’s so competitive that you just have to go out and worry about yourself, worry about completing the balls when you’re inside and we hope to improve every day.
“Then, hopefully, the coach sees something he can work with and then you can get your shot.”
Lonie Paxton was a long unworked parameter of the state of Sacramento in 2000, delighted to simply mark an invitation to an NFL rookie camp, when she first met Brady on his shared connecting flight to New England. “I got a T-shirt and a plane ticket, so I was going to prove it,” Paxton says. “I didn’t really expect too much.” He quickly learned that his new traveling companion, the 199th selection that year, had similar plans. “He’s always had that chip on his shoulder,” Paxton says of Brady.
Eitzmann realized this shortly after he began training at Bryant University in Rhode Island, at which point he and Brady had begun the tradition of staying up late after practice to throw and run routes. “We would go until it was completely gassed and I couldn’t take it anymore,” Eitzmann says. One day, “We were leaving, and he said, ‘You know what Eitz, I’m going to beat Bledsoe.’
Brady, in 2000, warmed up that preseason game at the Silverdome.
Carlos Osorio / AP
In the absence of significant reps to prove himself, Brady did everything he could to get ahead. “I would always be out throwing, running … everything,” says receiver Shockmain Davis. Bjornson recalls that his preseason roommate, Friesz, came home to come up with the meticulously detailed “works of art” that Brady would draw in the quarterback room when a coach questioned him. Others recall that he was awake to study the playbook at his temporary lodging at the Foxboro Area Motel, Massachusetts. “His drive to improve was crazy,” Eitzmann says. “He’s probably the most competitive person I’ve ever met.”
The football field wasn’t Brady’s only court here. “Nintendo, Ping-Pong, pool, you beat him and he was angry,” Eitzmann says. Later that year, when Brady lived with Eitzmann and Nugent in a condominium he bought from corner worker Ty Law, the trio regularly held double elimination tournaments in Tecmo Super Bowl. A native of the Bay Area, Brady would play as the Niners, while Eitzmann often opted for the Raiders, with an unbeatable Bo Jackson. “It would throw the controller against the wall,” Eitzmann says. “He wouldn’t talk to me for half a day.”
Despite his best efforts, Brady continued to be a glorified player on the practice squad for most of that season, taking snapshots in moderation and staying home during away games. But it was clear he had caught the attention of fellow veterans, even if only judging by Bledsoe’s jokes aimed at the yellow Jeep. “At one point, he filled it with packing peanuts; at one point, there was flour in the respirators, ”says Eitzmann. All the while, Brady’s intensity never diminished. “Every night he would go down to the basement and watch movies, getting ready as if he were the starting quarterback,” Nugent says. “Then I wouldn’t see him in the morning, because he would get up so early and go to the stadium to watch movies before anyone got there.”
One night, after returning from a road trip, Nugent registered to watch Brady, out of the quarterback competition due to his time in Michigan, handle the lack of action. “I asked him, ‘Are you hanging there?’ Nugent recalls. “It was so competitive, but so far it has gone down in depth. “It’s how much I study, what I do with one or two repetitions they give me. And when my time comes, I’ll be ready.”
Pats fans around the world can recite what happened next: Bledsoe fell in Week 2 of the 2001 season, suffering serious internal injuries in a hit that accelerated his departure from New England; Brady stepped up and soon became the youngest Super Bowl winning quarterback in history, taking on the unknown role of the local deity, much to his surprise and the rest of the rest. being recognized as we headed to the playoffs, “Nugent says.” It was new to him at the time. We would go back to the car and he would freak out. “
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