March 2, 2022 • 55 mins
Host Andrea Kremer takes us back to 2002 when NFL Films Steve Sabol interviewed Tom Brady. The QB had just won the first of his seven Super Bowl Championships and discussed his start in high school football. Brady chose football over baseball and explained why he decided to attend Michigan University, which leads to a funny story about his first visit to Notre Dame. Steve moved onto Brady's Draft report and how it motivated him while improving in the NFL. Brady gives insight into the Tuck Rule game against the Raiders and how he kept the football from his first rushing TD. Now after the Super Bowl, Brady talks about his relationship with Drew Bledsoe and how much the two helped each other through the season. Steve wraps up ironically questioning Brady about the possibility of never playing in another Super Bowl.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to NFL Films Tales from the Vault. I'm your host,
Hall of Fame journalist Andrea Kramer. On this podcast, we
take you into the NFL Films Vault, and I'm not kidding.
There really is a fireproof fault where over fifty thousand
cans of film restored. Among the many items in that
vault are over two hundred interviews conducted by the late
(00:28):
President of NFL Films, my mentor, Steve Sable. And that's
where I come in. I'm here to present these interviews raw,
unedited in their entirety for the first time, so I'll
be jumping in here and there to provide context and insight.
And today I'm so excited to be bringing you a
true time capsule Steve's two thousand to interview with Tom Brady.
(01:07):
It was two thousand two. Tom Brady had just won
his first Super Bowl, and no one, even in their
wildest dreams, even with the greatest script ever to be
written in Hollywood, could envision this was going to be
the first of his seven Super Bowls in a career
that would spend twenty two years. Back then, he hadn't
yet married one of the most beautiful wealthiest models on
(01:29):
the face of the earth, Giselle Bunch, and he didn't
even have any of his three children. Here's who Tom
Brady was. I remember interviewing him right after that first
Super Bowl. He came over to our said at ESPN
for us to do what was then considered the gold
standard for interviews, the Sunday Conversation, and fresh face Tom
Brady says to me, Wow, I'm going to be the
(01:50):
subject of the Sunday Conversation. He was pretty excited about
that after just winning his first Super Bowl. But like
I said, that's who Brady was back then. And and
this is what was happening at NFL Films in the
summer of two thousand two. The company had just moved
into a two hundred thousand square foot facility in Mount Laurel,
(02:10):
New Jersey, and Steve Sable invited that young fresh face
quarterback to do the first interview on the new set
in the new building. Look, if you've got a child
that's interested in football, this interview is a clinic in leadership.
What that really means, and it's incredible considering that Brady
was only twenty four years old at this time. So
(02:32):
we begin today's interview with Brady talking about baseball, he said,
if he wasn't playing football, he'd be playing that sport.
It's his other favorite. So let's go to the vault
for Steve Sable and Tom Brady. We all said, I
read something that you said that baseball was rougher than football. Yeah,
(02:53):
what do you mean by that? Well, when I was
playing baseball growing up, what position were you? As a catcher?
That was a big catcher? So I was six four
two pounds getting down to us It's a catcher, not
at all. And that was my problem. I had my
knees every time I get down to the catcher stance.
After you know, catching seven innings of a game, I
get up and I'd be limping back to the to
(03:13):
the locker room to change my shoes. And after about
four years of high school baseball, I said, I think
I've had enough. I'm gonna go play football. Would be
a little bit easier on me. Were you quarterbacks at
the first position you played? Yeah, I went out for
my freshman uh. And I played football my whole my
whole life until I got to high school. And my
my mom didn't want me to play. She didn't want
(03:33):
me growing up playing football, said, yo, get hurt, you know,
but I she let me go out for a freshman
football and I was a backup. I wouldn't even start
in quarterback my freshman team. We three teams. We had
a freshman team, JV team, and the varsity team in
the lowest of the levels. And I'm the backup on
the team that went oh and eight, you know. And
and the guy who started before me, he's my best friend,
(03:54):
and he ended up quentin football, UM, which allowed me
to be the starting quarterback on the JV team. And
that's what happened this year is almost a mirror image
of what happened the first time that you ever played. Yeah,
it happened like that. It happened like that in college. Also,
so why that the guy in front of you got
hurt and then you stepped into Yeah, there was two
guys in front of me. One guy got hurt. I
(04:16):
moved up to number two, UM, and then I ended
up when I when I was starting my fourth and
fifth year, UM, no one got hurt. I kind of
assumed a role, but I was kind of a backup
and always kind of looking to get ahead. Now there's
a story that you when you found out you were
going to start at Michigan. Well, first of all, why
didn't you go to Michigan anyway? I thought that you
(04:37):
could have gone to Cow and you would have been
a starter. And when you went to Michigan, there was
like five or six all state quarterbacks ahead of you.
Why did you pick that school? Yeah, I to get
an education, right, so we didn't. So we did that too.
But I, uh, I went there. There was lat of
schools on the West Coast. I'm from San Francisco. There
was a law of schools in the West Coast that
(04:58):
I was thinking about going to. And and I remember
I was sending out tapes to different colleges when I
was being recruited, and uh, you know, I had these
letters from Michigan, and I'm thinking to my dad. You know,
I was a JVKI in the starter of my freshman team,
and I'm we're sending out these tapes. I'm like, you know,
here's Cow State, north Ridge, here's uh, you know, some
of these schools down south, University of San Diego to
(05:20):
play football. And I'm saying that you think I should
send a tape to Michigan. And He's like, yeah, you
know what, let's go for it. So send a tape
to Michigan and they were the one of the first
ones to respond, Hey, we love the tape. We'd love
to have you come in and uh. And I ended
up they ended up coming to see me at a
couple of games, and then sure enough I took the
trip back there just kind of school. It's a great school.
(05:43):
And I called my parents from the airport on the
way back and I told me, I'm just gonna take
a trip to Michigan. I'm not gonna go to Michigan.
That's way too far, it's way too cold. And I
took the trip and I called him from the airport
on the trip home and I said, Dad, Mom, I
think I know where I want to go to school.
And it was a it was a great decision for me. Now,
when you were a little did you go out in
the backyard and pass, you know, pretend that you were
(06:04):
going to play in the NFL someday or or were
you not really interested in footballs a kid? Yeah, that's
what well on our street, I mean, you'd be saying,
go okay, go down, make an out rude at the
fire hydrant. You know, bounce the guy off the car fender.
And I mean on my street growing up, we had
fifty kids. I mean there were so many kids. I
mean we didn't have dinner. I mean it was like
(06:24):
my mom would come out and she got guys were
eating and I'm not hungry, you know, and we're gonna
We're gonna stay and play all night. And we played
Captured the Flag and we played football. We should draw
plays in memorized place. Now it's all time quarterback. You
have three guys, you know, all time quarterback and get
one receiver and the other guy to be the dB
and then you played you pretend to be when you
were a quarterback, did you you know, obviously you must
(06:45):
have players that you watch. Did you say, oh, I'm
Terry Bradshaw or Roger Staubacher. I like to be Jerry
Rice when I was the receiver. So it's the oldest
kid was always the quarterback. So I was I was
playing receiver, and I'd always want to be Jerry Rice
because you know, a San Francisco kid, I mean he
was growing up and when I was seven years old
(07:06):
when I started to realize the game of football, and
he was Jerry Rice. Was the man and he was
only get mess when they learning all the Super Bowls.
And I want to go back to to Uh, you
had three sisters, right, so they were worst athlete in
the family. You were, yeah, lettering those girls are better
athletes than I am. What do they play? The oldest
one was an All American softball pitcher at Fresno State.
(07:27):
And she's, uh, she's competitive as any girl I've ever
been around. And she's a she's feisty, and she's a
tough swe house. And then the other one was a
soccer player at St. Mary's College. Hecko soccer player. The
other one was a basketball and softball player also, so
well they must have been that must have been kind
of tough, you know. So it's a little brother of
three sisters that are really did they give you a
lot of ship? You know when you started out about
(07:49):
you know you're not you know you you know you're
not measuring up to the rest of the FAMI or
they they inspire you. Yeah, a little both. I was
always I was always a little brother. And you're Maureen's brother,
you're Julie's brother. And and it's when I was a
freshman in high school, I wrote a essay about what
it's like to be a baby brother, and I was like,
(08:09):
people always refer to me as a baby, so maybe
one day, you know, I want my sisters referred to
as that's Tommy's sister, that's Julie's sister. And you know,
they give me that crap now they're when, oh god,
we asked about your brother. How's you know? Now when
you were going to the super Bowl the week before
the day, your sisters call you up and talk to you.
(08:30):
Oh yeah, they were. They were on the phone out,
you know, I mean the whole season and the Super Bowl.
I mean they would after the Pittsburgh game when you
know I twisted Michael. They they were always, of course
concerned and uh and we had we had big plans
and everyone was coming down to the super Bowl. Mean,
you're not gonna miss the super Bowl. Years old, you
(08:51):
never know when you're gonna get back. So they they
loved coming down and we had we had a great
one of the one the two days for the game.
I went to then there with my family was the
first time my family was together for probably seven months.
My mom and dad, my three sisters, um my sister's
fiancee um my niece. It was. It was probably the best,
(09:13):
the best memory of all Super Bowl. We Kevin dinner
at a steakhouse in New Orleans. Do you talk about
that that anybody has about the strategy about or did
everybody purposely try to not talk about the game to
make it more nervous? Uh? A little both. My dad
always wants to know, Okay, let's first play the game,
and you any secret plays and I mean there throwback passes, reverses. Um,
(09:34):
he's uh, he's a strategist. Everyone else kind of like
we'll talking about something else. We see all the football crowd.
We can read that. We don't give a shit about
that we want But what it's the best advice your
dad's ever giving you. I know it's a tough question,
but he's come up a couple of times. I'm wondered
if there's some like motto or something that that he's
you know, told you since you've been a little kid.
Always remember, Yeah, when I was when I was probably
(09:59):
first or second grade, I had a dinis appointment one morning.
It was like eight o'clock in the morning, so I
was gonna be late for school. So my dad's sitting
downstairs eating practice, and I walked up and I've got
a note and said, Dad, will you write me a
note to tell my teacher that I'm gonna be late
for school? And he goes, He goes, yeah, no problem.
He gives when the piece paper, just a regular pad
of paper, and he writes, you know, dear, you know, miss,
(10:19):
you know whoever, Tom will be late for school. He's
got a DNIS appointment. So it covered about a quarter
of the page. So what do I do. I ripped
three chords of the sheet off and throw it away.
So I've got this little piece of paper, I mean,
And he says, what the hell did you just do
that for? I said, what do you mean? He goes,
when I signed my name to a piece of paper,
you know, I'm presenting myself and I'm not presenting, you know,
(10:40):
a little quarter piece of paper ripped and torn. I mean,
that's me. I want it. You know, this is Tom
Brady on it. This is I'm presenting, you know, this
sheet of paper. And it was just something like, if
you're going to present something, you know, it's got to
be exactly how you'd want it to be. You know,
it's not ripped it's not torn, it's not you know, discolored,
there's no belling airs. I mean, there's nothing that's uh.
(11:02):
It's something I've always taken with me and says, hey,
when I when I signed my name to something, when I,
you know, say this is Tom Brady, then I wanted
to be exactly how I wanted to be presented. Thomas
Edward Patrick Brady Jr. And that junior is pretty important
because it signifies the relationship he has with his father,
Tom Brady Senior. For all the talk about Brady's family
(11:24):
and we've heard about his sisters, don't rule out the
importance of his mom. You know how many postgame interviews
I've done with Brady and he ends them all with
hi Mom, Hi Mom, Hi Mom. Well, there's a lot
of those in the archives as well. And of course
if you ask anyone in the family, they'll tell you
that Brady gets his competitive juices from his mother, Galen,
(11:45):
But his relationship with his father is so strong, that
bonds so unbreakable that when Tom went across the country
to Michigan as opposed to up the road to cal
Tom Brady Senior told me that he had to see
a therapist to work at. His issue was with separation
anxiety from his best friend, his son, So upholding the
(12:06):
Brady name is hugely important to Tom, which is why
this story of how he almost got arrested at Notre
Dame is so meaningful. You mean you never heard the
one about Tom Brady getting locked in Notre Dame stadium. Um,
I want you to tell a story about when you
when you realize you were going to start at Michigan.
You looked on the schedule and you saw that you
(12:27):
were going to play Notre Dame. Then what did you do?
It was probably when Rooney came out, So I just
touchdown Jesus and you know, I mean this, this Notre
Dame is kind of or of Notre Dame. And I'm
thinkuring I've never been to the stadium. There's a wedding
in Chicago that was a part of song. On the
way back from Chicago Day and Arbor, I was like,
you know, I drive by sea signs for South Bend.
(12:49):
It's about a month before we're playing them, and I'm thinking, okay,
I'm just stopping. I'd love to see what it's like.
So when I go down and run on the field
for the first time. It's not the first time. I'm
getting used to get used the environment. And so I
pulled up. It's a Sunday afternoon, you know, it's about
probably about five or six o'clock. And uh, I mean,
I've never been there. But there's a huge um uh
(13:12):
steel gates to get in. And I go up to
the first one and it's locked. And I'm thinking, how
the hell am I going to get in the stadium?
What if I if I just walk around, maybe someone
left the gate open. So I walk around. Sure enough,
halfway around there's a gate that's unlocked. Um. You know,
there's a lock hanging off, but it's not fastening the
gate together. So I walk in and I locked the
gate to itself, thinking that while someone walked by from
(13:34):
the outside and so it was unlocked, they might lock
it knocked me in. Well, I walk around, you know,
the stadium. I go by yourself. No one's in the stadium,
you know, I don't see anyone on hear anything. As
I see is a bunch of no trespassing signs, you know.
So I'm kind of kind of creeping my way through
the stadium and I'm standing on the field kind of
walking around the outside. We're thinking when you were I'm
gonna play here in a month or yeah. I just
(13:57):
kind of took it all in, you know. I walked
up to the top of this stands and kind of
walked down and stood on our sidelines, stood in the
middle of the field real quick, and I kind of
ran across, and uh, I was just you know, you
go and look at the touchdown Jesus from the stadium
and it was cool. And so I walked walking back
out to the gate that I walked in, and I
guess someone had come into the stadium because they had
(14:19):
unlocked the gate and then fastened the two sides of
the gate together. So I'm thinking, oh, I'm locked in
the freaking stadium. It's six o'clock at night, my car
sitting out there in some illegally parked zone, and there's
I'm thinking, I'm playing here in a month. I'm gonna
be on Sports Center, you know, breaking into the stadium.
So I'm trying to get out, and then I go
(14:39):
up to one end of the stadium, but I think
it was a south south end zone and I there's
a big there's a ramp, you know, kind of a
handicap ramp that goes up the side of the stadium,
and about twenty ft up there's kind of a you know,
it's like an open window that you can jump down
under the grass. And it was you know when I
got up there, and I kind of looked down because
(15:00):
I was gonna jump over the top. I'm thinking, I'm
gonna break my ankle. I don't know what's worse, being jail.
We're breaking my ankle jumping out of the stadium. So
I don't know what to do. I didn't have a
phone on me, so I get in this uh I
get into this, this gardening, this maintenance tent, and I
found a sledgehammer. So I take the sledgehammer, go outside
(15:21):
and there's a there's an extension ladder bolted onto the wall,
and I just started beating the hell out of its
extension the ladder to knock it off the wall. So
I knocked the thing off the wall after about ten
I mean I must have hit it ten times. And
this ladder was so busted up. I took it, carried it,
you know, halfway around the stadium, threw it over the
top where I was gonna jump, climbed down, got in
(15:42):
that car and drove it U souf then faster and
I've ever driven in my life. Did you tell anybody
that story when you got back to Michigan. No, I
didn't want to tell my coach. I didn't want to
tell anyone. I didn't want any want to know what
I mean. And people when I'm climbing on the ladder,
there were people that were visiting and I turned on
the got this cam quarter from look for that footage.
(16:03):
It might be somewhere. You know, someone's probably got it.
If anyone actually does have this footage, can you please
contact NFL Films. I mean, this may not be the
sports version of the Suppruter film, but this is Tom
Brady we're talking about. And when we come back, we'll
hear about his infamous NFL scouting report, and Steve and
Tom get into great detail about the Tuck Rule game.
(16:26):
Stay tuned, Welcome back to NFL Films Tales from the Vault.
It seems almost unfathomable that Tom Brady was drafted in
this sixth round, but make no mistake one where he
was picked, that numbers etched in his mind and his legacy,
his draft status and the kind of embarrassing portrayal of
(16:48):
Brady and draft anals belies what I think is perhaps
his greatest attribute, his mental fortitude. That's what's enabled him
to never accept the judgment of others or to set
limits on himself. So again, as you listen to young
Tom Brady, remember this is twenty years ago. With this mindset,
makes it pretty clear why he's going on to become
(17:09):
the greatest Super Bowl winner of all time. I want
to read you something. This is the draft report on you,
and we we condensed this a little bit, and basically
it goes Tom Brady poor build. That might be accurate.
I would probably agree skinny lacks great physical stature and
(17:34):
strength and gets knocked down easily. It's the same thing
as a runt. Yeah. Um, you know, I don't think
I was. Well, that kind of gets me fired up
because I big, and you know, the head of these people. No.
I mean that sounds like Joe Montana right there. I mean,
(17:56):
uh huh, Well, when you what I'm going to get
at is when you got to the end I fell,
I mean, what were you thinking that? You know I'm here.
Maybe I'll come up for a cup of coffee. I
can play a couple of years. Maybe I can be
a starter. Maybe I can you know, you know, make
a career out of this, or did you have you know,
bigger dreams and say, geez, you know I can. I
think I can play. I had huge dreams and I
(18:19):
still got bigger dreams, and I think that, you know,
my whole life, people tell you, hey, you know you
can't do this. You're too you know, you're too slow.
You don't throw hard, and you know you're not. I
didn't even say that that we can add that I
have a good arm. Sure, I'm sure if you if
you if you didn't have the condensed vers and that's
part of what you read. But my whole you know,
when I was when I was a freshman high school,
(18:41):
when I wasn't starting my coach out, you know, you
gotta work on your speed. You know you're just not
fast enough. So sure enough, that's what I did. And
you know when I got to college, same thing. You know,
you've got to be better at this. You can't do this.
And when people tell you, hey, you can't do this,
you can't do this, and you keep overcoming that, I mean,
you just you build this. This it's confidence in yourself,
and it's belief in yourself that even when nobody else
(19:03):
believes in you, that I'm still gonna do it because
I don't give a ship what you say. But I
know what I can do, and I've done it, and
I'm gonna prove it to you. And then if you
don't believe, I'm gonna do it again, and I'm gonna
keep doing to you believe. And if you don't believe,
that's your that's your problem, because someday I'm gonna get
it done. And and I want your help. I don't
ask for I don't want your sympathy, and I'm gonna
you know, I'm gonna keep overcoming things. What did the
Patriots tell you when you started to day go through
(19:25):
the same thing? Hey, Tom, you gotta work on this,
You gotta work on that? Or were they more encouraging?
They were? They were always very encouraging. We had a
quarterback coach who came to Who's the guy who worked
me out at Michigan? And he passed away last year
at Dick Raybine and he came to my school and
he was always on my side from the day I
got there. We had meetings um before the before the
(19:47):
the veteran meetings, it was rookie meetings and that was
me and him and all summer long we worked on stuff.
And over the course of last year watching from Watch
You from Drew and John Freese was a great tour
of Michael bish was on. I mean, these guys are
guys that I watch. I kind of said, Okay, well,
what do they do well? And I try to take
that from them and how can I how can I,
you know, find a niche? What what do I do well?
(20:09):
And how can I contribute? What do you think you
do well? What's your what's your best asset as a quarterback?
Oh man, that's the hardest question to answer. We can
pass on it and come back to it. I mean,
if there's something that I don't think I do well
or maybe what's what do you think all the obviously
all the things have been written about you this year?
What do you think is maybe your overlooked most overlooked
(20:31):
skill that that people say, well, Tom Brady to this
and this and this, But you're saying, you know, nobody
ever mentioned that I can do this, like you know,
follow through. Maybe something a little like following through in
your fakes or you know, picking out a third receiver.
I think I think one thing that in the reason
why I think i'm you know, i'm successful, as I
think I love playing football. I just and because of that,
(20:56):
everything is sacrificed for playing. I mean, I love I
could throw seven on seven for twelve hours a day,
and it's just that's that's the most fun I have,
you know, throughout you know, my life is going on
in the football field and play and catch and because
of that, and people see that, and people say, hey, man,
time's having a hell of a time. Let's just let's
(21:18):
just hop on his back and we'll go in there
and I'm gonna have a hell of a time to
doing it, you know. And we have fun out their practice.
I mean we're cracking jokes and we're you know, making
fun of our coaches and and I think when you
have a group of guys that you know, it could
kind of come together and say, you know, it sounds
it sounds phony. But he mean, well, I don't think
(21:39):
it's a hell of a time. Is there one specific
playtime that you can look back last year through the
whole season and think, man, I know I can do
this now. It was there one game or play that
that comes back to your mind or that you could
say when that happened, you'd say, you know, I think
(22:00):
I can. I think I can take this team to
the Super Bowl. Mm hm. You know, it's probably probably
the most disappointing game of the year when it was
probably an interception. You know that there was a play
in Denver Broncos where, um, we had like four interceptions
that in the last quarter, and that's the hell of
a quarter and ship four picks. There was one where
(22:25):
I was It was the second one and I was
thrown to Troy Brown, and we had an option route
for Troy, and I didn't read Troy the way I
should have read him. You know, Troy's got option to
break in a breakout depending on where the defenders what
his own coverage. Troy started to the outside and he
saw the defender sitting outside, so he turned back in
(22:45):
while you know, I'm figuring. You know, I was a
little flustered. As soon as he broke outside, I threw it,
and I threw it's darnall. Walker hit him right between
the two and the seven. He took it yards to
end the game. You know, and from that point on
I said, I'm never gonna let that happen again, you know,
And I'm never gonna take my team out of the game.
(23:06):
I'm never gonna um make a mistake like that, and
and never kind of miss communication with you. I mean
all the things that come into a play like that
that you know, we gotta go forward from there, and
I gotta make sure that never happens again. And that
was really when we started take off and I was
a four picks were we were three. I think that
took us to I think we're two and three at
(23:27):
the time or something like that. But our season really
turned from that point. And I thought, you know, I
remember what you're saying about relating to your teammates. I
did an interview a long time ago with Bobby Lane
and he said that the quarterback has got to be
different than everybody else. He says, football, it's like a
cast system. You have the whole team here and the
(23:49):
quarterback is up here. He's separate, he doesn't socialize, he's
he's got to be different. You think that's that's that's
still true. Where do you believe in that? Um In
a sense, yes, but a sense now and I think
you gotta be one of the boys because you are.
But in another sense, there's more expectation, there's more responsibility.
(24:12):
So you know, when all the guys are going off
to drink beers, you know you might have to slip
a few waters in there. You know, you gotta you're
you're one of the guys and you enjoy hanging out
with them, but you've gotta be up at seven. You know,
you've got to study film late. You know, you've gotta
you've got to be the guy that's you know, fills
in the holes for everyone else. So when everyone else
is is you know, goof around or get a little complacent.
(24:35):
You've got to be the one that you can bring
everyone back up. You know, you've got to be the
one that is kind of the checks and balances of
the whole team. And but you can't ever seem like,
you know, you're another coach, because you're not. You know,
you're a player, and the coach communicates you do. But
it's a fine line. It's a very fine line because
you know, the quarterback gets a lot of the you know,
(24:57):
when when people want to talk to you want to
talk to the quarterback, you know, and the quarterback has
always held to a certain level. But you don't ever
want your guys feeling like they can't talk to you.
They put you on that pedstle because you want to
be You want to feel like I'm just I'm just
like you guys. You know, I'm slugging it out like you.
And that's how I feel. I've read once that um
(25:18):
in order to succeed in something, you have to have
a clear knowledge of your own weakness weaknesses. Obviously, you
had an incredibly successful season. What was What do you
think is your weakness the thing that you were aware
of during the course of this year? Wow? Uh? And
(25:38):
want A lot of times you pride yourself on you
know what, what you do do well? And I think
sometimes going back to that, you think, or at least
I think. You know, I can think my way through
this game. You know, I'm a smart guy. I can
process the information I could. I know the cause, I
know the audibles, I know the defenses. But one of
the weaknesses sometimes you get too smart for yourself. You know,
(25:58):
you start to over anticipate things you don't play. You
think that, okay, I have this play versus you know,
I see a defense case Cover two defense. I know
exactly my read. Well, you know what if the free
safety doesn't play cover too quite like I expect them to,
And I've already thrown the ball to a guy who
should be open if you played it the right way.
But you know he's guessing, so he picks the ball.
(26:22):
And you can overthink things. You can you can anticipate things,
but you can over anticipate, and you could. You could
talk your way out of place. You know that. You
know you're going to the line of scrimmage. Sometimes you're oh, ship,
you know, I hate this play. I don't like. I
didn't like in practice, I didn't like the game plan,
and now he's calling it, you know, And then you
get out there and sure enough it's a bad play,
(26:43):
you know, just because you've talked yourself into it. So
we're surrounded by all this memorabilia. What did you save
from last season? I gotta I got a few things.
I have my Super Bowl jersey, of course, Um are
you waring your ring? Well, get him soon. I don't
have it the next Sunday. But the one thing that
(27:04):
I kept was the touchdown ball from the Raider game.
Then when I ran it in, you know, everyone said,
you can't run, you know, it's too slow. Can't run,
you know, And that was that was like one of
the biggest players of my career. And I spiked that.
I tried to spike that ball so hard, you know,
And did you get how did you get the ball?
(27:24):
Did you get the ref to give it to you
or how do you know it's the real ball? As
soon as I spiked it, Damian what he picked it
up my center and he came over and he gave
to me. Was I think you want this? And uh,
I kind of took it off the sideline like grid
and I wouldn't let him go to that ball. I
put it in a safe place. They get to Dom
Brochard quiment, don't you lose this? As I wants aft
to the game? Where is it now? Um, it's in
(27:45):
my house. I wrote on it. You know Patriots. You know,
Patriots first Oakland first rushing touchdown. It's pretty cool. Now,
let's go back to that game. When you run out
onto the field and you see that that weather was
the first thing that you thought of. Great, you know,
you know I'm from Michigan, I'm used to playing in
this or oh boy, this is gonna be. This is
(28:07):
gonna be hell to play at something like it. Ran out,
probably to our always like to go out early and
get loose. I walked, I said, holy sh it, why
is it the field not covered? That's what I thought,
you know, cornerbacks are always thinking that kind of the footing.
I mean, the ball is gonna be wet. And uh.
I ran out and I was I couldn't believe it.
When was the first time I had played in snow
(28:28):
like that before? Real? And you and you played at
Michigan and you never had a snowstorm like that, Never
a snowstorm like that. Practice we had done in practice
a little bit, but never never like that. I don't
think a lot of people have played in weather like that.
I just that effect the game, that kind of snow
play of that weather. What did you have to change?
They were big, the snowflakes were. They were big, soft,
(28:49):
you know, white snowflake. They weren't heavy slush, you know,
So it wasn't like a just a slush bowl out there.
It was. The snow was pretty dry, so it was
I'm sure playing in that snow was probably better than
playing in in the rain. In the rain, the hard
part I think was for the receivers because the field
was like cement on the outside and from the numbers
(29:10):
out it was it was ice and the field was
frozen solid, so they couldn't get in and out of cuts.
And the only thing that was keeping them from cutting
was the snow. So guys would have their cleats, you know,
their half inch spikes on, and they're be half inch
of snow to two or three inches snow that was
packed down by the in the game, but nobody could
make any cuts. The dbs with backpedal and you throw
the body receiver and he couldn't even break to break
(29:31):
up the ball. So in a lot of ways, I
think I was an advantage for the quarterback. We have
a shot of you in the in the bob Crab
before the game, and there's like some sort of a conversation.
Do you remember what he said to you, what you
said to him? Yeah? I remember that one. Uh. I
think I promised him we'd win the game. Okay, he'd
(29:52):
come up to me a couple of weeks before, and uh,
going in earlier that week, I said to him, I said,
we're gonn get this one. You know, we're winning this
ball game, and he said, all right, say something for
the game. And he looked at me, said you remember
what you told me, right, And I said something like yeah,
I said, I promise you we're gonna win this one.
So we're gonna get this one for you. I read
(30:13):
something about the strategy of that game, and a lot
of credit was given to coach Belichick, and justifiably so.
But and I don't know whether this is true, but
they said that this particular article said that the whole
first you know, three quarters is that it was just
run the ball, run the ball, run the ball. And
it wasn't until that you were really in a desperate
situation that the coach said all right, you know, to
(30:34):
throw the damn thing and let's see if we can
we can win it this way. Yeah, we were down
ten and the fourth quarter and it was probably twelve
minutes left and Charlie Weiss walked over to me and
Charlie said, uh, he said, we're going to no huddle.
He says, we gotta go win this game. And uh.
And Coach Belichick came where he said, Okay, now we're
gonna We're either gonna go no huddle, We're just gonna
kind of pick up our tempo and Charlie was I
(30:56):
think Charlie was pretty adamant about going to huddle. So
they talked. He said, all right, coach Bouchick, we gotta go.
We gotta go winness thing. And we marched down, scored
and we finished off on that run and they pointed
it back to us, and uh, we pointed back to them.
So it wasn't like, you know, we scored twice in
(31:18):
a row. We actually had a serieson and where we
didn't score which allowed our defense. Did you change the
strategy was the beginning of the game, the first half,
We're gonna run the ball because of the weather or
or or is or is that not true? I think
we thought we could run the ball well against him.
I mean I thought going into the game that um
Our our our game plan was to to run it
(31:38):
because they were very good in the secondary and Charles
Woodson he's gonna be he's gonna be a Hall of Famer.
Um they had Eric Allen on the other side. Everybody
had some some good talent out there, some great talent.
So we thought one of the things that we could
exploit was there was there d line, their linebackers and
who are good players, but we thought we'd have a
better chance running the ball. And then especially when you
go out and see the snow ship, you know, we
(31:59):
gotta run it out. So it put that at the end.
You changed. You changed totally and said all right to
when it we're gonna have to throw it. Yeah, and
we threw it probably thirty times in the second half.
What now, let's get back to the to the to
the play, you know the fumble. What was your first
reactionally pass that? Really? You thought it was getting complete pass?
(32:21):
You know when when when he initially hit me, Um
kind of reached out to try to trip Greg Beaker.
He was the one going after and I saw him,
so I tried to kick my leg up. You can't
do a lot when you're laying on the ground, someone's
laying on top of you. But I got hit. I
was trying to throw it to the to the to
the running back, and it happened. Was a defensive end
peeled on the peeled off. He was a rusher and
(32:43):
once he saw the running back kind of released out
of the backfield. I guess it was his job to
to drop it. Was a It was a zone blitz
is what it was. So they were bringing there. They're
too strong side Lineberck. One was Charles Woodson and one
was I think Beaker. They were coming which I should
have thrown to the right side to a slant that
was wide open. As I was gonna throw, Weeks aid,
this is one of those things that I can overthink things,
(33:04):
and I'm gonna throw a Jared Redman coming out of
the backfield, but the defensive end peeled on him, which
made me hold the ball. So I was gonna recock
and throw it to him. And just as I was
starting to it was coming down. I was pumped taking
I to go, was recocking ball, was going right back
up to throw it, and that's when you hit me.
But they didn't call that illegal hit to the head
that he gave me either. Where were you when Venetary
kicked the field goal, the one that tied at the
(33:27):
one that we've said it's the greatest field goal in
NFL history, Yeah, no question. I mean you couldn't even see,
if you you know, from that from the from the
from the from the tight shot on the other end,
and you couldn't even see the ball go through the
uprights and its that's how bad it was, but I
was standing probably Susie ran out of the field. I
think I walked right over and I turned around as
fast because I know the clock was running down too,
(33:49):
so he Uh, did you say anything to him when
as he was coming on the field. I don't remember.
I remember right after I ran out there and came,
I was so excited and I figured, ship, we got
a shot. Now. That was so and I was unbelievable.
It's called the Tuck Roule Game because of that play,
but it overshadows what it really came down to, the kicks,
(34:12):
because this game solidified Adam Vinitary as the greatest bad
weather kicker in NFL history. So well Vinitary may get
overshadowed the game during that Super Bowl run. That often
gets overlooked is the a f C Championship game that
took place the following week in Pittsburgh. The Steelers were
nine point favorites, and late in the first half, Drew
(34:33):
bledso replaced and Andrew tom Brady he'd hurt his ankle,
and led the Patriots to victory. The same Drew Bledsoe,
who would signed a ten year, one three million dollar
contract the previous offseason, only to be replaced by Brady
in Week two after Bledsoe suffered what could have been
a fatal injury. The a f C Championship Game was
(34:55):
Bledsoe's greatest contribution actually getting the Patriots to the Super Bowl.
But that set up Bill Belichick's decision who to start
in the Super Bowl. Look, look, I covered the team
that week and it was agonizing does he start Brady,
the second year wonderkin or Bledsoe, the nine year veteran.
That decision to go with Brady, to go with Belichick's gut,
(35:17):
may have been the most impactful decision in the history
of the Patriots franchise. So let's rejoin Steve and Tom
and learn what happened pregame prior to Super Bowl thirty six. Now,
I want to get to the to the Super Bowl.
I read a story that said that in the locker
room before the Super Bowl that you fell asleep. Yeah,
(35:42):
I was Does that relax you before the game? Do
you do that a lot? I've never done that? And
but before the Super Bowl, the biggest game of your life,
you're sleeping in the locker room. Yeah? There was there
was such a long break between our warm up and
the start of the game because that pre game day
pregame show runs for an hour, you know, so normally
(36:03):
we're out there and we go in five minutes. They
were back on the field. Well, coach and said, hey, guys,
we're gonna have hour and ten hour and fifteen minutes. Well,
the night before, of course you're a low restless, so
you know, anytime you get to the game, we had
warmed up, and then of course you're you know, you
go sit down and the next thing I know, I'm
sitting on the floor. Next thing, I take my pads off,
(36:23):
you know, and I laid them back right in front
of my locker. I just kind of put my head down,
and I knew I had a lot of time, so
I think it at the at that point and there's
there's not really any nerves for me because there's nothing
more I can do. You're I was prepared, I was ready,
I was confident, you know, I was at peace. I
(36:43):
was just had such a piece of mind. I said, hey,
you know, I just put my head back in and
I woke up about a half hour later, and I
looked next to me, and bloods of sleeping, you know,
And I think some of the guys are kind of
kicking back, a lot of guys listening to headphones. But
it was just one of those moments that you know,
just just relaxed. A lot of people have talked about
(37:04):
the relationship that you had with Blood, so that's really
an interesting, a whole interesting story. Do you think you
could have if the roles were reversed it that you
could have done this handled it the way he did.
And that's the toughest situation as as um as there
could be for a quarterback, because when you're a quarterback,
you know you you you have this great confidence about
(37:26):
you and you never want to feel like you know
that there's someone else out there. And if I was
in that situation, I don't know how I could have
dealt with it, and um it was this. It's never easy,
and it's a competitive situation. There's one guy that plays.
You know, it's not like running back or receiver. There's
one quarterback. And you know, when you're the quarterback, you
(37:49):
always feel like, um, I've had a big part to
do with this game. When you're the backup quarterback, you
don't even feel like you're on the team. You feel
like you're a fan. You know, that guy I didn't
do anything to help our team win. So I mean
he's been a he's been a great player, you know,
for a long time. And h he was he was
a big reason of our success. That his he he
(38:12):
put you know, the team low ahead of his own goals.
And that was kind of our that was our team
and in a nutshet, and that was really us was
that we weren't gonna let any of our own agendas
get in the way of where our team was trying
to accomplish. And because of that, it was the oltim
payoff that when you do win, everyone gets the credit.
You know, there's enough credit to go around for everyone,
(38:33):
and a lot of people don't realize that that when
you're great, you know, when your team's great, you know,
the waterboys get credit, and the equipment and the trainers
and everyone, and it's great and everyone can can share
and enjoy that. But the individual stuff, now, there's nothing
that you give me. It's gonna be worth as much
as that super Bowl ring. I think we have a
shot you in the in the tunnel with the super
(38:53):
Bowl and you're and you're you and blood so and
you're banging each other and you're saying, you're gonna get this.
I'm gonna win this for you. I'm gonna win this
for you. Do you remember what you said? Is that,
um it sounded like something like that. We were going
out beforehand, and uh, I'll always go up. I was
going up to him. I made a habit of going
up to him. And you know, as quarterbacks where you know,
(39:14):
we're not the big tough guys, you know, we try
to pretend like we're going to be. So I always
grabbed him. I tried to sneak up on him and
take my helmet, just just give him, give him a
shot as hard as I can. Well, before the game,
pregame warmups, I kind of turned around and here he
came smack and he got me. So I'm gonna get
you back for that one. So I saw him in
(39:34):
I saw him in the tunnel for the game, and
I turned around and I gave him a big dove
and kind of have it. It It just kind of knocks,
you know, you just get hit. You know, I just
knocked some of the energy out of you. And I said,
I told, Hi'm gonna get you back, and I'm gonna
get you back. And then of course William mc ginnis
grabs me and he will he's you know, six six
to sixty, he just to ninety puts me up against
things and he just laughs at me. And I'm just
(39:55):
kind of like a little kid, going, I can't move.
How are ways that the Drew helped during the season,
I mean, what were the things that he did that
any specific things that he did to help you? Um,
he was just he's just that he's a it's kind
of a safety blanket, you know. He's just a guy
that he's very comfortable. There's coaches can sit there and go, man,
(40:17):
you should have thrown to this guy. And you know,
you've got to read the you know, you gotta read
the front and then hey, you gotta check them at
a linebacker on the snap. Then read the rotation of
the safeties and then if you see this, you know,
if you see the sam you know, get outside the
tight end. You know, you gotta you gotta work backside
to the the X with I mean you're going, wait, I
mean how many I just think I got? I mean
I can see a few things. And Drew had come
over and said, man, just look at this, you know,
(40:39):
and throw it here. And you know, if they take
that away throw here. I mean, you don't don't get
crazy with this, and you know coaches will go up.
You know, you should have thrown that ball on him,
And Drew's kind of looking at me like, what the
hell is he looking at? You know, he in no
way you're going to complete that ball. Um. So he's
a guy that when he's got confidence in you, you know,
(40:59):
and he's in there for eight years. Three Pro Bowls
have been the super Bowls. I mean there's you get
confidence that, okay, I am doing the right thing, and
that you know, when someone else has beating you down
he comes in. You feel like there's trusting him to
know that if he tells you something, that's the truth.
But that that's sort of a unique situation because there's
not many things I can think of going back through
(41:20):
the NFL where you have someone like you comes in
and the old the incumbent quarterback seems to be that
congenial and helpful and and you know most of the
time that he maybe they wouldn't have talked to you
or they wouldn't have helped you. So did you realize
how unusual what that situation was, and that then that
you've actually you actually replaced him, and yet he still
is is there to help you? Yeah, I think so.
(41:44):
I mean, like I said, it was never It's never easy.
It wasn't. It wasn't an easy situation were you for
either of us. I mean, because you know, I would
never want to feel like, you know, I'm stepping on
anyone's toe, and I don't want to feel like I'm
pushing someone aside, because I wasn't. You know. It was
when I took over on he was hurt, he was
(42:06):
in hospital, you know, And I saw him in hospital
and he's you know, laying there and he can't talk,
and these guys kids jumping on him, and he's lost
leaders of blood. I mean, he's just um. At that point,
you fill in and you try to play like he
would play, you know, and you try to keep getting better.
And then when he finally came back and was ready
to play, it wasn't like it was open competition or anything.
(42:26):
It was um. When he was finally ready to play,
we were on a roll, and I think that made
the coach's decision easier. He said, hey man, we're winning games,
you know, let's just keep rolling with it. And we
didn't lose after that, So how can you make a change.
(42:47):
And he's a great player, and he's always gonna be
a great and he has been and he's proved it,
and I know that he knows that, and there was
never gonna be We're never gonna let um the competitiveness
between each other, you know, take away from like I said, well,
we were trying to do it. It was very um.
(43:10):
It was a lot of It was a lot of
strain on both of us. You know that you always
have to say the right thing and feel the right
way and act the right way, but inside you know
what's going on, and you're a competitor. I want to play,
I want to play bad. I don't want to play.
I don't want to come out, and of course I
don't think that there's anyone else that should be playing
but me. On the other side, he's saying the same
thing that you know, I'm the best player. I want
(43:31):
to lead this team. And that's that's how you should feel.
And if you don't feel that way, you'll never be good.
You'll never be good at anything, you know, because you
always feel that I'm just I'm just taking up space.
Blood so often gets lost in the Brady greatest ever narrative.
But after New England won the Super Bowl, the way
the former first rounder handled his demotion and ultimately his
(43:51):
trade to the Bills just two months after the championship
is commendable. Sure, Blood so had to grapple with the
fickle fate of football history, but he never let resentment
affect his relationship with Brady or with the Patriots franchise,
which inducted him into their Hall of Fame. And when
we come back, we'll hear about the final drive in
(44:12):
the Super Bowl and the decision not to take a knee.
And in the ultimate illustration of why this interview is
a great time capsule, Steve asks Tom maybe the most
ironic question in this entire interview, if Brady's worried about
peaking too early in his career. Stay tuned, Welcome back
(44:35):
to Tails from the Vault. Let me set the scene
for you here. In Brady and Belichick's first Super Bowl together,
the Patriots were trying to ground the high flying Rams.
Remember they had Kurt Warner and the greatest show on turf.
The game was tied with a minute twenty one to go.
Keep in mind that at this point in his career,
Brady was basically a game manager. There was conservative play
(44:55):
calling by then offensive coordinator Charlie Weiss, and the emphasis
was just don't make any mistakes. That's why the legendary
John Madden suggested on the broadcast that the Patriots taken
knee and play for overtime. Thank I think that the
pickpot for this field position. You have to just run
the clock out. You have to play for rolls the time. Now,
(45:17):
I don't think you want to force anything here. We
don't want if you want to, thank stupid because you
have no time out on your back up. Little did
we all know what we were about to witness and
set the stage for the next twenty years. I want
to move ahead to the end of the Super Bowl,
the last drive with a minute and twenty one to go.
(45:37):
Can you take me take me through that, because that again,
that's a classic sequence of plays in NFL history. Yeah,
that was they had just scored the first one. When
you were the tom when you were do you realize
what was at stake? I mean the magnitude of the
event and uh, there's a famous story with Joe Montana
that against the Super Bowl against the Bengals, where he's
(45:59):
leading team the last drive and all of Suddy sees
John Candy and the you know, the comedian, and then
he's going to call in the play. He says, hey,
you know, look over there as John Candy. Everybody looks over,
and then he continues to call the play. Was there
anything like that that that you had, any any abstract
kind of moment like that that you might have had
that final drive and you had I had no idea
(46:21):
the magnitude, no idea. I mean just it's it feels
like another two minute drill. And until that following through
the uprights, it was just hey, you's, well, you know,
flip to JR. You know, throw another swing pass, bamn,
hit Troy and I'm runs on. He kicks the game winner,
and it was almost like okay, what's next and then
(46:43):
it's it's it all set in that Holy shit, you know,
we're super Bowl champs, you know, and they Caffetti's coming down.
I mean, that was it was incredible. It was the
start of the drive. We were kind of deciding whether
we want to kneel on it or or take a
shot and go win it. Charlie came over our offensive
(47:05):
Cordiner and he said, uh, he said, we're gonna go
for it. You know, we're gonna go to winness. You're
not going to play for the tie, right, So I'm
kind of getting loose, he said, you know, charl said
get ready to go. You know, some get morem loose.
I was like, throw a lot. It's just that I'm
around the field. Charlie kind of grassed me and says, hey,
you know there's a bad play. We can run out
the clock, you know, just you know, be careful with
the ball. So I took about three more steps and
(47:27):
drews right behind. He goes, hey, and he goes, fuck that.
He goes go out there and sling it, you know,
and it was like, that's what we're gonna do. Of course,
I were on the huddle, you know, I started jumping
around and there was no TV time out, so we're
going right away and we said, uh, sorry, guys, let's
go win this thing. And six plays later, man and
(47:48):
it kicks forty eight yard. We have a shot at you.
At the end of the gay. I think you're in
the pedical in your hands are like this, and your
life you're seeing it might have been done. The sports
Illustrated had it too, but we had a great shot.
Were you thinking at that point, was that the backup,
you know, thinking about I can't believe that this is
actually happened. Yeah, no question. And I was looking at
my sisters and I saw them sitting over there, and
(48:09):
I kind of looked like, can you believe this kind
of this is just unbelievable? Where did you go next?
What are some of the things that you've done since?
Of course he went to Disney World and the Pro Bowl.
Who were some of the people that you've met since then? Oh? God,
just heroes of mine. I mean John Elway and Steve
Young and Muhammad Ali, um, Dan Marino. When you talk
(48:32):
to all these people, you really realize, Um, you know,
you talked to Montana and you know Montana and Steve Young,
and you know, you just get a feel for him
and you know why, Now I know why this guy's
done what he's done. You know why, I see what
there's just you know, there's just there's a competitiveness, there's
a spirit about him. You know. That's like when you
(48:53):
when you're around people like that, you just kind of
feel like, you know, man, I'm sitting next to the man,
you know, I mean, this is that's the way I
feel now I'm saying I gott if. I got a
lot of years to get to catch up to those guys.
But you know, you hear these stories about them, and um,
you know when you finally get to meet him and
you get to meet Muhammad Ali, and Muhammad Ali was,
(49:15):
you know, the greatest fighter ever and he's you know,
he came up and he's showing a magic trick and
everybody is just and awe. You know, you just feel
like he and he walks out of the room and
everyone sit there. I mean, that was unbelievable. And that's
like when you sit there and go now, that's why,
you know, that's that's why people feel like people make
Muhammad Ali makes people feel like that. You know. Damn
(49:37):
Marino makes people feel like that. John Own makes people
feel like that. And he made his teammates feel like that,
and his coaches that everyone was believed in them and
everyone was like, hey, man, if I'm on your side,
we're gonna win. We're on the right side. When you
look back at last season, that your last season and
all the great things that happened, what do you think
is the biggest obstacles, but you have to overcome last
(49:58):
year when you look back at it, um, I would
say learned to adjust to the outside pressures of playing quarterback.
That the football is the stuff that's always come pretty easy,
you know, the athletics, stuff to throw in the ball,
to learning the plays that hang with my team, and
(50:19):
that's the easy stuff. But the pressures of the interviews
and the demands and the tickets and the hotel rooms
and you know, the phone calls, and it's just it
can get it can get very um You feel like
the walls are caving in after a while that you know,
you get boxed into a corner where you know you're
(50:39):
so set in your routine that you know anything that
breaks it, you just you just become overwhelmed. And I
was really overwhelmed this last year because I felt like, um,
I felt like there was no escape for me. I mean,
there was no way to enjoy myself. For as great
as the year was, the football was great, but off
(51:01):
the field, it was hard to get to use to
kind of my new life. You know, years ago, a
lot of times the quarterback, you know, when you had
to Dan Fouts or a Bradshaw they were the gun slingers,
and they, you know, the whole team took their character
from the from the quarterback. Now, sometimes it seems like
a quarterback is just like the caretaker. You know, you
(51:22):
send the guy out there. Don't lose the game for us,
you don't have to win it. Don't lose it the
defense when it will win it with the field position.
Do you get a sense of that change at all? Uh?
You know, I think if you look at individual teams,
I really think the I really think the team takes
on the personality of the quarterback, and in the quarterback
(51:43):
takes on the personality of the coach. And I think
that's how it kind of trickles down. So you think
you're you have Bill Belichick's personality. I think I take
parts from him. You know that his um, he didn't
get flustered too easy, I mean, and you know he
kind of he moves on, you know, if the week's
over or hey, we're on the next week. And that's
kind of how I am. But I think, you know,
you you you a question like that, I think they're
(52:09):
if I'm thinking about our team, we had a great defense.
You know, we had a team that could run the ball. Well,
so what you know do you need? I'm there to
fill in the gaps. I'm there to there to make plays. Hey,
when we're down ten in the snow, you gotta go
win it, you know. But if you're if you're up one,
you know, and you gotta run the ball to win
the game and hit a few third downs, you gotta
do that too. I think every team demands different, something different,
(52:33):
you know. I mean I think of the Baltimore Ravens,
you know, and that defense. I mean, you couldn't score
that defense if you you know, if in fifty quarters,
you know. But then I think of the Rams, and
you think Kurt Warren. They asked Hurt to do different things,
and they ask different players to do different things. I
don't think the quick I don't think the relevance of
the position has changed one bit. I think it's it's,
(52:55):
i mean, probably the most important position on the field,
because you've got the ball every snap, and every time
you touch it, you know something's happening, and and the
words come from your at the play cops comes from
your mouth, the signals coming to the game plan. Are
you afraid about peeking at this point? I mean you
think it. Dan Marino and the story, you know, the
second year he breaks through a forty eight touchdown passes,
(53:17):
breaks always records, goes to the super Bowl, and then
he never returns. Has that ever cross your mind? That boy,
you know, this is really so, I might never be
back here again. That's never It's never cross But I
don't think that ever will cross my mind that you always,
Like I said, I'm always looking forward. It was great.
I mean, I had a had a our equipment manager
(53:38):
in college and he had been a Michigan for twenty
five years or something. He's got so many big ten rings.
I mean, he doesn't have enough fingers for all the
rings he's gotten. He says, you know what, whenever he's
you know what, Tom, you know what my favorite ring is?
And I said, which one's at? That's the next one.
That's why I think the next one that's my favorite.
All Right, it's a good way to end that. That's it.
(53:59):
We gotta we gotta do that again. I hope we
get you back here again. But like I said, I'll
be throwing our guys off. You guys, I'm sick. NFL filmed.
All right, that's it, Thanks guys, that's it. Thank you.
I think it's been so cool to observe in this
interview the roots of Brady's Hall of Fame career. But
(54:20):
there's so many times where I hear Brady say something
and I just want to yell, just you wait. Like
Winnie laments how overwhelmed he felt after his first Super
Bowl win, but his comment about his favorite super Bowl
ring being his next one, well, he's maintained that as
he's gone on to win six more. As we speak,
Brady has just retired, although he threw his caveat Zinger
(54:42):
into the universe never say Never. Next week, we'll hear
from another man who has just walked away from the
game with perhaps an open ended future, in Sean Payton.
We'll travel back to two thousand seven for an interview
with Peyton that took place just after his first season
in New Orleans. I hope you'll join us. Thanks for listening.
(55:03):
I'm Andrea Kramer, M
Welcome to NFL Films Tales from the Vault. I'm your host,
Hall of Fame journalist Andrea Kramer. On this podcast, we
take you into the NFL Films Vault, and I'm not kidding.
There really is a fireproof fault where over fifty thousand
cans of film restored. Among the many items in that
vault are over two hundred interviews conducted by the late
(00:28):
President of NFL Films, my mentor, Steve Sable. And that's
where I come in. I'm here to present these interviews raw,
unedited in their entirety for the first time, so I'll
be jumping in here and there to provide context and insight.
And today I'm so excited to be bringing you a
true time capsule Steve's two thousand to interview with Tom Brady.
(01:07):
It was two thousand two. Tom Brady had just won
his first Super Bowl, and no one, even in their
wildest dreams, even with the greatest script ever to be
written in Hollywood, could envision this was going to be
the first of his seven Super Bowls in a career
that would spend twenty two years. Back then, he hadn't
yet married one of the most beautiful wealthiest models on
(01:29):
the face of the earth, Giselle Bunch, and he didn't
even have any of his three children. Here's who Tom
Brady was. I remember interviewing him right after that first
Super Bowl. He came over to our said at ESPN
for us to do what was then considered the gold
standard for interviews, the Sunday Conversation, and fresh face Tom
Brady says to me, Wow, I'm going to be the
(01:50):
subject of the Sunday Conversation. He was pretty excited about
that after just winning his first Super Bowl. But like
I said, that's who Brady was back then. And and
this is what was happening at NFL Films in the
summer of two thousand two. The company had just moved
into a two hundred thousand square foot facility in Mount Laurel,
(02:10):
New Jersey, and Steve Sable invited that young fresh face
quarterback to do the first interview on the new set
in the new building. Look, if you've got a child
that's interested in football, this interview is a clinic in leadership.
What that really means, and it's incredible considering that Brady
was only twenty four years old at this time. So
(02:32):
we begin today's interview with Brady talking about baseball, he said,
if he wasn't playing football, he'd be playing that sport.
It's his other favorite. So let's go to the vault
for Steve Sable and Tom Brady. We all said, I
read something that you said that baseball was rougher than football. Yeah,
(02:53):
what do you mean by that? Well, when I was
playing baseball growing up, what position were you? As a catcher?
That was a big catcher? So I was six four
two pounds getting down to us It's a catcher, not
at all. And that was my problem. I had my
knees every time I get down to the catcher stance.
After you know, catching seven innings of a game, I
get up and I'd be limping back to the to
(03:13):
the locker room to change my shoes. And after about
four years of high school baseball, I said, I think
I've had enough. I'm gonna go play football. Would be
a little bit easier on me. Were you quarterbacks at
the first position you played? Yeah, I went out for
my freshman uh. And I played football my whole my
whole life until I got to high school. And my
my mom didn't want me to play. She didn't want
(03:33):
me growing up playing football, said, yo, get hurt, you know,
but I she let me go out for a freshman
football and I was a backup. I wouldn't even start
in quarterback my freshman team. We three teams. We had
a freshman team, JV team, and the varsity team in
the lowest of the levels. And I'm the backup on
the team that went oh and eight, you know. And
and the guy who started before me, he's my best friend,
(03:54):
and he ended up quentin football, UM, which allowed me
to be the starting quarterback on the JV team. And
that's what happened this year is almost a mirror image
of what happened the first time that you ever played. Yeah,
it happened like that. It happened like that in college. Also,
so why that the guy in front of you got
hurt and then you stepped into Yeah, there was two
guys in front of me. One guy got hurt. I
(04:16):
moved up to number two, UM, and then I ended
up when I when I was starting my fourth and
fifth year, UM, no one got hurt. I kind of
assumed a role, but I was kind of a backup
and always kind of looking to get ahead. Now there's
a story that you when you found out you were
going to start at Michigan. Well, first of all, why
didn't you go to Michigan anyway? I thought that you
(04:37):
could have gone to Cow and you would have been
a starter. And when you went to Michigan, there was
like five or six all state quarterbacks ahead of you.
Why did you pick that school? Yeah, I to get
an education, right, so we didn't. So we did that too.
But I, uh, I went there. There was lat of
schools on the West Coast. I'm from San Francisco. There
was a law of schools in the West Coast that
(04:58):
I was thinking about going to. And and I remember
I was sending out tapes to different colleges when I
was being recruited, and uh, you know, I had these
letters from Michigan, and I'm thinking to my dad. You know,
I was a JVKI in the starter of my freshman team,
and I'm we're sending out these tapes. I'm like, you know,
here's Cow State, north Ridge, here's uh, you know, some
of these schools down south, University of San Diego to
(05:20):
play football. And I'm saying that you think I should
send a tape to Michigan. And He's like, yeah, you
know what, let's go for it. So send a tape
to Michigan and they were the one of the first
ones to respond, Hey, we love the tape. We'd love
to have you come in and uh. And I ended
up they ended up coming to see me at a
couple of games, and then sure enough I took the
trip back there just kind of school. It's a great school.
(05:43):
And I called my parents from the airport on the
way back and I told me, I'm just gonna take
a trip to Michigan. I'm not gonna go to Michigan.
That's way too far, it's way too cold. And I
took the trip and I called him from the airport
on the trip home and I said, Dad, Mom, I
think I know where I want to go to school.
And it was a it was a great decision for me. Now,
when you were a little did you go out in
the backyard and pass, you know, pretend that you were
(06:04):
going to play in the NFL someday or or were
you not really interested in footballs a kid? Yeah, that's
what well on our street, I mean, you'd be saying,
go okay, go down, make an out rude at the
fire hydrant. You know, bounce the guy off the car fender.
And I mean on my street growing up, we had
fifty kids. I mean there were so many kids. I
mean we didn't have dinner. I mean it was like
(06:24):
my mom would come out and she got guys were
eating and I'm not hungry, you know, and we're gonna
We're gonna stay and play all night. And we played
Captured the Flag and we played football. We should draw
plays in memorized place. Now it's all time quarterback. You
have three guys, you know, all time quarterback and get
one receiver and the other guy to be the dB
and then you played you pretend to be when you
were a quarterback, did you you know, obviously you must
(06:45):
have players that you watch. Did you say, oh, I'm
Terry Bradshaw or Roger Staubacher. I like to be Jerry
Rice when I was the receiver. So it's the oldest
kid was always the quarterback. So I was I was
playing receiver, and I'd always want to be Jerry Rice
because you know, a San Francisco kid, I mean he
was growing up and when I was seven years old
(07:06):
when I started to realize the game of football, and
he was Jerry Rice. Was the man and he was
only get mess when they learning all the Super Bowls.
And I want to go back to to Uh, you
had three sisters, right, so they were worst athlete in
the family. You were, yeah, lettering those girls are better
athletes than I am. What do they play? The oldest
one was an All American softball pitcher at Fresno State.
(07:27):
And she's, uh, she's competitive as any girl I've ever
been around. And she's a she's feisty, and she's a
tough swe house. And then the other one was a
soccer player at St. Mary's College. Hecko soccer player. The
other one was a basketball and softball player also, so
well they must have been that must have been kind
of tough, you know. So it's a little brother of
three sisters that are really did they give you a
lot of ship? You know when you started out about
(07:49):
you know you're not you know you you know you're
not measuring up to the rest of the FAMI or
they they inspire you. Yeah, a little both. I was
always I was always a little brother. And you're Maureen's brother,
you're Julie's brother. And and it's when I was a
freshman in high school, I wrote a essay about what
it's like to be a baby brother, and I was like,
(08:09):
people always refer to me as a baby, so maybe
one day, you know, I want my sisters referred to
as that's Tommy's sister, that's Julie's sister. And you know,
they give me that crap now they're when, oh god,
we asked about your brother. How's you know? Now when
you were going to the super Bowl the week before
the day, your sisters call you up and talk to you.
(08:30):
Oh yeah, they were. They were on the phone out,
you know, I mean the whole season and the Super Bowl.
I mean they would after the Pittsburgh game when you
know I twisted Michael. They they were always, of course
concerned and uh and we had we had big plans
and everyone was coming down to the super Bowl. Mean,
you're not gonna miss the super Bowl. Years old, you
(08:51):
never know when you're gonna get back. So they they
loved coming down and we had we had a great
one of the one the two days for the game.
I went to then there with my family was the
first time my family was together for probably seven months.
My mom and dad, my three sisters, um my sister's
fiancee um my niece. It was. It was probably the best,
(09:13):
the best memory of all Super Bowl. We Kevin dinner
at a steakhouse in New Orleans. Do you talk about
that that anybody has about the strategy about or did
everybody purposely try to not talk about the game to
make it more nervous? Uh? A little both. My dad
always wants to know, Okay, let's first play the game,
and you any secret plays and I mean there throwback passes, reverses. Um,
(09:34):
he's uh, he's a strategist. Everyone else kind of like
we'll talking about something else. We see all the football crowd.
We can read that. We don't give a shit about
that we want But what it's the best advice your
dad's ever giving you. I know it's a tough question,
but he's come up a couple of times. I'm wondered
if there's some like motto or something that that he's
you know, told you since you've been a little kid.
Always remember, Yeah, when I was when I was probably
(09:59):
first or second grade, I had a dinis appointment one morning.
It was like eight o'clock in the morning, so I
was gonna be late for school. So my dad's sitting
downstairs eating practice, and I walked up and I've got
a note and said, Dad, will you write me a
note to tell my teacher that I'm gonna be late
for school? And he goes, He goes, yeah, no problem.
He gives when the piece paper, just a regular pad
of paper, and he writes, you know, dear, you know, miss,
(10:19):
you know whoever, Tom will be late for school. He's
got a DNIS appointment. So it covered about a quarter
of the page. So what do I do. I ripped
three chords of the sheet off and throw it away.
So I've got this little piece of paper, I mean,
And he says, what the hell did you just do
that for? I said, what do you mean? He goes,
when I signed my name to a piece of paper,
you know, I'm presenting myself and I'm not presenting, you know,
(10:40):
a little quarter piece of paper ripped and torn. I mean,
that's me. I want it. You know, this is Tom
Brady on it. This is I'm presenting, you know, this
sheet of paper. And it was just something like, if
you're going to present something, you know, it's got to
be exactly how you'd want it to be. You know,
it's not ripped it's not torn, it's not you know, discolored,
there's no belling airs. I mean, there's nothing that's uh.
(11:02):
It's something I've always taken with me and says, hey,
when I when I signed my name to something, when I,
you know, say this is Tom Brady, then I wanted
to be exactly how I wanted to be presented. Thomas
Edward Patrick Brady Jr. And that junior is pretty important
because it signifies the relationship he has with his father,
Tom Brady Senior. For all the talk about Brady's family
(11:24):
and we've heard about his sisters, don't rule out the
importance of his mom. You know how many postgame interviews
I've done with Brady and he ends them all with
hi Mom, Hi Mom, Hi Mom. Well, there's a lot
of those in the archives as well. And of course
if you ask anyone in the family, they'll tell you
that Brady gets his competitive juices from his mother, Galen,
(11:45):
But his relationship with his father is so strong, that
bonds so unbreakable that when Tom went across the country
to Michigan as opposed to up the road to cal
Tom Brady Senior told me that he had to see
a therapist to work at. His issue was with separation
anxiety from his best friend, his son, So upholding the
(12:06):
Brady name is hugely important to Tom, which is why
this story of how he almost got arrested at Notre
Dame is so meaningful. You mean you never heard the
one about Tom Brady getting locked in Notre Dame stadium. Um,
I want you to tell a story about when you
when you realize you were going to start at Michigan.
You looked on the schedule and you saw that you
(12:27):
were going to play Notre Dame. Then what did you do?
It was probably when Rooney came out, So I just
touchdown Jesus and you know, I mean this, this Notre
Dame is kind of or of Notre Dame. And I'm
thinkuring I've never been to the stadium. There's a wedding
in Chicago that was a part of song. On the
way back from Chicago Day and Arbor, I was like,
you know, I drive by sea signs for South Bend.
(12:49):
It's about a month before we're playing them, and I'm thinking, okay,
I'm just stopping. I'd love to see what it's like.
So when I go down and run on the field
for the first time. It's not the first time. I'm
getting used to get used the environment. And so I
pulled up. It's a Sunday afternoon, you know, it's about
probably about five or six o'clock. And uh, I mean,
I've never been there. But there's a huge um uh
(13:12):
steel gates to get in. And I go up to
the first one and it's locked. And I'm thinking, how
the hell am I going to get in the stadium?
What if I if I just walk around, maybe someone
left the gate open. So I walk around. Sure enough,
halfway around there's a gate that's unlocked. Um. You know,
there's a lock hanging off, but it's not fastening the
gate together. So I walk in and I locked the
gate to itself, thinking that while someone walked by from
(13:34):
the outside and so it was unlocked, they might lock
it knocked me in. Well, I walk around, you know,
the stadium. I go by yourself. No one's in the stadium,
you know, I don't see anyone on hear anything. As
I see is a bunch of no trespassing signs, you know.
So I'm kind of kind of creeping my way through
the stadium and I'm standing on the field kind of
walking around the outside. We're thinking when you were I'm
gonna play here in a month or yeah. I just
(13:57):
kind of took it all in, you know. I walked
up to the top of this stands and kind of
walked down and stood on our sidelines, stood in the
middle of the field real quick, and I kind of
ran across, and uh, I was just you know, you
go and look at the touchdown Jesus from the stadium
and it was cool. And so I walked walking back
out to the gate that I walked in, and I
guess someone had come into the stadium because they had
(14:19):
unlocked the gate and then fastened the two sides of
the gate together. So I'm thinking, oh, I'm locked in
the freaking stadium. It's six o'clock at night, my car
sitting out there in some illegally parked zone, and there's
I'm thinking, I'm playing here in a month. I'm gonna
be on Sports Center, you know, breaking into the stadium.
So I'm trying to get out, and then I go
(14:39):
up to one end of the stadium, but I think
it was a south south end zone and I there's
a big there's a ramp, you know, kind of a
handicap ramp that goes up the side of the stadium,
and about twenty ft up there's kind of a you know,
it's like an open window that you can jump down
under the grass. And it was you know when I
got up there, and I kind of looked down because
(15:00):
I was gonna jump over the top. I'm thinking, I'm
gonna break my ankle. I don't know what's worse, being jail.
We're breaking my ankle jumping out of the stadium. So
I don't know what to do. I didn't have a
phone on me, so I get in this uh I
get into this, this gardening, this maintenance tent, and I
found a sledgehammer. So I take the sledgehammer, go outside
(15:21):
and there's a there's an extension ladder bolted onto the wall,
and I just started beating the hell out of its
extension the ladder to knock it off the wall. So
I knocked the thing off the wall after about ten
I mean I must have hit it ten times. And
this ladder was so busted up. I took it, carried it,
you know, halfway around the stadium, threw it over the
top where I was gonna jump, climbed down, got in
(15:42):
that car and drove it U souf then faster and
I've ever driven in my life. Did you tell anybody
that story when you got back to Michigan. No, I
didn't want to tell my coach. I didn't want to
tell anyone. I didn't want any want to know what
I mean. And people when I'm climbing on the ladder,
there were people that were visiting and I turned on
the got this cam quarter from look for that footage.
(16:03):
It might be somewhere. You know, someone's probably got it.
If anyone actually does have this footage, can you please
contact NFL Films. I mean, this may not be the
sports version of the Suppruter film, but this is Tom
Brady we're talking about. And when we come back, we'll
hear about his infamous NFL scouting report, and Steve and
Tom get into great detail about the Tuck Rule game.
(16:26):
Stay tuned, Welcome back to NFL Films Tales from the Vault.
It seems almost unfathomable that Tom Brady was drafted in
this sixth round, but make no mistake one where he
was picked, that numbers etched in his mind and his legacy,
his draft status and the kind of embarrassing portrayal of
(16:48):
Brady and draft anals belies what I think is perhaps
his greatest attribute, his mental fortitude. That's what's enabled him
to never accept the judgment of others or to set
limits on himself. So again, as you listen to young
Tom Brady, remember this is twenty years ago. With this mindset,
makes it pretty clear why he's going on to become
(17:09):
the greatest Super Bowl winner of all time. I want
to read you something. This is the draft report on you,
and we we condensed this a little bit, and basically
it goes Tom Brady poor build. That might be accurate.
I would probably agree skinny lacks great physical stature and
(17:34):
strength and gets knocked down easily. It's the same thing
as a runt. Yeah. Um, you know, I don't think
I was. Well, that kind of gets me fired up
because I big, and you know, the head of these people. No.
I mean that sounds like Joe Montana right there. I mean,
(17:56):
uh huh, Well, when you what I'm going to get
at is when you got to the end I fell,
I mean, what were you thinking that? You know I'm here.
Maybe I'll come up for a cup of coffee. I
can play a couple of years. Maybe I can be
a starter. Maybe I can you know, you know, make
a career out of this, or did you have you know,
bigger dreams and say, geez, you know I can. I
think I can play. I had huge dreams and I
(18:19):
still got bigger dreams, and I think that, you know,
my whole life, people tell you, hey, you know you
can't do this. You're too you know, you're too slow.
You don't throw hard, and you know you're not. I
didn't even say that that we can add that I
have a good arm. Sure, I'm sure if you if
you if you didn't have the condensed vers and that's
part of what you read. But my whole you know,
when I was when I was a freshman high school,
(18:41):
when I wasn't starting my coach out, you know, you
gotta work on your speed. You know you're just not
fast enough. So sure enough, that's what I did. And
you know when I got to college, same thing. You know,
you've got to be better at this. You can't do this.
And when people tell you, hey, you can't do this,
you can't do this, and you keep overcoming that, I mean,
you just you build this. This it's confidence in yourself,
and it's belief in yourself that even when nobody else
(19:03):
believes in you, that I'm still gonna do it because
I don't give a ship what you say. But I
know what I can do, and I've done it, and
I'm gonna prove it to you. And then if you
don't believe, I'm gonna do it again, and I'm gonna
keep doing to you believe. And if you don't believe,
that's your that's your problem, because someday I'm gonna get
it done. And and I want your help. I don't
ask for I don't want your sympathy, and I'm gonna
you know, I'm gonna keep overcoming things. What did the
Patriots tell you when you started to day go through
(19:25):
the same thing? Hey, Tom, you gotta work on this,
You gotta work on that? Or were they more encouraging?
They were? They were always very encouraging. We had a
quarterback coach who came to Who's the guy who worked
me out at Michigan? And he passed away last year
at Dick Raybine and he came to my school and
he was always on my side from the day I
got there. We had meetings um before the before the
(19:47):
the veteran meetings, it was rookie meetings and that was
me and him and all summer long we worked on stuff.
And over the course of last year watching from Watch
You from Drew and John Freese was a great tour
of Michael bish was on. I mean, these guys are
guys that I watch. I kind of said, Okay, well,
what do they do well? And I try to take
that from them and how can I how can I,
you know, find a niche? What what do I do well?
(20:09):
And how can I contribute? What do you think you
do well? What's your what's your best asset as a quarterback?
Oh man, that's the hardest question to answer. We can
pass on it and come back to it. I mean,
if there's something that I don't think I do well
or maybe what's what do you think all the obviously
all the things have been written about you this year?
What do you think is maybe your overlooked most overlooked
(20:31):
skill that that people say, well, Tom Brady to this
and this and this, But you're saying, you know, nobody
ever mentioned that I can do this, like you know,
follow through. Maybe something a little like following through in
your fakes or you know, picking out a third receiver.
I think I think one thing that in the reason
why I think i'm you know, i'm successful, as I
think I love playing football. I just and because of that,
(20:56):
everything is sacrificed for playing. I mean, I love I
could throw seven on seven for twelve hours a day,
and it's just that's that's the most fun I have,
you know, throughout you know, my life is going on
in the football field and play and catch and because
of that, and people see that, and people say, hey, man,
time's having a hell of a time. Let's just let's
(21:18):
just hop on his back and we'll go in there
and I'm gonna have a hell of a time to
doing it, you know. And we have fun out their practice.
I mean we're cracking jokes and we're you know, making
fun of our coaches and and I think when you
have a group of guys that you know, it could
kind of come together and say, you know, it sounds
it sounds phony. But he mean, well, I don't think
(21:39):
it's a hell of a time. Is there one specific
playtime that you can look back last year through the
whole season and think, man, I know I can do
this now. It was there one game or play that
that comes back to your mind or that you could
say when that happened, you'd say, you know, I think
(22:00):
I can. I think I can take this team to
the Super Bowl. Mm hm. You know, it's probably probably
the most disappointing game of the year when it was
probably an interception. You know that there was a play
in Denver Broncos where, um, we had like four interceptions
that in the last quarter, and that's the hell of
a quarter and ship four picks. There was one where
(22:25):
I was It was the second one and I was
thrown to Troy Brown, and we had an option route
for Troy, and I didn't read Troy the way I
should have read him. You know, Troy's got option to
break in a breakout depending on where the defenders what
his own coverage. Troy started to the outside and he
saw the defender sitting outside, so he turned back in
(22:45):
while you know, I'm figuring. You know, I was a
little flustered. As soon as he broke outside, I threw it,
and I threw it's darnall. Walker hit him right between
the two and the seven. He took it yards to
end the game. You know, and from that point on
I said, I'm never gonna let that happen again, you know,
And I'm never gonna take my team out of the game.
(23:06):
I'm never gonna um make a mistake like that, and
and never kind of miss communication with you. I mean
all the things that come into a play like that
that you know, we gotta go forward from there, and
I gotta make sure that never happens again. And that
was really when we started take off and I was
a four picks were we were three. I think that
took us to I think we're two and three at
(23:27):
the time or something like that. But our season really
turned from that point. And I thought, you know, I
remember what you're saying about relating to your teammates. I
did an interview a long time ago with Bobby Lane
and he said that the quarterback has got to be
different than everybody else. He says, football, it's like a
cast system. You have the whole team here and the
(23:49):
quarterback is up here. He's separate, he doesn't socialize, he's
he's got to be different. You think that's that's that's
still true. Where do you believe in that? Um In
a sense, yes, but a sense now and I think
you gotta be one of the boys because you are.
But in another sense, there's more expectation, there's more responsibility.
(24:12):
So you know, when all the guys are going off
to drink beers, you know you might have to slip
a few waters in there. You know, you gotta you're
you're one of the guys and you enjoy hanging out
with them, but you've gotta be up at seven. You know,
you've got to study film late. You know, you've gotta
you've got to be the guy that's you know, fills
in the holes for everyone else. So when everyone else
is is you know, goof around or get a little complacent.
(24:35):
You've got to be the one that you can bring
everyone back up. You know, you've got to be the
one that is kind of the checks and balances of
the whole team. And but you can't ever seem like,
you know, you're another coach, because you're not. You know,
you're a player, and the coach communicates you do. But
it's a fine line. It's a very fine line because
you know, the quarterback gets a lot of the you know,
(24:57):
when when people want to talk to you want to
talk to the quarterback, you know, and the quarterback has
always held to a certain level. But you don't ever
want your guys feeling like they can't talk to you.
They put you on that pedstle because you want to
be You want to feel like I'm just I'm just
like you guys. You know, I'm slugging it out like you.
And that's how I feel. I've read once that um
(25:18):
in order to succeed in something, you have to have
a clear knowledge of your own weakness weaknesses. Obviously, you
had an incredibly successful season. What was What do you
think is your weakness the thing that you were aware
of during the course of this year? Wow? Uh? And
(25:38):
want A lot of times you pride yourself on you
know what, what you do do well? And I think
sometimes going back to that, you think, or at least
I think. You know, I can think my way through
this game. You know, I'm a smart guy. I can
process the information I could. I know the cause, I
know the audibles, I know the defenses. But one of
the weaknesses sometimes you get too smart for yourself. You know,
(25:58):
you start to over anticipate things you don't play. You
think that, okay, I have this play versus you know,
I see a defense case Cover two defense. I know
exactly my read. Well, you know what if the free
safety doesn't play cover too quite like I expect them to,
And I've already thrown the ball to a guy who
should be open if you played it the right way.
But you know he's guessing, so he picks the ball.
(26:22):
And you can overthink things. You can you can anticipate things,
but you can over anticipate, and you could. You could
talk your way out of place. You know that. You
know you're going to the line of scrimmage. Sometimes you're oh, ship,
you know, I hate this play. I don't like. I
didn't like in practice, I didn't like the game plan,
and now he's calling it, you know, And then you
get out there and sure enough it's a bad play,
(26:43):
you know, just because you've talked yourself into it. So
we're surrounded by all this memorabilia. What did you save
from last season? I gotta I got a few things.
I have my Super Bowl jersey, of course, Um are
you waring your ring? Well, get him soon. I don't
have it the next Sunday. But the one thing that
(27:04):
I kept was the touchdown ball from the Raider game.
Then when I ran it in, you know, everyone said,
you can't run, you know, it's too slow. Can't run,
you know, And that was that was like one of
the biggest players of my career. And I spiked that.
I tried to spike that ball so hard, you know,
And did you get how did you get the ball?
(27:24):
Did you get the ref to give it to you
or how do you know it's the real ball? As
soon as I spiked it, Damian what he picked it
up my center and he came over and he gave
to me. Was I think you want this? And uh,
I kind of took it off the sideline like grid
and I wouldn't let him go to that ball. I
put it in a safe place. They get to Dom
Brochard quiment, don't you lose this? As I wants aft
to the game? Where is it now? Um, it's in
(27:45):
my house. I wrote on it. You know Patriots. You know,
Patriots first Oakland first rushing touchdown. It's pretty cool. Now,
let's go back to that game. When you run out
onto the field and you see that that weather was
the first thing that you thought of. Great, you know,
you know I'm from Michigan, I'm used to playing in
this or oh boy, this is gonna be. This is
(28:07):
gonna be hell to play at something like it. Ran out,
probably to our always like to go out early and
get loose. I walked, I said, holy sh it, why
is it the field not covered? That's what I thought,
you know, cornerbacks are always thinking that kind of the footing.
I mean, the ball is gonna be wet. And uh.
I ran out and I was I couldn't believe it.
When was the first time I had played in snow
(28:28):
like that before? Real? And you and you played at
Michigan and you never had a snowstorm like that, Never
a snowstorm like that. Practice we had done in practice
a little bit, but never never like that. I don't
think a lot of people have played in weather like that.
I just that effect the game, that kind of snow
play of that weather. What did you have to change?
They were big, the snowflakes were. They were big, soft,
(28:49):
you know, white snowflake. They weren't heavy slush, you know,
So it wasn't like a just a slush bowl out there.
It was. The snow was pretty dry, so it was
I'm sure playing in that snow was probably better than
playing in in the rain. In the rain, the hard
part I think was for the receivers because the field
was like cement on the outside and from the numbers
(29:10):
out it was it was ice and the field was
frozen solid, so they couldn't get in and out of cuts.
And the only thing that was keeping them from cutting
was the snow. So guys would have their cleats, you know,
their half inch spikes on, and they're be half inch
of snow to two or three inches snow that was
packed down by the in the game, but nobody could
make any cuts. The dbs with backpedal and you throw
the body receiver and he couldn't even break to break
(29:31):
up the ball. So in a lot of ways, I
think I was an advantage for the quarterback. We have
a shot of you in the in the bob Crab
before the game, and there's like some sort of a conversation.
Do you remember what he said to you, what you
said to him? Yeah? I remember that one. Uh. I
think I promised him we'd win the game. Okay, he'd
(29:52):
come up to me a couple of weeks before, and uh,
going in earlier that week, I said to him, I said,
we're gonn get this one. You know, we're winning this
ball game, and he said, all right, say something for
the game. And he looked at me, said you remember
what you told me, right, And I said something like yeah,
I said, I promise you we're gonna win this one.
So we're gonna get this one for you. I read
(30:13):
something about the strategy of that game, and a lot
of credit was given to coach Belichick, and justifiably so.
But and I don't know whether this is true, but
they said that this particular article said that the whole
first you know, three quarters is that it was just
run the ball, run the ball, run the ball. And
it wasn't until that you were really in a desperate
situation that the coach said all right, you know, to
(30:34):
throw the damn thing and let's see if we can
we can win it this way. Yeah, we were down
ten and the fourth quarter and it was probably twelve
minutes left and Charlie Weiss walked over to me and
Charlie said, uh, he said, we're going to no huddle.
He says, we gotta go win this game. And uh.
And Coach Belichick came where he said, Okay, now we're
gonna We're either gonna go no huddle, We're just gonna
kind of pick up our tempo and Charlie was I
(30:56):
think Charlie was pretty adamant about going to huddle. So
they talked. He said, all right, coach Bouchick, we gotta go.
We gotta go winness thing. And we marched down, scored
and we finished off on that run and they pointed
it back to us, and uh, we pointed back to them.
So it wasn't like, you know, we scored twice in
(31:18):
a row. We actually had a serieson and where we
didn't score which allowed our defense. Did you change the
strategy was the beginning of the game, the first half,
We're gonna run the ball because of the weather or
or or is or is that not true? I think
we thought we could run the ball well against him.
I mean I thought going into the game that um
Our our our game plan was to to run it
(31:38):
because they were very good in the secondary and Charles
Woodson he's gonna be he's gonna be a Hall of Famer.
Um they had Eric Allen on the other side. Everybody
had some some good talent out there, some great talent.
So we thought one of the things that we could
exploit was there was there d line, their linebackers and
who are good players, but we thought we'd have a
better chance running the ball. And then especially when you
go out and see the snow ship, you know, we
(31:59):
gotta run it out. So it put that at the end.
You changed. You changed totally and said all right to
when it we're gonna have to throw it. Yeah, and
we threw it probably thirty times in the second half.
What now, let's get back to the to the to
the play, you know the fumble. What was your first
reactionally pass that? Really? You thought it was getting complete pass?
(32:21):
You know when when when he initially hit me, Um
kind of reached out to try to trip Greg Beaker.
He was the one going after and I saw him,
so I tried to kick my leg up. You can't
do a lot when you're laying on the ground, someone's
laying on top of you. But I got hit. I
was trying to throw it to the to the to
the running back, and it happened. Was a defensive end
peeled on the peeled off. He was a rusher and
(32:43):
once he saw the running back kind of released out
of the backfield. I guess it was his job to
to drop it. Was a It was a zone blitz
is what it was. So they were bringing there. They're
too strong side Lineberck. One was Charles Woodson and one
was I think Beaker. They were coming which I should
have thrown to the right side to a slant that
was wide open. As I was gonna throw, Weeks aid,
this is one of those things that I can overthink things,
(33:04):
and I'm gonna throw a Jared Redman coming out of
the backfield, but the defensive end peeled on him, which
made me hold the ball. So I was gonna recock
and throw it to him. And just as I was
starting to it was coming down. I was pumped taking
I to go, was recocking ball, was going right back
up to throw it, and that's when you hit me.
But they didn't call that illegal hit to the head
that he gave me either. Where were you when Venetary
kicked the field goal, the one that tied at the
(33:27):
one that we've said it's the greatest field goal in
NFL history, Yeah, no question. I mean you couldn't even see,
if you you know, from that from the from the
from the from the tight shot on the other end,
and you couldn't even see the ball go through the
uprights and its that's how bad it was, but I
was standing probably Susie ran out of the field. I
think I walked right over and I turned around as
fast because I know the clock was running down too,
(33:49):
so he Uh, did you say anything to him when
as he was coming on the field. I don't remember.
I remember right after I ran out there and came,
I was so excited and I figured, ship, we got
a shot. Now. That was so and I was unbelievable.
It's called the Tuck Roule Game because of that play,
but it overshadows what it really came down to, the kicks,
(34:12):
because this game solidified Adam Vinitary as the greatest bad
weather kicker in NFL history. So well Vinitary may get
overshadowed the game during that Super Bowl run. That often
gets overlooked is the a f C Championship game that
took place the following week in Pittsburgh. The Steelers were
nine point favorites, and late in the first half, Drew
(34:33):
bledso replaced and Andrew tom Brady he'd hurt his ankle,
and led the Patriots to victory. The same Drew Bledsoe,
who would signed a ten year, one three million dollar
contract the previous offseason, only to be replaced by Brady
in Week two after Bledsoe suffered what could have been
a fatal injury. The a f C Championship Game was
(34:55):
Bledsoe's greatest contribution actually getting the Patriots to the Super Bowl.
But that set up Bill Belichick's decision who to start
in the Super Bowl. Look, look, I covered the team
that week and it was agonizing does he start Brady,
the second year wonderkin or Bledsoe, the nine year veteran.
That decision to go with Brady, to go with Belichick's gut,
(35:17):
may have been the most impactful decision in the history
of the Patriots franchise. So let's rejoin Steve and Tom
and learn what happened pregame prior to Super Bowl thirty six. Now,
I want to get to the to the Super Bowl.
I read a story that said that in the locker
room before the Super Bowl that you fell asleep. Yeah,
(35:42):
I was Does that relax you before the game? Do
you do that a lot? I've never done that? And
but before the Super Bowl, the biggest game of your life,
you're sleeping in the locker room. Yeah? There was there
was such a long break between our warm up and
the start of the game because that pre game day
pregame show runs for an hour, you know, so normally
(36:03):
we're out there and we go in five minutes. They
were back on the field. Well, coach and said, hey, guys,
we're gonna have hour and ten hour and fifteen minutes. Well,
the night before, of course you're a low restless, so
you know, anytime you get to the game, we had
warmed up, and then of course you're you know, you
go sit down and the next thing I know, I'm
sitting on the floor. Next thing, I take my pads off,
(36:23):
you know, and I laid them back right in front
of my locker. I just kind of put my head down,
and I knew I had a lot of time, so
I think it at the at that point and there's
there's not really any nerves for me because there's nothing
more I can do. You're I was prepared, I was ready,
I was confident, you know, I was at peace. I
(36:43):
was just had such a piece of mind. I said, hey,
you know, I just put my head back in and
I woke up about a half hour later, and I
looked next to me, and bloods of sleeping, you know,
And I think some of the guys are kind of
kicking back, a lot of guys listening to headphones. But
it was just one of those moments that you know,
just just relaxed. A lot of people have talked about
(37:04):
the relationship that you had with Blood, so that's really
an interesting, a whole interesting story. Do you think you
could have if the roles were reversed it that you
could have done this handled it the way he did.
And that's the toughest situation as as um as there
could be for a quarterback, because when you're a quarterback,
you know you you you have this great confidence about
(37:26):
you and you never want to feel like you know
that there's someone else out there. And if I was
in that situation, I don't know how I could have
dealt with it, and um it was this. It's never easy,
and it's a competitive situation. There's one guy that plays.
You know, it's not like running back or receiver. There's
one quarterback. And you know, when you're the quarterback, you
(37:49):
always feel like, um, I've had a big part to
do with this game. When you're the backup quarterback, you
don't even feel like you're on the team. You feel
like you're a fan. You know, that guy I didn't
do anything to help our team win. So I mean
he's been a he's been a great player, you know,
for a long time. And h he was he was
a big reason of our success. That his he he
(38:12):
put you know, the team low ahead of his own goals.
And that was kind of our that was our team
and in a nutshet, and that was really us was
that we weren't gonna let any of our own agendas
get in the way of where our team was trying
to accomplish. And because of that, it was the oltim
payoff that when you do win, everyone gets the credit.
You know, there's enough credit to go around for everyone,
(38:33):
and a lot of people don't realize that that when
you're great, you know, when your team's great, you know,
the waterboys get credit, and the equipment and the trainers
and everyone, and it's great and everyone can can share
and enjoy that. But the individual stuff, now, there's nothing
that you give me. It's gonna be worth as much
as that super Bowl ring. I think we have a
shot you in the in the tunnel with the super
(38:53):
Bowl and you're and you're you and blood so and
you're banging each other and you're saying, you're gonna get this.
I'm gonna win this for you. I'm gonna win this
for you. Do you remember what you said? Is that,
um it sounded like something like that. We were going
out beforehand, and uh, I'll always go up. I was
going up to him. I made a habit of going
up to him. And you know, as quarterbacks where you know,
(39:14):
we're not the big tough guys, you know, we try
to pretend like we're going to be. So I always
grabbed him. I tried to sneak up on him and
take my helmet, just just give him, give him a
shot as hard as I can. Well, before the game,
pregame warmups, I kind of turned around and here he
came smack and he got me. So I'm gonna get
you back for that one. So I saw him in
(39:34):
I saw him in the tunnel for the game, and
I turned around and I gave him a big dove
and kind of have it. It It just kind of knocks,
you know, you just get hit. You know, I just
knocked some of the energy out of you. And I said,
I told, Hi'm gonna get you back, and I'm gonna
get you back. And then of course William mc ginnis
grabs me and he will he's you know, six six
to sixty, he just to ninety puts me up against
things and he just laughs at me. And I'm just
(39:55):
kind of like a little kid, going, I can't move.
How are ways that the Drew helped during the season,
I mean, what were the things that he did that
any specific things that he did to help you? Um,
he was just he's just that he's a it's kind
of a safety blanket, you know. He's just a guy
that he's very comfortable. There's coaches can sit there and go, man,
(40:17):
you should have thrown to this guy. And you know,
you've got to read the you know, you gotta read
the front and then hey, you gotta check them at
a linebacker on the snap. Then read the rotation of
the safeties and then if you see this, you know,
if you see the sam you know, get outside the
tight end. You know, you gotta you gotta work backside
to the the X with I mean you're going, wait, I
mean how many I just think I got? I mean
I can see a few things. And Drew had come
over and said, man, just look at this, you know,
(40:39):
and throw it here. And you know, if they take
that away throw here. I mean, you don't don't get
crazy with this, and you know coaches will go up.
You know, you should have thrown that ball on him,
And Drew's kind of looking at me like, what the
hell is he looking at? You know, he in no
way you're going to complete that ball. Um. So he's
a guy that when he's got confidence in you, you know,
(40:59):
and he's in there for eight years. Three Pro Bowls
have been the super Bowls. I mean there's you get
confidence that, okay, I am doing the right thing, and
that you know, when someone else has beating you down
he comes in. You feel like there's trusting him to
know that if he tells you something, that's the truth.
But that that's sort of a unique situation because there's
not many things I can think of going back through
(41:20):
the NFL where you have someone like you comes in
and the old the incumbent quarterback seems to be that
congenial and helpful and and you know most of the
time that he maybe they wouldn't have talked to you
or they wouldn't have helped you. So did you realize
how unusual what that situation was, and that then that
you've actually you actually replaced him, and yet he still
is is there to help you? Yeah, I think so.
(41:44):
I mean, like I said, it was never It's never easy.
It wasn't. It wasn't an easy situation were you for
either of us. I mean, because you know, I would
never want to feel like, you know, I'm stepping on
anyone's toe, and I don't want to feel like I'm
pushing someone aside, because I wasn't. You know. It was
when I took over on he was hurt, he was
(42:06):
in hospital, you know, And I saw him in hospital
and he's you know, laying there and he can't talk,
and these guys kids jumping on him, and he's lost
leaders of blood. I mean, he's just um. At that point,
you fill in and you try to play like he
would play, you know, and you try to keep getting better.
And then when he finally came back and was ready
to play, it wasn't like it was open competition or anything.
(42:26):
It was um. When he was finally ready to play,
we were on a roll, and I think that made
the coach's decision easier. He said, hey man, we're winning games,
you know, let's just keep rolling with it. And we
didn't lose after that, So how can you make a change.
(42:47):
And he's a great player, and he's always gonna be
a great and he has been and he's proved it,
and I know that he knows that, and there was
never gonna be We're never gonna let um the competitiveness
between each other, you know, take away from like I said, well,
we were trying to do it. It was very um.
(43:10):
It was a lot of It was a lot of
strain on both of us. You know that you always
have to say the right thing and feel the right
way and act the right way, but inside you know
what's going on, and you're a competitor. I want to play,
I want to play bad. I don't want to play.
I don't want to come out, and of course I
don't think that there's anyone else that should be playing
but me. On the other side, he's saying the same
thing that you know, I'm the best player. I want
(43:31):
to lead this team. And that's that's how you should feel.
And if you don't feel that way, you'll never be good.
You'll never be good at anything, you know, because you
always feel that I'm just I'm just taking up space.
Blood so often gets lost in the Brady greatest ever narrative.
But after New England won the Super Bowl, the way
the former first rounder handled his demotion and ultimately his
(43:51):
trade to the Bills just two months after the championship
is commendable. Sure, Blood so had to grapple with the
fickle fate of football history, but he never let resentment
affect his relationship with Brady or with the Patriots franchise,
which inducted him into their Hall of Fame. And when
we come back, we'll hear about the final drive in
(44:12):
the Super Bowl and the decision not to take a knee.
And in the ultimate illustration of why this interview is
a great time capsule, Steve asks Tom maybe the most
ironic question in this entire interview, if Brady's worried about
peaking too early in his career. Stay tuned, Welcome back
(44:35):
to Tails from the Vault. Let me set the scene
for you here. In Brady and Belichick's first Super Bowl together,
the Patriots were trying to ground the high flying Rams.
Remember they had Kurt Warner and the greatest show on turf.
The game was tied with a minute twenty one to go.
Keep in mind that at this point in his career,
Brady was basically a game manager. There was conservative play
(44:55):
calling by then offensive coordinator Charlie Weiss, and the emphasis
was just don't make any mistakes. That's why the legendary
John Madden suggested on the broadcast that the Patriots taken
knee and play for overtime. Thank I think that the
pickpot for this field position. You have to just run
the clock out. You have to play for rolls the time. Now,
(45:17):
I don't think you want to force anything here. We
don't want if you want to, thank stupid because you
have no time out on your back up. Little did
we all know what we were about to witness and
set the stage for the next twenty years. I want
to move ahead to the end of the Super Bowl,
the last drive with a minute and twenty one to go.
(45:37):
Can you take me take me through that, because that again,
that's a classic sequence of plays in NFL history. Yeah,
that was they had just scored the first one. When
you were the tom when you were do you realize
what was at stake? I mean the magnitude of the
event and uh, there's a famous story with Joe Montana
that against the Super Bowl against the Bengals, where he's
(45:59):
leading team the last drive and all of Suddy sees
John Candy and the you know, the comedian, and then
he's going to call in the play. He says, hey,
you know, look over there as John Candy. Everybody looks over,
and then he continues to call the play. Was there
anything like that that that you had, any any abstract
kind of moment like that that you might have had
that final drive and you had I had no idea
(46:21):
the magnitude, no idea. I mean just it's it feels
like another two minute drill. And until that following through
the uprights, it was just hey, you's, well, you know,
flip to JR. You know, throw another swing pass, bamn,
hit Troy and I'm runs on. He kicks the game winner,
and it was almost like okay, what's next and then
(46:43):
it's it's it all set in that Holy shit, you know,
we're super Bowl champs, you know, and they Caffetti's coming down.
I mean, that was it was incredible. It was the
start of the drive. We were kind of deciding whether
we want to kneel on it or or take a
shot and go win it. Charlie came over our offensive
(47:05):
Cordiner and he said, uh, he said, we're gonna go
for it. You know, we're gonna go to winness. You're
not going to play for the tie, right, So I'm
kind of getting loose, he said, you know, charl said
get ready to go. You know, some get morem loose.
I was like, throw a lot. It's just that I'm
around the field. Charlie kind of grassed me and says, hey,
you know there's a bad play. We can run out
the clock, you know, just you know, be careful with
the ball. So I took about three more steps and
(47:27):
drews right behind. He goes, hey, and he goes, fuck that.
He goes go out there and sling it, you know,
and it was like, that's what we're gonna do. Of course,
I were on the huddle, you know, I started jumping
around and there was no TV time out, so we're
going right away and we said, uh, sorry, guys, let's
go win this thing. And six plays later, man and
(47:48):
it kicks forty eight yard. We have a shot at you.
At the end of the gay. I think you're in
the pedical in your hands are like this, and your
life you're seeing it might have been done. The sports
Illustrated had it too, but we had a great shot.
Were you thinking at that point, was that the backup,
you know, thinking about I can't believe that this is
actually happened. Yeah, no question. And I was looking at
my sisters and I saw them sitting over there, and
(48:09):
I kind of looked like, can you believe this kind
of this is just unbelievable? Where did you go next?
What are some of the things that you've done since?
Of course he went to Disney World and the Pro Bowl.
Who were some of the people that you've met since then? Oh? God,
just heroes of mine. I mean John Elway and Steve
Young and Muhammad Ali, um, Dan Marino. When you talk
(48:32):
to all these people, you really realize, Um, you know,
you talked to Montana and you know Montana and Steve Young,
and you know, you just get a feel for him
and you know why, Now I know why this guy's
done what he's done. You know why, I see what
there's just you know, there's just there's a competitiveness, there's
a spirit about him. You know. That's like when you
(48:53):
when you're around people like that, you just kind of
feel like, you know, man, I'm sitting next to the man,
you know, I mean, this is that's the way I
feel now I'm saying I gott if. I got a
lot of years to get to catch up to those guys.
But you know, you hear these stories about them, and um,
you know when you finally get to meet him and
you get to meet Muhammad Ali, and Muhammad Ali was,
(49:15):
you know, the greatest fighter ever and he's you know,
he came up and he's showing a magic trick and
everybody is just and awe. You know, you just feel
like he and he walks out of the room and
everyone sit there. I mean, that was unbelievable. And that's
like when you sit there and go now, that's why,
you know, that's that's why people feel like people make
Muhammad Ali makes people feel like that. You know. Damn
(49:37):
Marino makes people feel like that. John Own makes people
feel like that. And he made his teammates feel like that,
and his coaches that everyone was believed in them and
everyone was like, hey, man, if I'm on your side,
we're gonna win. We're on the right side. When you
look back at last season, that your last season and
all the great things that happened, what do you think
is the biggest obstacles, but you have to overcome last
(49:58):
year when you look back at it, um, I would
say learned to adjust to the outside pressures of playing quarterback.
That the football is the stuff that's always come pretty easy,
you know, the athletics, stuff to throw in the ball,
to learning the plays that hang with my team, and
(50:19):
that's the easy stuff. But the pressures of the interviews
and the demands and the tickets and the hotel rooms
and you know, the phone calls, and it's just it
can get it can get very um You feel like
the walls are caving in after a while that you know,
you get boxed into a corner where you know you're
(50:39):
so set in your routine that you know anything that
breaks it, you just you just become overwhelmed. And I
was really overwhelmed this last year because I felt like, um,
I felt like there was no escape for me. I mean,
there was no way to enjoy myself. For as great
as the year was, the football was great, but off
(51:01):
the field, it was hard to get to use to
kind of my new life. You know, years ago, a
lot of times the quarterback, you know, when you had
to Dan Fouts or a Bradshaw they were the gun slingers,
and they, you know, the whole team took their character
from the from the quarterback. Now, sometimes it seems like
a quarterback is just like the caretaker. You know, you
(51:22):
send the guy out there. Don't lose the game for us,
you don't have to win it. Don't lose it the
defense when it will win it with the field position.
Do you get a sense of that change at all? Uh?
You know, I think if you look at individual teams,
I really think the I really think the team takes
on the personality of the quarterback, and in the quarterback
(51:43):
takes on the personality of the coach. And I think
that's how it kind of trickles down. So you think
you're you have Bill Belichick's personality. I think I take
parts from him. You know that his um, he didn't
get flustered too easy, I mean, and you know he
kind of he moves on, you know, if the week's
over or hey, we're on the next week. And that's
kind of how I am. But I think, you know,
you you you a question like that, I think they're
(52:09):
if I'm thinking about our team, we had a great defense.
You know, we had a team that could run the ball. Well,
so what you know do you need? I'm there to
fill in the gaps. I'm there to there to make plays. Hey,
when we're down ten in the snow, you gotta go
win it, you know. But if you're if you're up one,
you know, and you gotta run the ball to win
the game and hit a few third downs, you gotta
do that too. I think every team demands different, something different,
(52:33):
you know. I mean I think of the Baltimore Ravens,
you know, and that defense. I mean, you couldn't score
that defense if you you know, if in fifty quarters,
you know. But then I think of the Rams, and
you think Kurt Warren. They asked Hurt to do different things,
and they ask different players to do different things. I
don't think the quick I don't think the relevance of
the position has changed one bit. I think it's it's,
(52:55):
i mean, probably the most important position on the field,
because you've got the ball every snap, and every time
you touch it, you know something's happening, and and the
words come from your at the play cops comes from
your mouth, the signals coming to the game plan. Are
you afraid about peeking at this point? I mean you
think it. Dan Marino and the story, you know, the
second year he breaks through a forty eight touchdown passes,
(53:17):
breaks always records, goes to the super Bowl, and then
he never returns. Has that ever cross your mind? That boy,
you know, this is really so, I might never be
back here again. That's never It's never cross But I
don't think that ever will cross my mind that you always,
Like I said, I'm always looking forward. It was great.
I mean, I had a had a our equipment manager
(53:38):
in college and he had been a Michigan for twenty
five years or something. He's got so many big ten rings.
I mean, he doesn't have enough fingers for all the
rings he's gotten. He says, you know what, whenever he's
you know what, Tom, you know what my favorite ring is?
And I said, which one's at? That's the next one.
That's why I think the next one that's my favorite.
All Right, it's a good way to end that. That's it.
(53:59):
We gotta we gotta do that again. I hope we
get you back here again. But like I said, I'll
be throwing our guys off. You guys, I'm sick. NFL filmed.
All right, that's it, Thanks guys, that's it. Thank you.
I think it's been so cool to observe in this
interview the roots of Brady's Hall of Fame career. But
(54:20):
there's so many times where I hear Brady say something
and I just want to yell, just you wait. Like
Winnie laments how overwhelmed he felt after his first Super
Bowl win, but his comment about his favorite super Bowl
ring being his next one, well, he's maintained that as
he's gone on to win six more. As we speak,
Brady has just retired, although he threw his caveat Zinger
(54:42):
into the universe never say Never. Next week, we'll hear
from another man who has just walked away from the
game with perhaps an open ended future, in Sean Payton.
We'll travel back to two thousand seven for an interview
with Peyton that took place just after his first season
in New Orleans. I hope you'll join us. Thanks for listening.
(55:03):
I'm Andrea Kramer, M
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