Tom Brady’s legendary NFL career seemingly came out of nowhere — the ultimate product of circumstance.
Brady was a second-year backup quarterback when Patriot starter Drew Bledsoe went down with a chest injury early in 2001. By now, most know the story: Brady took over as the starter and led the Patriots to their first Super Bowl title. Bledsoe never started another game for New England.
Six Super Bowl titles later, Brady’s career remains surprising to Bledsoe. And in an interview with ESPN, Bledsoe admitted that he never thought Brady would be an NFL starter, seeing him more as a career backup like Jason Garrett.
Bledsoe said:
“When he was on practice squad his rookie year, I actually called my financial advisor about him. ‘Hey, I really like this kid. He’s never gonna be a starter. He’s gonna be Jason Garrett or one of those guys who’s just gonna be around forever. You’ll really like the kid.'” And we really did. We kind of brought him in. We had him over for dinner probably at least every other week. But just really liked him — and still do. Nobody outside of maybe Tom himself could ever have predicted that he was going to go on to be a starter in the league and be in the conversation as one of the greatest of all-time.”
In a separate interview with For The Win, Bledsoe said that nobody thought Brady was something *that* special.
“Tommy was a young kid out of Michigan, a skinny little twerp,” Bledsoe said. “The one thing that stuck out about Tommy when he was a young kid was that he was immediately an extremely hard worker and had a great personality about him. People naturally gravitated toward him. None of us — at that point — thought he would be something special.”
The full ESPN interview airs Sunday at 7 p.m. ET.
