Tom Brady

• 1. Introduction

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  Tom Brady arrived at the New England Patriots' old Foxboro Stadium as a sixth-round draft pick, carrying a pizza box and wearing the look of someone who had something to prove. Patriots owner Robert Kraft remembered the moment: Brady walked up, introduced himself, and then told Kraft, "I'm the best decision this organization has ever made." He was selected 199th overall in the 2000 NFL draft, the seventh quarterback taken, a compensatory pick the Patriots received for losing a punter. Brady and his family had believed he would go in the second or third round. They watched at home, stunned, as six other quarterbacks were drafted before him. Brady was so embarrassed he briefly left the house during the sixth round, and he cried when recounting the experience in an interview eleven years later.

  Over the next 23 seasons, that overlooked prospect became the most decorated quarterback in the history of professional football. He won seven Super Bowl titles, appeared in ten, and broke nearly every major passing record the NFL keeps. The questions worth asking are not simply how many championships he won, but how a player dismissed at every stage of his early career built something no franchise or athlete had built before.

• 2. Two Sports, One Decision

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  At Junipero Serra High School in San Mateo, Brady was as serious about baseball as he was about football. He was a left-handed-batting catcher with power, and his skills attracted Major League Baseball scouts. After working out at Candlestick Park with players, an unusual arrangement, the Montreal Expos drafted him in the 18th round of the 1995 MLB draft. Then-general manager Kevin Malone projected Brady as a potential All-Star, claiming he had the potential to be "one of the greatest catchers ever." The Expos offered him money comparable to a late second-round or early third-round pick.

  Brady chose football instead, recruited by Bill Harris to play for the University of Michigan. He became the last active athlete ever drafted by the Expos. His high school football numbers were substantial: 236 completions from 447 attempts, 3,702 yards, and 31 touchdowns. He earned All-State and All-Far West honors, along with his team's Most Valuable Player Award. His father had hoped he would attend Cal-Berkeley, where Brady had a silent commit, so that he could watch his son play nearby. Brady narrowed his choices to Cal-Berkeley, UCLA, USC, Michigan, and Illinois before ultimately heading to Ann Arbor.

• 3. Learning to Wait

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  Brady entered the University of Michigan in 1995 and immediately hit a wall. He started seventh on the depth chart, could not get meaningful playing time, and seriously considered transferring to UC Berkeley. He hired a sports psychologist to help manage the frustration, and worked weekly with assistant athletic director Greg Harden, who focused on building Brady's confidence. Brady told 60 Minutes in 2014: "He will always be somebody I rely on for sound advice and mentorship. He has helped me with my own personal struggles in both athletics and in life. Greg really pushed me in a direction that I wasn't sure I could go."

  While future NFL quarterback Brian Griese led Michigan to an undefeated season and a share of the national championship in 1997, Brady remained on the bench. By the 1998 and 1999 seasons, he finally locked down the starting job, though even then he shared snaps with Drew Henson for the first seven games of 1999, with the two quarterbacks alternating by quarter. Brady's signature moment in that stretch came in the 2000 Orange Bowl against Alabama, where he threw for 369 yards and four touchdowns and led Michigan back from two separate 14-point deficits in regulation. He threw the game-winning score on a bootleg play, and Alabama missed an extra point after its own touchdown. Brady set a BCS bowl record with 35 completions. His two seasons as starter produced a 20-5 record.

• 4. Dynasty Built on a Hit

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  Jets linebacker Mo Lewis changed NFL history on the 23rd of September 2001. In the Patriots' home opener, Lewis delivered a hit that caused starter Drew Bledsoe to suffer internal bleeding. Brady entered for the final series of a 10-3 loss. By the following week's game against the Indianapolis Colts, he was the starter, and the Patriots won 44-13.

  Brady turned a 0-2 start into an eleven-win season, capped by a run through the playoffs that ended with a 20-17 win over the heavily favored St. Louis Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI at the Louisiana Superdome. The Rams had rallied from a 17-3 deficit to tie the game with 1:30 left. Brady then took possession at the Patriots' own 17-yard line with no timeouts. Sportscaster and former coach John Madden argued publicly that the Patriots should simply run out the clock. Brady instead drove the offense to the Rams' 31-yard line and spiked the ball with seven seconds left, setting up a 48-yard field goal by Adam Vinatieri as time expired. Madden later said that "what Tom Brady just did, gives me goosebumps."

  At 24 years and 6 months old, Brady was the youngest quarterback to win a Super Bowl, surpassing both Joe Namath and Joe Montana. Bledsoe was traded to Buffalo in April, and Brady's role was permanent. The Patriots then won back-to-back Super Bowls in the 2003 and 2004 seasons, becoming the first franchise since the Dallas Cowboys to win three titles in four years. During that stretch, the Patriots recorded an NFL-record 21 consecutive wins across the regular season and playoffs.

• 5. The Perfect Season and Its Collapse

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  In the 2007 off-season, the Patriots overhauled their receiver corps, adding Randy Moss, Wes Welker, and Donte Stallworth, among others. Brady responded with a season that ESPN later unanimously voted the greatest passing season ever. He threw 50 touchdown passes, breaking Peyton Manning's single-season record of 49, finished with 4,806 yards, eight interceptions, and a career-high passer rating of 117.2. The Patriots went 16-0 in the regular season, the first undefeated regular season since the 16-game schedule was adopted in 1978. Their offense scored a then-NFL record 589 points.

  Brady was named the Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year, the first NFL player to receive that honor since Joe Montana won it in 1990. In the Divisional Round against Jacksonville, he completed 26 of 28 attempts, a completion rate of 92.9 percent, which remains the highest single-game completion rate in NFL postseason history for a quarterback with at least 20 attempts.

  Super Bowl XLII ended the run. Facing the New York Giants, Brady was sacked five times. The Patriots led late, but Eli Manning drove the Giants to a last-minute touchdown, and New York won 17-14. The potential first perfect season since the NFL expanded to 16 games was gone. Brady had his first Super Bowl loss.

• 6. Deflategate and Its Aftermath

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  On the 6th of May 2015, the NFL published a 243-page report on the deflation of footballs used in the AFC Championship Game the previous January. The report concluded that Brady was more likely than not at least generally aware of the intentional deflation. Five days later, the NFL suspended Brady for four games, with Troy Vincent, the NFL's Executive Vice President of Football Operations, writing that Brady's actions "clearly constitute conduct detrimental to the integrity of and public confidence in the game of professional football." Commissioner Roger Goodell upheld the suspension on July 28, citing Brady's destruction of his cell phone as a critical factor.

  A federal judge vacated the suspension in September 2015, but the NFL appealed, and a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit overturned that ruling in April 2016. Brady ultimately accepted the four-game suspension and served it at the start of the 2016 season.

  Years later, in February 2022, sportswriter Mike Florio's book Playmakers revealed that NFL executives had falsified data and hidden information that would have cleared Brady. Florio reported that 11 of the 12 Patriots footballs used in the game were actually within the predicted range of the Ideal gas law, and that the NFL's general counsel ordered records of all PSI data from the 2015 season to be deleted. NFL senior VP Dave Gardi was shown to have used false numbers in his letter to the Patriots ordering the investigation. Brady returned from his suspension in October 2016 and immediately threw for 406 yards and three touchdowns in a road win over the Cleveland Browns.

• 7. The Tampa Chapter

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  When Brady signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2020, the team had not reached the postseason since 2007 and had not won a playoff game since 2002. He led them to Super Bowl LV in his first season, winning his seventh championship and his fifth Super Bowl MVP, making him the only player to win the award with two different franchises.

  In 2021, Brady set the season record for completions, led the league in passing yards and touchdowns, and posted career-high passing yards for the year. Even in his final season, when the Buccaneers finished with a losing record for the first time in his career, he broke his own single-season completion record and set the season record for attempts. He was 44 years old and still the oldest quarterback selected to the Pro Bowl.

  Brady retired briefly in February 2022 before returning for the 2022 season. His career totals upon retirement included the most passing yards, completions, and touchdown passes in NFL history for both the regular season and playoffs, and 251 regular season wins, the most by any quarterback. He started 333 regular season games and 48 playoff games, both records for a quarterback. In 2024, he became the lead color commentator for the NFL on Fox and a partial owner of the Las Vegas Raiders, the franchise his Patriots once defeated in a famous overtime playoff game involving the tuck rule call in 2001.