While everything you cite is true, it’s important to remember how beyond fucked college QB rating calculations are, above and beyond NFL ones. I mean, actually look at his stats, they weren’t impressive but got him a 133.1/138.0 rating for those seasons, with a combined 30/16 TD to INT ratio. That doesn’t exactly scream ‘stud prospect’.
He would have had a 93.8 passer rating in his senior year under the NFL system. That was pretty damned good in 1999.
That team lost two games, 34-31 to Michigan State and 35-29 to Illinois. Henson played some in both games, (more in the first loss) for no clear reason other than probably a promise was made. But Belichick himself said the fact that Carr was taking Brady out made them wonder if something was up.
Irrelevant. The NFL’s 32 teams deemed it irrelevant in the 2000 draft. They were wrong, but every physical measurable you can possibly imagine was then against him.
Which is not really relevant to whether he would have caught on elsewhere as a late round draft pick or UFA. If anybody in that situation is more likely to catch on, it's going to be the guy from Michigan with the pedigree and relatively gaudy college numbers.
He tweeted out the resume he was sending out—you are misremembering what he thought his own certainty was. And the point isn’t that he was definitely walking away (obviously, he wasn’t yet doing so) it is that even he acknowledged that was a real possibility, and that most guys in his situation never get a chance to truly be a starter. Someone can do the math on guys with his draft status or below but nearly certain that will prove to be true.
So he catches on with the 2000 Chargers or 2001 Panthers, 1 and 15 both, fully the equivalent of the 1989 Cowboys and 1990 Patriots. He, of course, looks abysmal. Then what?
You're assuming the conclusion. I can play the same game, watch: he, of course, looks like a promising starting QB in leading the Chargers to five wins in seven games to end the season, completing 64% of his passes. Then what?
On the contrary it is you who is assuming the conclusion—you have him signed and given a shot by teams who just skipped him repeatedly in the draft!
Nope, not assuming the conclusion. Saying you haven't proven your claim that it's statistically unlikely, and trying to support that conclusion by lumping him in with mediocre power conference QBs, instead of lumping him in with two-year starter graduating Michigan QBs (who had at that time two of the top 3 passing years in school history; or QBs who led the Big Ten in passer rating in their senior seasons, etc.
The Cowboys went through this with Dak Prescott last year; the Vikings with Case Keenum this year. SF with Colin Kaepernick a few years ago. Hell, 2000 wasn't that last time Bledsoe would lose his job to injury; Romo replaced him five years later in Dallas. Jeff Hostetler took Phil Simms' job after leading the Giants to a Super Bowl victory, one Belichick was part of. This is a cruel business and established players lose gigs due to injury all the time.
Sure, but equally true if not more so for head coaches. Tons of smart coaches have failed because they had lousy quarterbacks (and owners) - like Belichick did in Cleveland. At least they get to pick their spots, I guess.
Absolutely. But at the same time, what a break for Belichick! Because instead of shackled to a declining, overpaid Bledsoe (and, harmfully, a beloved but overrated QB in the same vein as Eli this year or Bernie Kosar when Belichick was in Cleveland), his sixth-round pick turns out to be a far superior scheme fit, a far superior personality fit, plays under a dirt cheap rookie contract, and allows BB to unload Bledsoe for a first-round pick (from a division rival, no less). Oh, and when he surrounds that sixth-round pick with top-tier receiving weapons, he develops into a perennial MVP candidate who can carry the team when the defensive stars get old, but somehow still takes less than market contracts, and also continues to excel well past expected human decline ... let's face it, Belichick struck gold, too. Brady is basically a real-life superhero.
OK, that's fair. But if the Patriots didn't draft him, at worst he was a priority UDFA. Five more QBs were drafted after Brady, and the Patriots decided to take him in the sixth even though a) they didn't need a QB and b) they had three seventh round picks. Moreover, they did not take a chance on sneaking Brady through waivers to the Practice Squad even though they had three guys ahead of him on the depth chart. There was interest in Brady - or at least Belichick thought there was.
While I don’t disagree with a lot of what you’re saying, these are pretty bad comps to Brady/Bledsoe.
Bledsoe was 5-13 as a starter under his new coach, and had a passer rating of under 77 in those 18 games. Tony Romo was actually 15-3 in his last 18 games before his injury with a 109.1 passer rating.
22 and at the time not particularly impressed by Brady. How old were you?
So you're counting the game that Brady came in after Bledsoe got hurt? Cool story.
I’m listing the games he played in that you’re citing as some kind of hard evidence that it was an easy decision to bench the $100M QB, face of the franchise for the third string sixth round pick that looked like a game manager.
Everything you've written is either factually false, or a ridiculous opinion. Going from 5-13 to 11-3 is definitionally changing the direction of the franchise. I have no doubt it wouldn't have been an easy decision for you. Thank god you weren't in charge.
I hope we can hear more about Bledsoe's salary and being the "face of the franchise" going forward, rather than how he was statistically inferior to Brady by every single measurable, both traditional and advanced. Sticking by one's opinion held as a 22-year old, because--how could it be wrong--pretty much never goes wrong.
It wasn't at all that obvious at the time to most of us besides Bill Belichick and I think you're using the benefit of hindsight here. Also Brady was not 11-3 as a starter by the time Bledsoe was cleared to play.
He was 5-3 or 6-3 when BB named him starter for the remainder of the season. And Bledsoe was 5-13 under BB.
If you think benching a guy that just signed the biggest deal in the leagues history, was beloved by the owner and had taken them to a Super Bowl - based on an 11 point differential in rating - was an easy call, im not sure what to tell you. I don’t quite see how me being 22 at the time plays any part, since it was a pretty big debate with, I guess in your opinion, ‘adults’ at the time having the very same debate. At the time he decided to stick with Brady, no, not at the time or even in hindsight was it easy. Looking back he made the right call obviously.
OMG, I'm totally putting you on ignore first. Your posting sucks in general more.
Here’s the difference: Drew Bledsoe was in his physical prime and the first year of the biggest contract in NFL history. No other owner puts his ego or loyalty aside and lets his coach make that change from that contract to no-name 6th rounder permanent and I don’t think any other coaches make the move, either.
For sure it was ballsy, especially since Belichick had been essentially run out of town for doing the same thing in Cleveland.
The fact that they even had a #4 QB on the roster is kind of crazy when you think about it. They gave him the opportunity, and he has obviously made the most of it.
I was a big Drew Bledsoe fan back in the day (before the statistical revolution), although rooting for him was torture as he had a knack for seizing defeat from the jaws of victory over and over again (the regular season loss to the Steelers in the 1997 season being a galling example).
These all are fair points, and I don’t believe we disagree. It’s hard, almost impossible, to parse the credit between B.B. and TB. I am — or was — fighting the narrative that TB would have become TB anywhere, anytime, regardless, and implicitly that B.B. was a small tail on a big dog.
Well sure, but he did lead the NFL in TD passes his second year as starter, throwing for nearly 4000 yards.
Brady's game logs from early 2002 call that assertion into question:
Also, in 2002, he threw 601 passes, which was a ton for the era. It is his #5 most attempts in his career. The other four are 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2015. They put a ton on him and he played well.
In a decade where Jeff George and Tim Couch went number one, Bledsoe cannot possibly be a disappointment.
I was recently reading up on Johnny Unitas, the last GOAT who was way undervalued in the draft. He was drafted by the Steelers in the 9th round and cut in camp because he was their 4th QB and their coach at the time only wanted to keep 3. (Wikipedia: Steelers' head coach Walt Kiesling had made up his mind about Unitas; he thought he was not smart enough to quarterback an NFL team)
Teams skip players in draft, then sign and give them shots all the time--there are 27 guys in this Super Bowl (I think that's the number) that weren't drafted. That's the calculus of the late rounds--by the time you reach round 6 or 7 some teams pass over guys, hoping to just sign them as UDFA.
The first game against Pittsburgh was eye opening. They came out throwing the ball all around the field. If you were paying attention is was apparent right then that he wasn't a game manager.
Here is a recent list of the top undrafted QBs in NFL history.
Exactly. The data here is quite clear; I get that we all love Brady, but some folks are letting that get in the way of looking at the probabilities in a sober way.
The data is quite clear about what? There are two undrafted QBs in the HOF, and it looks like at least 10% of the top 50 career passing yardage leaders were undrafted. I didn't really understand what dcm meant about "you can have the others," including Jeff Garcia and Dave Krieg, by the way. If the implication that those multiple pro bowlers, frequent top 5 and 10 passer rating QBs in their time in the league were not above average NFL QBs, I sure don't understand the criteria.
Sure, there are a couple of undrafted qbs in the hall of fame. And perhaps several thousand who aren’t. That’s the data.
