Before Tom Brady won 7 Super Bowls and 3 MVP awards, he was just a scrawny 6th rounder who had to prove his worth during the preseason, and that’s exactly what he did.
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Tom Brady and the Pontiac Silverdome go way back. The current Buccaneers and former Patriots QB made his NFL debut at the stadium in November, 2000 during a blowout loss to the Detroit Lions.
In fact, throughout the course of the 2000 season, the only completed pass that Brady threw came in garbage time during that game. Most people forget that was in his sophomore, not rookie, year that Brady took Drew Beldsoe’s job and led New England to their first championship.
However, that doesn’t mean he didn’t show glimpses of his future self as a rookie. 3 months before his regular season debut, Brady found himself at the Silverdome again, this time for a preseason outing.
The game went to overtime, which obviously pleased no one on the sidelines. Except Tom Brady. He took it as his chance to earn a job in the NFL, with the Patriots or otherwise, and made the game-changing 47 yard pass to Sean Morey.
This set up an easy field goal for Adam Vinatieri, who sealed the game as the clock ran out. Now where have we heard that before?
Brady’s veteran teammates, delighted that they could go home, were grateful for his heroics. “Those guys did not want to keep playing,” Brady explained after the game. “One of the guys let me use his DVD player because he said, ‘At least you didn’t keep me around for another half-hour.’ So that was nice.”
