While Tom Brady is now the undisputed GOAT of football, it’s easy to forget just how unlikely his rise was to the top. The guy was picked 199th overall in the 2000 NFL Draft and barely got a sniff as a rookie, throwing just three passes all year. Then, the next season, he was leading the Patriots as the starter, winning 14 games and bringing home their first-ever Super Bowl. While no one could have imagined such a turnaround, it seems even his agents had doubts. Brady, however, believed.
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In his weekly newsletter, 199, Brady recalled that after getting drafted and sitting fourth on the depth chart, there wasn’t much guarantee he’d make the 53-man roster. When does that ever happen anyway?
Yet, the future multi-million-per-year QB believed he belonged and even decided to buy a house from his teammate in Franklin, Massachusetts. As expected, Brady’s agents didn’t support the move.
“Two weeks before final cuts, I wanted to buy my teammate Ty Law’s old house. My agents were strongly against it. They advised me to wait until I made the team before I made any big financial commitments. And I was like, ‘dude, I’m going to make the team, don’t worry about it,'” Brady recalled.
This insane financial decision was one of the examples Brady used in his newsletter to illustrate what he calls “naïveté.” He was facing one of the steepest uphill battles as a rookie, but he didn’t fully grasp the challenges, which helped him to move with confidence. And no hesitation whatsoever. He took risks and stayed committed.
“I never truly understood how difficult the path to success actually is. When I look back at my journey, the path seems next to impossible. I find myself thinking about all the different reasons it was hard or why it should have failed. The way I did it doesn’t look like something that should have worked. And it might not have if I knew any better at the time,” he penned, adding,
“Obviously, everything worked out, but at no point was it obvious that it would work out at the time. When people talk about ignorance being bliss, this is what they mean. This is the power of naïveté: all the space that’s eventually taken up by knowing, can be filled instead by believing and doing. Which are far more powerful when you’re trying to do something new.”
Other examples he pointed to as naivety include not even filling out college applications because he believed he’d land a scholarship. And after eventually somehow getting a full-ride at Michigan, he lost his recruiting head coach and coordinator, which could have easily derailed him.
But once again, that same naïveté kept him from focusing on what could go wrong and instead helped him focus on what he could control and improve. And the rest, as they say, is history.
But this doesn’t mean Brady is encouraging someone to be blindly reckless. Committing to a goal is a must, blocking out white noise is great for growth, and continuing to move forward is part of the journey. But taking advice from the right people is just as necessary. Naïveté only works when it’s backed by effort and accountability.
