Good afternoon.
Welcome to the first NFL college player draft of the new millennium.
We appreciate all the fans who are here with us this afternoon.
We thank you for being here. We appreciate...
I remember draft day.
I was watching at home with my parents.
We'll probably see seven or eight quarterbacks go eventually in this draft.
I knew I wasn't a first round pick.
I thought maybe second or third round.
And the third round came and I was like, "Nothing."
You could see the upcoming teams that were picking,
you'd see the quarterbacks that were available,
and guys that I was kind of lumped with.
A lot of those guys were going off the board.
The Jets select quarterback, Chad Pennington, from Marshall University.
You know, the rounds just started,
and we had one of those old school screen TVs
and we would just wait, and wait.
A quarterback taken by the San Francisco 49ers,
and it's one of local interest, in Giovanni Carmazzi.
Pittsburgh Steelers choice in the fifth round is Tee Martin,
quarterback from University of Tennessee.
And we get through the fifth round and still he's not picked,
and we're thinking, "What in the heck?"
He says, "I just got to get out of here."
So, I took a walk around the block, I had a baseball bat,
I was slamming the baseball bat into my hand, you know, just...
I mean, imagining if I didn't ever get picked.
And anxious time for so many football players
who are waiting to see if they will be drafted.
Some are hoping that the phone call comes
or their name gets mentioned in the next couple of hours.
In the draft that year,
one of the places we knew that we didn't have an immediate need...
...was quarterback.
- How much time we got? - We only have a minute twenty.
- Minute twenty. - Let's do it.
All right. We'll take it for what it is.
We'll take it? We'll take it.
You know, we drafted a bunch of players ahead of him,
but when we get to the sixth round,
we're looking at the board and Brady's over there by himself,
I'm like, "What are we doing?"
Yeah, we don't need quarterback,
but he was the best player available.
Make sure that that's confirmed on time and everything, Jimmy D.
- Want me to turn it in? - Yeah. Yeah.
Okay, here it is.
We were sitting there on the sofa downstairs in the family room,
and finally we got a call that Bill Belichick was on the line.
Congratulations.
Well, we're excited to have you. Sorry to make you wait so long.
They said, "Can we speak to Tommy?"
And put him on the phone, and...
...he became a Patriot, which was a jubilant time for the family.
Among the last six picks taken,
Tom Brady at pick 199 goes to the New England Patriots.
My dad had a bottle of champagne that he popped.
I was so happy.
We didn't care where he got picked, we didn't care what number,
although 199 is a pretty good number, if you ask me.
There you go. Hold that for ten seconds.
I remember walking in the first day.
You know, I'm sure none of the guys were thinking
as the sixth round pick that I would be on this team very long.
I remember a young, skinny beanpole kid comes over
and he says, "Mr. Kraft, I want you to know I'm Tom Brady."
I said, "I know who you are.
You're a sixth-round draft choice out of Michigan."
And he-- I can still see the look now, I'll never forget.
He said, "Yes, and I'm the best decision your organization has ever made."
I'm looking at him.
"Okay.
From your lips to God's ears, let's see."
Welcome back to sold out Foxboro Stadium. The Rams and the Patriots.
New England with the ball at midfield.
Here we go, Brady!
Over the last seven games, Tom Brady doing a nice job of managing this offense.
But with Drew Bledsoe back on the active roster able to practice,
this is where, as a quarterback, you have to step up your game.
Intercepted!
Goddamn it!
I didn't even see a receiver in the area.
That game was very important for the Patriots.
The Rams were the best team in football.
And the Patriots had many opportunities to win,
but Brady really lost that game for the team.
He only got lucky one game.
He's a candidate for a bench warmer. That's it!
I was watching on the sidelines, and I remember thinking,
"The shine's off this nickel a little bit.
Maybe now I've got a chance to get back in there and play."
Our final score, Saint Louis 24, New England 17.
And it's back to 500 for the New England Patriots.
Losing sucks.
You know, any time you play a good team, it's hard to make mistakes.
But, you know, that wasn't our best day out there today, possessing the ball.
How would you assess your performance?
You ask coach Belichick about that one.
The Patriots were five and five after that loss.
People in the media, many of them still looked at Bledsoe
as their best chance of winning, and looked at him as a franchise.
Brady had his opportunity.
It's time for Bledsoe.
Bill, here he is again. He's got to get this one right.
My job, and I've been here two years,
my job is to make the decisions for the football team.
That's what Mr. Kraft's paying me to do, and that's what I'm gonna do,
I'm gonna make the decisions that I think are the best for the football team.
"T-E-A-M" as in team.
I can't make them for an individual or a group,
I gotta do what's best for the entire team.
Going forward, Tom will be the starter, and...
...that's the way it'll go.
He'll be the starter unless there's an injury,
I don't see, you know, him not being in there.
Bill, do you reserve the right to change your mind on this?
Prior to making a decision like that,
you understand what's going to come with it, right?
You don't just do it in a vacuum.
The media loves a good quarterback controversy.
You understand there's going to be heat.
Tony, you know, I've said this is one of the worst years of coaching
ever in the National Football League.
Which leads me to one of my favorite whipping boys, Bill Belichick.
Today he decided to declare Tom Brady his starter
for the rest of the season.
I don't see the need to name this guy right now.
What if he implodes as the season goes on?
Why have you done this to Bledsoe?
So we're gonna leave a hundred-million-dollar quarterback
- sitting on the bench? - Are we sure he's ready to go?
- I don't know that question. - I don't know if we're sure he's ready.
I think Tom Brady, who hasn't played all that well
in two out of the last three ball games.
I think eventually you gotta find a spot for Drew Bledsoe.
The media, it's the group that I call the scribes.
It's just a lot of people who don't have a clue what they're talking about frankly.
But there are some experts in New England on football.
And they all work on the coaching staff for the Patriots.
If you're not in the building, you don't really know.
Bill is a dear friend, a guy I've known since high school.
When you've been with somebody for half a century
through a lot of situations,
we know how each other think, we know our quirks.
Sometimes I can look at him, I can gauge his reactions
just seeing his face, and he can do the same with me.
So, when it came to the quarterback controversy,
I knew exactly what he was thinking.
We were not going with Drew Bledsoe as our starting quarterback.
Let's go, Drew!
You're a rookie, you're coming in, you're the new guy, whatever.
I think if you're able to just keep your mouth shut and play well on the field,
then guys, you know, tend to accept you pretty well.
We talked to all the veterans,
and they all talked about the first time they really get crushed.
Is that something you want to get out of the way early,
or never wanna happen, or...?
I know it's gonna happen so yeah, I guess I'd rather have it happen early.
Get my "Welcome to the NFL" hit, and get that out of the way,
and then hopefully not have too many of them after that.
Earlier in his career,
Drew was a very good quarterback, at times great.
But he got hit.
A lot.
You've been down on the ground how many times, man?
Eleven? Twelve, brother?
After dozens and dozens and dozens of vicious hits,
Drew had started becoming human.
Hut!
Bledsoe to pass, under pressure.
When he's pressured like that,
you could see Bledsoe's feet just stop moving.
You know, Drew, when there was real pressure coming at him,
he'd struggle a little bit.
He knew he was going to be hit, and it looked like
he would just freeze up and wait for the inevitable.
And of course, I talked to Scott Pioli about it.
He goes, "Scott, come in here."
And he was watching film, he goes,
"This is it, this is what we've been talking about."
And he goes, "Drew.
He looks like a wildebeest under attack."
As coaches, we knew that we had a problem.
And with Tom,
he was the guy that we thought and truly believed was the answer.
I remember feeling confident,
because we'd had time to learn who he really was.
Let's get a little bit rowdy.
Tom, what do you think makes a good ball player?
- I don't know - You don't know?
Growing up, Tommy was kind of a ballpark rat.
His older sisters played all the sports.
And so, when he was barely crawling,
he was out at the soccer fields, the softball fields,
just taking it all in.
Somehow, this whippersnapper got the idea that we loved sports.
You know, my dad, we'd go up to the ballpark,
he'd roll his collared shirt up, and he'd have a fungo bat in one hand,
he'd have a glove in the other hand with a ball.
And he'd toss it up with the ball out of his mitt
and he'd hit, you know, ground balls to me.
I'd always say, "Dad, hit me the divers," you know, make it hard for me.
When it's down and away you drop the shoulder,
you gotta stay up on it.
For Tommy, everything was a competition.
I mean, we used to have races home from church on a Sunday.
Like, whoever got to the porch first, you know, would be waving their finger,
and if he didn't win, he would get angry.
One time, he took the remote
and he threw it as hard as he could at the wall.
I asked my wife about the hole in the wall,
and I said, "What is that?" And she said, "It was Tommy's temper."
Brady rifling it, complete to Kirby.
Tommy started playing football in high school.
He had a very significant desire to compete and to win.
- What are your strengths? - My strengths?
Everybody tells me I have a pretty strong arm, which is good.
I'm pretty accurate with it.
And... think I need to work on my speed a little bit.
His speed was not up to where he wanted it to be.
So, there's a drill called The Five Dot Drill.
It's a drill that everybody abhors,
but he went to the backyard and painted on the concrete these dots.
You know, he used to have this dot drill outside,
and he would just practice his footwork, because people would say he was slow.
He was a perfectionist.
Well, I think you always worry, you know.
I mean, a perfectionist is almost kind of like a kiss of death in some ways.
Because no matter how well you do,
you know, it's never good enough for yourself.
This approach in high school
of doing everything that he could to get better
continued for a long time.
Even after Tommy got to the Patriots here in New England,
his drive was insatiable.
And I think Bill, he could see Tommy's potential.
Here in New England there's been only one topic of discussion all week long.
Who will the starting quarterback be?
On one side it's Tom Brady, on the other side, Drew Bledsoe.
The head coach, Bill Belichick says it's Tom Brady.
On first down, play-action fake by Brady.
Looking. Fires to the end zone.
Caught, touchdown, Troy Brown.
What a play!
Bill Belichick chose Tom Brady and said he'd be the quarterback.
And Tom Brady has had a great game, as has the entire team.
You know, Tom's had... he's done a pretty good job,
now this is nine weeks, he's done a pretty good job every week.
Not perfect, but pretty good. And you know, he had, I don't know,
three of four touchdowns today, whatever it was.
You know, he-- I thought that throw at the end of the half
was really a heck of a throw.
Tom understood his role on and off the field, how to help the team.
He prepared extremely hard, individually on his fundamentals, his techniques.
It's too early for cameras.
Tom, I feel like got the best out of me because he was so well-prepared,
that I felt like I had to keep up with his preparation.
This is, you know, I just thought I'd show a few plays here a bit.
I think coach saw something in me that he could work with.
We had quarterback school and there was me and Coach Belichick.
We'd sit in there, and we just were football junkies.
From morning, noon, night, that's all we did was talk about football.
Yeah, I loved working with Tom every day.
Seeing the game through the quarterback's eyes,
and understanding what he saw.
I think those are things that helped me be a better coach.
If you're here, what a good quarterback should do is...
Coach Belichick taught me so much.
I could not be the player I was without him.
See what it looks like today. See what it looks like.
Brady was a sponge.
He was absorbing all of this information and applying it on the field.
And one of the things that Belichick values over anything is improvement.
All right, beautiful.
You know, Bledsoe was kind of like this,
and Brady would go from here to there.
Bill Belichick respects it. He loves that.
Nice ball.
I remember this one time, I was having this conversation with Bill,
and he says, "This fucker Brady.
He's making this play, he's making this throw, he's making this adjustment,
you don't have to tell him, he understands the complete situation.
I've never seen anything like it."
Tom, it's a good looking series right there.
Good looking series.
So Bill, he had a belief in Brady.
And the players could sense that, and they bought into it.
Because the rest of the regular season, they didn't lose another game.
Brady, firing underneath, and it's caught.
Coleman, stroking it towards the end zone.
The spectacular catch and run.
This Jets team is shocked.
- That's it! That's awesome! - Here we go, baby. We gotta keep going.
Keep it up, bro!
Football is a relationship business.
And Tom Brady, he understood that to a tee.
Me and the rest of the offensive linemen, we would have drinking contests.
And Tom would hang out with us.
I'm like, "Shit, this dude is drinking me under the table."
That's pretty cool.
I think Tommy's been drinking a little bit tonight.
You looking at me? You looking at me?
You gotta be one of the boys, because you are.
You don't ever want your guys feeling like they can't talk to you.
But when all the guys are going out to drink beers,
you might have to slip a few waters in there, you know?
Tom knew that when you endear yourself to the big guys in front,
it's usually reciprocated, you know, on the field.
Hut!
Brady, out of the shotgun.
All day to throw to the sideline.
Patten with the catch, out of bounds.
There's attitude to this offensive line.
Smith, looking for daylight!
Touchdown, New England.
And we got bedlam here at Foxboro.
It's the Patriots with new momentum.
He takes a mammoth hit.
Tell you what, Brady got right up.
All right, baby. Let's go get them.
It's caught.
As we went on, Tom was getting tougher.
Not just physically, but mentally.
But you can't just turn that on during the game.
You gotta practice that.
And put the ball on the one yard line.
What's up, young buck?
Don't let me catch you or I'm gonna do something to you.
When Tom went against us in practice,
we're talking shit and we're going at him,
because we gotta make sure you feel that pressure.
- Oh yeah, pick. - Damn it!
He scared now. We got him.
You know, I picked off Tom. I'm like, "What the hell is that?
My goddamn grandma could've caught that shit!"
You know, I'm just giving it to him.
Man, we used to rip him up.
When it came to getting under a player's skin,
Ty, Vrabel, some of these other guys, they had no rules.
Whatever it was, there was nothing off the table for Mike Vrabel.
Fuck off, Brady!
And sometime I would even look at him and be like,
"Vrabes, like, I think you went too fucking far."
You know, I said, "Tom'll be just fine. Trust me."
Brady in the shotgun on third and one.
Nice fake by Brady.
And Faulk turns and throws it back for Brady.
He's there!
If you look at the stands, not an empty seat.
Everybody in Patriot colors, and--
And they're having fun so far.
Let's go Brady! Throw it! Throw it!
Brady, quick pass out here.
Complete to Pass. Pass to the ten, to the five, touchdown!
The New England Patriots win their fifth in a row.
I think without him being the superstar, the iconic main guy for the team,
kinda let everybody else have a piece of the pie.
They took a little bit more ownership in the sense, like,
this is our team.
It's not Tom's team. It's not Bill's team.
It's Mr. Kraft's team, but it's not even Mr. Kraft's team.
It's our team. We're doing this together.
The New England Patriots on the verge
of their first division title in four years.
Brady to the end zone. Touchdown!
That should do it, the regular season has come to a close.
Our congratulations to the AFC
Eastern Division champion New England Patriots.
And now this New England Patriots football team is headed to the playoffs.
Hey, Mr. Kraft, playoffs. Let's go!
Hi, Pat.
Thank you, we're... we're all flying high here.
Yeah, it's great, and it hope it sells more newspapers for the Herald.
No, that's great, you've done...
After we won our last game in that season, we had made the playoffs.
- Bobby, congratulations. - Thanks.
Way to go!
When you bought this team, you never dreamed
that this would happen this quickly, did you?
Before I bought the team, I'd been a fan for 34 years.
And in those 34 years, been one home playoff game.
Think about it. One home playoff game.
The whole New England region was going nuts.
With Foxboro Stadium set for demolition this off season,
the Patriots just two games away from the Super Bowl,
will host a game for the final time at the storied venue.
It's the most memorable game in the 30-year history
of the old Foxboro Stadium.
The last game ever played there.
Game day, there's nothing quite like it.
You know, when you have a big game,
you can feel your heart coming right up into your mouth.
But you've gotta stay focused on what the team needs to get done.
Fellas, listen, it's been an incredible run.
Almost a Cinderella story.
But tonight, I am very concerned
that we're gonna turn into a big, fat pumpkin.
[radio caller 2] The Raiders look sharp. Let's be honest, fellas.
There's no competing with that.
With Brady and Belichick, we just can't match that.
We're gonna lose the final game in Foxboro Stadium.
I'm afraid we're all gonna get our butts handed to us.
With call-in radio, when I have it on for about two minutes,
I kick myself and say, "You dummy, that's why you don't listen to it."
And I turn it off for another three weeks.
That said, they were not wrong.
This is way before we became the Evil Empire.
I mean, we were the underdog all the way.
But I remember driving to the game,
it starts spitting snow as I'm going down,
and I just had a great feeling.
We loved playing in the snow.
Looking in hindsight, of course, it's the only snow we got all winter,
that evening, when we needed it.
It was like the weather guy just dialed it up for us right over the field.
For us, it was kind of a magical night.
Felt like fate.
I remember walking out on the field for pregame,
and I'm thinking, "Man, we are gonna shock the world today."
Good evening, everyone, and welcome
to the winter wonderland that is Foxboro Stadium.
Tonight, the Patriots against the Oakland Raiders in the AFC semi-finals,
and the snow is coming down in Foxborough,
and will come down throughout this evening.
The snow just came continuously.
And we tried to clear it by the rules, but as little as we had to.
I know I'm not supposed to say that, but that's the truth.
Listen up! Who here has a championship ring?
- Nobody. - Let's go, baby.
Don't forget what the fuck you're fighting for!
All right? We win! Win on three. One, two, three, win!
We're gonna get this one.
- Promise? - I promise that.
Bill, given the conditions, how big of an advantage is that?
The field, I don't think we'll have a problem.
At least it didn't look like that pregame.
And, you know, I think we're ready to go tonight.
It seemed like Belichick hit the switch on this one as far as the weather.
Here's the switch.
Weather's good one day, the next day look what flows in.
We had a blizzard goin' on out here.
This is perfect for us.
We're playing against the Raiders.
This is a West Coast team coming in.
It was slushy. The vision was blurred.
Not what they're accustomed to.
Ain't that cold. Ain't no cold, baby. It ain't cold.
You're always trying to find the small advantages.
Especially for that game.
Because we knew they were good.
They were a good football team.
They were wishing for everything. They wished for the snow.
They wished for it to be cold.
There's one thing they didn't wish for. They didn't wish for the Raiders.
Raiders on three.
One, two, three, Raiders!
And we're underway at Foxboro.
Gannon looking for the end zone, has a man.
Touchdown!
Not today. Not today.
On to the field comes Tom Brady.
Let's see how the Patriots bounce back.
Hut!
Brady, pulls it down. Now throws, and it's intercepted.
Tom Brady lost his patience as a quarterback.
It's a big turnover for the Oakland Raiders,
and they have field position once again.
We had some shit happen in that game that made it almost impossible for us to win.
I threw an interception early.
Hut!
And we didn't do shit.
We couldn't move the ball.
I mean, it was just-- It was awful.
Brady with time, lots of time.
Throws, and overthrows the receiver.
Having all day to throw the football.
Tom Brady relatively quiet.
Let's go!
Wake up, will you? Let's play the game!
Looked up at the scoreboard.
Down ten, you know, against a great team, in the fourth quarter of the game.
And the feeling that we had, judging by the way we played,
I mean, there was no way we could do it.
But coach came over, and was like,
"Come on guys, we still got a shot at this."
We just gotta get the ball in the end zone here.
So whatever our best plays are, that's what we need to do.
Okay. Well, I mean...
So, we're goin' no-huddle.
We're just gonna kinda pick up our tempo.
Going out on the field.
I remember looking at the guys and saying,
"You gotta have the best game of your life for me."
Hut!
Third and five.
Quick pass. Wiggins. First down.
Brady. There's a quick pass.
And that's complete to Troy Brown.
Well, we've just seen a different New England offense.
You can tell a little more intensity, a sense of urgency.
Talk about finding a rhythm.
Hut!
Brady.
And is that caught? It is caught.
Jermaine Wiggins caught it off of David Patten.
Patriot fans come to their feet.
They smell something here on second and goal.
Hut!
Steps up. Gonna run it.
Inside the five, touchdown.
Patriots, behind Tom Brady, see their season stay alive.
That's some great comebacks. Keep it up, baby.
I was fired up. I was screaming at my teammates.
And it gave us a chance.
Hut!
Brady, with time. Running out of time now.
On the move.
And he's gonna run for the first down, and has it, and goes out of bounds.
Yeah, let's go!
Not much question about what Tom Brady has to get done here,
but on the last drive, he showed
that he can move this football team in a hurry.
Well, I think they've taken off some of those shackles
they had on him, and he's making good decisions.
Brady, from the shotgun.
Lost the football.
Covered by the Raiders.
That has pretty much sealed
an Oakland Raider victory here in New England.
I was so pissed.
And I ran off the field and I thought, "Fuck, that's it, that's the season."
I mean, I just, I couldn't believe that,
you know, I'd fumbled the ball to lose the game.
With the amount of time we had left on the clock,
there's no way that we could have come back and won that game.
That moment, that was tough.
You know, we've had this special season,
and then all of a sudden, just... it's over.
This game of football, it's all about control, control, control.
Control your own destiny.
And then, every once in awhile, you know...
...God does tell you, you ain't in control.
Well, they're going to, under two minutes,
review whether it's an incomplete pass or a fumble.
Well, it looks like Tom Brady had changed his mind
and was not gonna throw the football.
He's pulled it down. He had control of it.
Charles Woodson hits him.
And there's no doubt Greg, that is a fumble.
We basically thought we'd lost.
I remember my son, Josh, he enjoyed sitting in the stands.
We had seen him leave.
And he was in the parking lot, getting ready to drive out.
And then this big roar happens.
And he calls me, and he says, "What's going on?"
I said, "Come back."
After reviewing the play,
the quarterback's arm was going forward,
and is an incomplete pass.
Wow.
Game time, baby. It's game time!
It, of course, is up to Walt Coleman's interpretation.
Let's go back and take a look.
I mean, it felt like a fumble to me.
And it looked like a fumble to basically everyone else,
except that's not the way the rule was written.
So we didn't write the fucking rule!
Yeah, we were just told, Greg,
when the quarterback pulls the football down, or tucks it,
it doesn't matter if he's intending to throw the football or not,
it is an incomplete pass.
God bless Walt Coleman and the "Tuck Rule."
And we do feel that God's hand was at work.
The truth is, in this game, whether it's...
...luck, good fortune, fate, I don't know.
Something... something was on our side.
New life for the Patriots.
And the chance for a possible game tying field goal.
Come on, Adam.
Adam Vinatieri, with a season long of 54,
but it did not come in a snowstorm.
At that point, the realization kicked in of,
"This is gonna come down to a kick in this snowy weather on you, bud."
And onto the field comes Adam Vinatieri.
This will be a 45-yard attempt.
Come on.
You know, a 45-yarder in six inches of snow
in a crazy blizzard like that, was super, super low percentage kick.
We didn't even have any time to really clear the field or anything.
I kind of gave one little sweep with my foot and was like...
"Here goes nothing."
I just had a conversation with myself saying,
"Hey, Adam, man, this is gonna be the most difficult kick of your life.
With this much on the line,
you have to just focus in and do everything right.
If you miss it, you're done, man."
He kicked the ball,
but it's dark, it's snowing, very hard to see.
And I remember the famous words from the head coach, "What happened?"
I said, "He made the field goal."
It is... good!
That tied it up, and...
you know, we went on to stop them, get the ball in overtime
and kick the field goal to win it.
This is to advance to the AFC championship game.
Hey, I can't even put it in words.
These guys played like champions. They played hard.
And they gave me a chance to play...
Thank God for Adam Vinatieri!
Oh, my God--
Man, they should bronze his damn foot, for real, you know?
Put Adam Vinatieri's foot on top of your damn car, like it's a Rolls-Royce.
That was one of those games, where you be like,
"Damn, we gonna remember that one."
Was that a football game or what? Yeah!
What just happened, boy?
Yeah! What just happened!
- Told you fourteen would win it. - Yeah, that did, didn't it.
That was a great job.
Okay, we got it from everybody.
Third down stops, offense, special team punt return.
Everything you had to do in the fourth quarter, you did it.
You cut it close, but you did it. Okay.
All right, look,
everything we've had this year,
there's a lot to be thankful for,
but it all starts at the top.
This playoff game was for you.
Mr. Kraft!
Tuesday, Tuesday at one.
- Yes, sir. - Tuesday at one.
This is our year! This is our year!
Hey, "Champs" on three. One, two, three.
Champs!
This is destiny. Destiny, baby.
There's a part of all of us thinking, like, "Man...
I mean, there are some things happening here that are destiny-like."
And I mean, I felt this before.
But now it's for sure.
It's like, "Oh my gosh.
I mean, maybe we were meant to do this."
Welcome to Pittsburgh.
The Patriots do provide a formidable challenge here today,
and anyone who watched Tom Brady's performance in the snow last weekend
knows the young New England quarterback can deliver.
Hut!
Oh, boy.
The Patriots quarterback is down and he's injured.