MINNEAPOLIS — The Legend of Tom Brady, who is gunning for his sixth Lombardi Trophy against the Eagles in Super Bowl LII, the very beginning of the unparalleled Belichickian Patriots Dynasty, began inside the Superdome on Feb. 3, 2002, at the 17-yard line. Brady had 1:21 to try to upset the Greatest Show on Turf. He did not have any timeouts left.
Kurt Warner had just hit Ricky Proehl with a 26-yard TD pass and it was Patriots 17, Rams 17. Brady, Bill Belichick, offensive coordinator Charlie Weis and backup quarterback Drew Bledsoe huddled on the sideline.
“I said, ‘Well they got all the momentum,'” Weis told the Post on Super Saturday. “And we decided that we’d go ahead and go for it.”
Which was fine with Brady. “He wanted us to go for it,” Weis said. “Back at that time, this wasn’t one where he’s gonna be changing plays and everything like that. You’re calling a play and he’s running it.”
Brady had taken over after Bledsoe had been disabled in Week 2 by Jets linebacker Mo Lewis. Weis said to him: “Now listen, if you don’t have anything here, don’t be stupid. Throw the checkdown.”
Weis added: “I remember Bledsoe saying, ‘The hell with that, just sling it.’ Giving him totally different words of encouragement.”
Translation: “What he was saying, like any player would say, ‘don’t worry about being conservative, go out and win the game,'” Weis said.
The drive started with Brady, operating from the shotgun, targeting RB J.R. Redmond for a five-yard gain.
“On the first play of that drive, one of the interior defensive linemen did get a hand of him, but he slipped that, dumped the ball off for a checkdown,” Weis said.
Brady hit Redmond over the middle for eight yards, spiked the bill, then found Redmond for 11 more.
“I remember us throwing a check flare up the left to J.R. in minus territory where he made a guy miss and then barely got out of bounds,” Weis said.
Brady, from his 41, shunned a slant threw the ball away under pressure. Now there were 29 seconds left. The Rams switched to Cover 2. “He threw the in cut to Troy Brown, who got out of bounds and put us in field goal range,” Weis said.
It gained 21 yards. There were 21 seconds left. Brady was at the Rams 36. Adam Vinatieri was getting ready on the sideline.
“We had a little time left, so we said, ‘OK, let’s throw a little three-step drop, drop it off to the tight end, and then come up and clock the ball,'” Weis said.
A six-yard gain over the middle to Jermaine Wiggins. “We actually clocked the ball too early,” Weis said. “Now you have to clock it with five seconds to go. We clocked it with seven seconds to go, and Adam came on and split the uprights.”
Brady captured his first Super Bowl championship when Vinatieri booted the 47-yard field. Weis, asked to characterize Brady on that drive, said: “Poised.”
It was a remarkable rise for a sixth-round afterthought a year earlier.
“He was this skinny kid who’s not the most athletic in the whole world,” Weis said. “When you first saw him, he was our fourth-string quarterback, so he wasn’t getting very many reps. We kept him because we thought he had potential. I guess it was a good thing that we did that. I think the whole year he threw three passes in the Detroit game.”
But young Brady was relentless on the practice field.
“It was what you observed from him on a day-to-day basis,” Weis said. “After practice was over, after he got no reps, he’d take all the other guys like him, that weren’t getting reps at practice, and then he’d take the script, and go through the practice. No coaches, they didn’t have to be out there. But he would go out there. You’d watch this and say, ‘Maybe we got something here.'”
Boy, did they ever.
“He was driven by his draft order,” Weis said. “First of all, he wasn’t very happy that he had to split time with Drew Henson at Michigan. And then he get drafted in the sixth round, he wasn’t happy with that. That was enough incentive for him for the rest of his career.”
No one could possibly have imagined Brady would go on to be the G.O.A.T.
“I don’t know. … When a guy’s in his second year in the league, and he wins the Super Bowl MVP, you have to think that the kid might be special, right?” Weis said.
Weis, who left the Patriots in 2005 to coach at Notre Dame, hosts “Airing It Out,” a weekly SiriusXM NFL Radio Show. Brady at 40 is somehow still airing it out.
“He wants to prove to everyone that there’s no limits to do what you could do with your body if you take care of your body,” Weis said. “He’s driven to be the best of all time, which he’s probably already done that. But I think he wants to show people that 40 shouldn’t be a stigma to tell you that you’re done, because looking at him, and if you see him in person now versus to see him 15 years ago, I mean, he looks like he’s in better shape now.”
Weis was asked what his emotions were about Brady’s career all these years later.
“I’m just proud of him,” he said. “Every time he has success, you feel in a very small way, you’re part of that.”
Weis agreed with Phil Simms’ opinion that Brady has never thrown the ball better. Asked how long he thinks Brady can play, Weis said: “I don’t think he’s close to being done.”