Tom King

He was wide-eyed, if not bushy tailed.

The young rookie was sitting at his locker in the old, cramped home team locker room Foxboro Stadium, as happy as could be.

It was the end of sixth round draft pick Tom Brady’s first training camp as a New England Patriot. And he had made the team as the third string quarterback behind Drew Bledsoe and backup Damon Huard. The grin on his face was wider than some of the holes left by Patriots offensive linemen over the years.

That’s this humble scribe’s first encounter with a quarterback named Tom Brady, who later famously became TB 12, The GOAT.

But to these eyes, he was just some scrub who made the Patriots roster, at least for the time being. He was asked the question of how it felt to have survived his first training camp, and the answer was something like, “This feels great!”

Poor kid, we thought. With Bill Belichick, he doesn’t know what he’s in for.

Really, who knew?

Of course, none of us did. The Tom Brady story is the most incredible there ever was in sports. There won’t be another one like it, we can pretty much guarantee that.

Yours truly was lucky enough to have seen 20 of the 22 years of it in person. From his first couple games, especially that first start when the Patriots crushed Peyton Manning’s Indianapolis Colts, to the incredible Tuck Rule playoff game, to that first Super Bowl win. A lot of media who worked for smaller, suburban outlets like this one in New England were able to have the chance at the opportunity to cover multiple Super Bowls because of Brady’s play. Some have gone on social media to “thank” Brady for that, but let’s be clear it’s the management of those outlet that we should all be eternally grateful to.

That aside, we’ve all seen some pretty amazing things.

Yours truly first had an inkling that there would be a long stretch of Patriot winning when Brady won his second Super Bowl, as well as the MVP award, when the Patriots beat Carolina in Super Bowl XXXVIII in Houston (the Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” game). When the award was given in a hotel conference area, it came with a vehicle on order and Brady wrote down on a white board the specifics (types of tires, etc.) that he wanted. He did so with a confidence that was different from the “We won!” look he gave Drew Bledsoe after the win over the Rams.

Brady was in it to win it.

It was fun when he was here. Bledsoe had started the tradition of the QB press conference on Wednesdays, but then Brady drifted away from it, with the right idea that he was the same as every other player but the wrong idea he wouldn’t create a huge media throng by his locker that would inconvenience those who with a locker near him.

The funniest thing would always be the media scattering from the fringes of the Brady locker room press conference when Randy Moss would be approaching his locker which happened to be right next to Brady’s. “Randy’s coming!” the loud whispers would start, with fear in some eyes. Priceless.

Brady in New England was always respectful, polite, often not very insightful but sometimes would slip – as he did with the comments about how the Ravens should have known the rules when a trick play worked to beat them in a playoff game. That came back to bite him when Baltimore tipped off Indianapolis about the under inflated footballs. It all caught Brady by surprise; he was doing something most QBs around the league were doing, but got caught. Oops.

Brady was ultra competitive. Anything he could do physically and mentally to win, he did it. Driven. We watched him grow up, marry, have kids, and turn into a human corporation.

Then things changed, but the talent, ability, and drive to win never did. Brady press conferences were always the most attended at all the Super Bowls.

We remember the MVP press conference when Goodell and Brady hugged like old friends, after the Patriots beat the Seahawks in February of 2015 in Glenndale, Ariz.. Front row seat, and those morning Super Bowl MVP press conferences were the toughest ones to attend because of working late the night before, but that meant better chance of a front row seat. Then DeflateGate became a year-plus drama, and two years after that, the must-attend session was after the incredible 28-3 comeback vs. the Falcons, once again in Houston. Almost full circle. We settled for the second row.

Fast forward to the end in New England, Brady’s final post-game press conference as a Patriot, after the Wild Card loss to Mike Vrabel and the Tennessee Titans.

“I’ve loved playing for this team for two decades and winning a lot of games,” Brady said on that Saturday night in early January of 2020. “And again, I don’t know what it looks like moving forward, so we’ll just take it day by day.”

The schedule gods helped New England fans get the final memorable moment with Brady as an active player when he came to Gillette Stadium as a Buccaneer last October.

The next will be whenever he’s inducted into the Patriots Hall of Fame.

No, Tom Brady didn’t know what he was in for when he made the Patriots roster back in 2000.

Turns out, neither did we.

Tom King can be reached at tking@nashuatelegraph.com