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Tom Brady in New York Giants blue? The NFL world would have been very different had that come to fruition back in 2000. And Sean Payton says if he had his way, it would have.
While appearing on the “Green Light” podcast with retired defensive end Chris Long, Payton says he tried and failed to convince the Giants to draft Brady in 2000. At the time, Payton was the team’s offensive coordinator and shared agents with who we now know as the G.O.A.T.
“All right, so I’m in New York and my agent is Don Yee, and Don also represents Tom Brady,” Payton explained. “Don would periodically call me with a client that he just signed, and he said, ‘Hey, will you call up Tom Brady? He’s at Michigan and I’ve got him, and just help him out with things that would be important for him at the combine.'”
Payton claims he then met with Brady and began to study his film. He placed a late third-round/early fourth-round grade on the Michigan quarterback but simply did not have enough power to sway the Giants’ draft room.
But Payton wasn’t alone. Long-time Giants scout Raymond “Whitey” Walsh has also gone on record claiming he was high on Brady at the time. Like Payton however, he just didn’t have enough pull.
“I thought he had something,” Walsh Jr. told the New York Post. “I thought he could help us. . . But nobody in the room had anything to say about Brady.”
Payton and Walsh were helpless as Brady went off the board to the New England Patriots in the sixth round (No. 199 overall). And the rest, as they say, is history.
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