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Now that he’s got the most Super Bowl victories of any player in NFL history, Michigan fans will never forget that Tom Brady played college ball in Ann Arbor.
But it wasn’t always a storybook situation for Brady as a Wolverine.
Not only was he an afterthought for the early part of his career, but once he became the starter, he had to duke it out with true freshman Drew Henson, a star local product that some fans wanted to see supplant him at quarterback.
However, Brady was equipped to handle all and any adversity that came his way, due in large part to the experiences he had coming to Michigan after high school.
“I went to Michigan, right, and when I went to Michigan, the head coach that recruited me, he ended up getting fired before I even got to the school,” Brady said on the show. “I committed in the spring, but by the time I got there in the fall, they had fired him. And then the guy who recruited me, he left to go from Michigan to Stanford before I even stepped on the campus.
“So within four months of me committing and going there, the head coach who recruited me, he was gone, the recruiting coordinator who recruited me, he was gone. As it shook out in college, what I realized, when you’re not their guy, there’s a different dynamic. When I got to the Patriots and Coach Belichick had drafted me, I was his guy. When you’re their guy, they want you to succeed, too.”
Lloyd Carr took over as Michigan head coach after Moeller was fired. As a sophomore, Brady met with Carr to discuss transferring.
“My second year, and the guy who was playing above me, Scott Dreisbach, he was very much their guy,” Brady said. “I thought we had got off to kind of a good start, he had got off to a good start in his career, and I was looking up at all these guys on the depth chart that were ahead of me, and I thought, ‘I’m never going to get a chance here.’ I remember talking to the people at Cal, because that was my second choice, to go to Berkeley, and I was thinking, ‘Maybe I should go there, because I’ll get more of an opportunity to play.’
“I went in and talked to Lloyd Carr. I said, ‘I don’t really think I’m going to get my chance here, I think I should leave,’ and he said, ‘Tom, I want you to stay, and I believe in you and I think you could be a good player, but you’ve got to start worrying about the things you can control.’ When he said that he wanted me there, I went to bed that night, I woke up the next day, and I figured, you know what, if I’m going to be – and I still feel this way today – in a team sport, you’ve got to sacrifice what you want individually for what’s best for the team. So if you’re not the best guy, it’s a disservice for the team if you’re forced to somehow play. My feeling was, if I’m going to be the best, I’ve got to beat out the best and if the best competition’s at Michigan, I’ve got to beat those guys out if I’m going to play. I ended up committing to be the best.”
Naturally, that change in mindset helped Brady become the competitor he is today, especially given his rise from the No. 199 draft pick overall in 2000 to a six-time Super Bowl champion.
Brady went on to credit Michigan advisor Greg Harden for his mentorship throughout his time in Ann Arbor. For more on that, read more here.