22 years ago on Saturday, Michigan quarterback Tom Brady was selected with the 199th overall pick in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL Draft by the New England Patriots. There has perhaps never been a better value selection in draft history considering Brady went on to lead the Patriots to nine Super Bowl appearances and six Super Bowl championships, cementing himself as one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history along the way.
A 2000 quote by Patriots head coach Bill Belichick on why he and the team picked the unheralded quarterback was making the rounds on Saturday, going viral because of its innocuous nature at the time.
“The value board at that point really just clearly put him as the top value,” Belichick said. “[Tom] Brady is a guy who has obviously played at a high level of competition in front of a lot of people. He’s been in a lot of pressure situations. We felt that this year, his decision-making was improved from his junior year after he took over for [Brian] Griese and cut his interceptions down. [He’s] a good, tough, competitive, smart quarterback that is a good value, and how he does, and what he’ll be able to do. We’ll just put him out there with everybody else and let him compete and see what happens.”
The part that caught everyone’s attention was the last line, “We’ll just put him out there…and see what happens.” If you you knew, Bill.
Plenty of people around the NFL world had some fun reacting to the resurfaced quote.
What happened was he became the greatest quarterback in NFL history https://t.co/KK7do7xpSb
— JC Allen (@JCAllenNFL) April 16, 2022
My favorite parts of this: one, he mentions "value" three times. Something to be said for consistency. And two, "we'll just put him out there with everyone else and let him compete and see what happens." I mean, there was no way of *really* knowing it at the time, but lol. https://t.co/dEp1IOkuyE
— Christopher Price (@cpriceglobe) April 16, 2022
This is bonkers when you look back on it https://t.co/rCn1rZFrPB
— meghan (@meg_han_11) April 17, 2022
“…and see what happens.” https://t.co/edB2DvKgMB
— Alexander Braelow (@abbraelow) April 16, 2022
Lol, Belichick had a pretty good initial take here: https://t.co/nCCbfUvHdY
— bmaz (@bmaz) April 16, 2022
The wildest part is that, 22 years later, there is still more to “see what happens” for both Belichick Brady. Now who could have predicted that?