We Knew He Was Going to be Good, the Moment We Began to Ignore Him
We Knew He Was Going to be Good, the Moment We Began to Ignore Him
Luck, Pluck and Destiny
April 1, 2019
Luck, Pluck and the Patriots
The New England Patriots are very good and they are very lucky. Any assessment of their success over the past 18 seasons that doesn't recognize both New England's skill and good fortune is both inaccurate and silly.
We won't take time recounting all the individual moments from particular games where luck played just as vital a role as talent in the Patriots' success because that would take too long and would really be beside the point.
It would also be folly to document all instances of Patriotic mastery.
The windfall, and the acumen, to be addressed here is simply this one: Tom Brady.
Are the Patriots lucky to have Tom Brady, or did they just outsmart everyone else?
Yes.
Brady was chosen in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL draft, the 199th player chosen overall, after an impressive career at the University of Michigan where he threw 30 touchdown passes and staged many dramatic comeback wins but still had to constantly prove himself as the best signal caller on the roster.
Brady was taken in the sixth round, which means every single NFL team ignored him five or six times. All those teams thus made a mistake and that includes the Patriots. If New England thought Brady was going to be good they would not have tested fate and hoped that he'd still be available in the sixth round while they drafted, in this order, Adrian Klemm, J.R. Redmond, Greg Robinson-Randall, Dave Stacheski, Jeff Marriott and Antwan Harris before him.
No. If the Patriots thought Brady would be good they would have taken him in the second round. If they thought he would be great they would have taken him in the first round, despite the presence of quarterback Drew Bledsoe.
If they thought Brady was going to be possibly the greatest quarterback of all time they would have traded their entire roster and a few dozen pairs of shoes to the Cleveland Browns for the top overall pick (Cleveland chose Penn State defensive end Courtney Brown) and taken Brady.
The Patriots didn't think Brady was going to be great, or even good. They hoped he was going to be an OK backup. So they really weren't that smart. They were lucky.
But why were they the lucky ones? What was it about that skinny QB that made every other team refuse to take a chance on him? New England was dumb for five rounds and brilliant in the sixth.
Or New England was smart for five rounds and lucky in the sixth.
Skill would certainly seem to deserve more credit than luck when it comes to considering what the Patriots did once they got Brady. Stuck behind Bledsoe, he threw just three passes his rookie year. But in his second year when Bledsoe got hurt the Patriots plugged in Brady and did not look back. Their skill and their brilliance was in not hesitating to realize what they had once they had it. (Or should Brady have started his rookie year? Did they just get lucky again?)
The Patriots, Eagles, Seahawks, Packers and most other successful NFL teams know that there is no such thing as having too many good quarterbacks. Certainly there were some members of the Patriots brain trust who thought in 2000 that the team should continue to draft players to support Bledsoe and not take a QB. So, yes, that's what New England did.
Until the sixth round.
The Patriots got lucky. The Patriots got good. The Patriots got Brady.
Nearly twenty years later, (twenty years!) and with six Super Bowl trophies on the shelf the Patriots are still lucky. They are still good.
They are still Brady. --TK
Tuesday, April 2, 2019