Brady Starts Second Decade as Pats Starter at LinesMaker

Brady Starts Second Decade as Pats Starter

Tom Brady has said that he wants to play 10 more years.  As sev­eral of you have pointed out, Fri­day marked the 10-year anniver­sary of his arrival on the NFL scene.

On Sep­tem­ber 23, 2001, Jets line­backer Mo Lewis applied a lung-damaging hit to Drew Bled­soe.  Brady took over while Bled­soe healed, and the career of one of the great­est play­ers in NFL his­tory was launched.

Some won­der what would have hap­pened if Bled­soe hadn’t been injured.  There’s a school of thought that Brady was des­tined to over­come Bled­soe regard­less of injury, and that coach Bill Belichick at a min­i­mum had been toy­ing with the idea of putting Bled­soe on the bench.

This much is clear — Bled­soe didn’t play the clas­sic role of Wally Pipp.  When Brady suf­fered an injury dur­ing the AFC title game at Pitts­burgh, Bled­soe came in and presided over the win.  Though Bled­soe was more of a bystander than a game­breaker in that vic­tory, there was con­sid­er­able hand-wringing in Boston regard­ing the ques­tion of whether Bled­soe or Brady should get the nod in Super Bowl XXXVI.

In the end, Bled­soe didn’t pull a Pipp on Brady.  Belichick made the deci­sion that he sup­pos­edly had been pon­der­ing before Bledsoe’s injury.  The team won the Super Bowl, Bled­soe was traded to Buf­falo for a first-round pick in 2003, and the Pats won two more Super Bowls while being peren­nial contenders.

Though it’s been seven years since the last cham­pi­onship, Brady authored in 2007 and 2010 two of the best sin­gle sea­sons in league his­tory.  This year, he has had the two best regular-season games of his career (sta­tis­ti­cally), and he seems to have delib­er­ately kicked his game to another level.

Whether it’s a burn­ing desire to be known as the best ever or sim­ply the con­flu­ence of still-sharp phys­i­cal skills and suf­fi­cient expe­ri­ence to make the best deci­sions and exe­cute them well, Brady is mov­ing toward the man­tle of his boy­hood idol, Joe Mon­tana.  And at Brady’s cur­rent pace, he’ll sur­pass it.

Related Posts:

• Brady Says His OC Was Right to Yell at Him After Pick vs. Redskins
• Report: Paterno Dealt With Sec­ond Mile
• Brady: You Can’t Play QB Bet­ter Than Pack­ers’ Rodgers Is
• Cards’ Whisen­hunt: Skel­ton Likely Starter Over Kolb vs. Rams
• Palko Still Prepar­ing to Be Chiefs’ Starter Despite Orton Pickup

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