For one, it's easy to look back now, after multiple Pro Bowls, MVPs, and Super Bowl wins, and mock teams for passing on Tom Brady. It's easy to shake our heads knowing what we know now. Yes, the careers of Chad Pennington, Gio Carmazzi, Chris Redman, Tee Martin, Marc Bulger and Spergeon Wynn pale in comparison to Brady's(although Pennington and Bulger were decent pros). However, think about Tom Brady going into that Draft. In his senior year at Michigan, he was constantly fending off rival Drew Henson for the starting QB job. His numbers, while solid when he played, weren't exactly earth-shattering like his pro numbers are now. At the NFL Combine(which scouts and "experts" swear by....except when a guy like Brady slips through the cracks then they chastise it), Brady ran a pedestrian 5.23 in the 40-yard dash(By comparison, Pennington, who is to being mobile what Charlie Sheen is to being sane ran a 4.84), wasn't particularly amazing in the passing drills and looked like Calista Flockhart in the photos shot of him in Indy. If you were to take Tom Brady's career at Michigan, his workout numbers and everything we knew about Brady prior to the 2000 Draft and put that into this year's Draft, he'd be lucky to be drafted, let alone a 6th round pick. For all the outrage ESPN tried to show over Brady's snub, NFL rookies are still graded these days on how fast they can run, how much they can lift and how high they can jump. Production takes a backseat, so does heart, smarts and intangibles.
The problem I have in glorifying Brady's story is that it's not original. Every year, guys who don't possess "elite measurables" or have supposed "red flags" get drafted lower than their workout warrior counterparts. Want an example? I was afraid you'd never ask. Here's the list of some guys since that infamous 2000 NFL Draft that slipped on Draft Day but turned out to be solid pros.
2001: Drew Brees(In fairness, Brees was the 2nd QB taken behind Michael Vick, who was heralded as the future of NFL QB's, so that was at least justifiable. Brees falling to the top of the 2nd round? Far less excusable)
2002: David Garrard, taken in the fourth round, behind David Carr(#1 overall), Joey Harrington(#3 overall) and Josh McCown(3rd round). Garrard isn't exactly an elite QB, but he's been to the Pro Bowl, unlike the other three guys.
2003: Tony Romo(undrafted)...Some guys who actually were drafted in '03: Ken Dorsey, Brooks Bollinger, Brian St. Pierre, Chris Simms, Dave Ragone.
2004: Well, there's Ben Roethlisberger, a two-time Super Bowl champion, falling to 11th overall. However, Big Ben was taken behind Eli Manning(also a champion) and Phillip Rivers(multi-time Pro Bowler), so if you'll excuse that, maybe you won't be as lenient on Matt Schaub going in the 3rd round behind someone like, say, J.P. Losman.
2005: 23 teams passed on Aaron Rodgers, and all he's done in his first three years as starter in go for nearly 4,000 yards a season and win a Super Bowl. Alex Smith, the guy taken #1 overall, well, his stat sheet isn't quite as rosy. There's also Andrew Walter and David Greene going ahead of Kyle Orton and guys like Stephen LeFors and Adrian McPherson going ahead of Matt Cassel(although Cassel never took a snap in college, so that might be a bit more reasonable).
2006: Jay Cutler(11th overall).....Vince Young(3rd) and Matt Leinart(10th) were both projected to be bigger stars than they actually were so the fact that Cutler has turned out to be a better pro so far is more of a shocker than a misstep by other GMs. Still, Cutler should have went higher.
2007: I've never been a Kevin Kolb fan so it's hard to claim outrage over his dip to the 2nd round but JaMarcus Russell taken #1 overall is a textbook example of teams caring solely on workout numbers over statistics.
The jury's still out on the last three years, but you get the point. Brady's fall to the sixth round in 2000 looks laughable now but it's certainly nothing new. Brady grew up idolizing Joe Montana, a guy who was taken in the 3rd round because he didn't look the part of an NFL quarterback. Brett Favre went in the second round because some considered him a bit too short at a shade over 6'1 and he didn't exactly play for a big-time school at Southern Miss. Those are two of the three greatest QB's of all-time. These things happen. It will happen this year with TCU's Andy Dalton, who is a bit on the small side and, barring an upset, will probably be taken behind bigger-named, more physically-impressive signal callers like Auburn's Cam Newton, Washington's Jake Locker and Arkansas' Ryan Mallett.
The questions are "Why?" and "What do we plan to do about it?". If the Combine is so flawed in being a good indicator of talent, why does it still exist? And if we are so willing to throw workout numbers out the window when guys like Brady buck the system, then why do we post the results? Grizzled old veterans like Mike Golic or Mark Schlereth wax poetically this time every year about how bench presses and cone drills are meaningless in terms of how it translates success in the pro game....and they are right. Look at Vernon Gholston. Look at Mike Mamula or DeWayne Robertson or Troy Williamson. These are guys who put on a clinic in a t-shirt and shorts on a short track but failed miserably in pads on an actual football field in a game of consequence. You can't have it both ways. You can't praise guys for lighting it up during Pro Days or individual workouts or the Combine and, subsequently, raising them up on your draft board and then complain about the injustice of the little guy getting passed over by their more finely-sculpted rivals.
Tom Brady went 199th overall because people saw flaws that may or may not have been there. He was a skinny kid, with not much tape and even less to like. He didn't fit the standards cultivated by NFL scouts, draft "experts" and, most importantly, fans like us. We are just as deserving of the ridicule as the six teams in April of 2000 that put a quarterback's name down on the card that wasn't Brady's.
The system is flawed. So much of how we perceive success is based on the eye test. The true lesson of Tom Brady's story isn't the buffoonery of the teams that passed on "the next Montana", it's the fact that he used that snub as motivation to prove us ALL wrong. Brady's rise is a hell of a story about the perseverance of a classic underdog, but here's a better topic for ESPN's next great documentary: How we can prevent an oversight like this from happening again.
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