One of the reasons Tom Brady seemingly came out of nowhere to become the greatest NFL quarterback of all time was because he had to scratch and claw to get playing time in college at Michigan.
With the ever-changing transfer portal in modern college football, a story emerged from Brady’s coach with the Wolverines, Lloyd Carr, that was noteworthy regarding the quarterback’s time in Ann Arbor.
Brady redshirted his freshman year at Michigan, then spent two more seasons barely seeing the field.
At some point during this stretch, he went to Carr to ask for his release so he could go somewhere else where he could play. “It will be the biggest mistake of your life,” Carr told Brady, as reported by Yahoo Sports.
Tom Brady has won seven Super Bowls in the NFL. Getty Images«You came here to be the best.
You came here because of the strong competition. … If you leave now, you will always wish you had stayed and tried to compete. You will always wonder what would have happened if you had stayed.
After thinking about it, Brady, who would win seven Super Bowls in the NFL, returned to Carr’s office the next day and promised to attend.“I’m staying,” Brady reportedly said. “And I’ll show you that I’m a great quarterback.”
Even though Brady took most of the snaps for Michigan as a junior and senior, he still had to fend off Drew Henson, a local phenom at the time who would become a baseball prospect in the Yankees’ system.“I went in and spoke to Lloyd Carr.
I said, “I really don’t think I’ll get my chance here, I think I’ll have to leave,” and he said, “Tom, I want you to stay, and I believe in you and I think you could do. Be a good player, but you have to start worrying about the things you can control,” Brady recalled. ”
When he said he wanted me there, I went to bed that night, woke up the next day and thought, you know what, what if I have to do this – and I still feel like this today – in a… In team sports, you sacrifice what you want individually for what’s best for the team.“So if you’re not the best, it’s a disservice to the team if you’re forced to perform one way or another.”
My feeling was if I want to be the best, I have to beat the best, and if the best competition is in Michigan, I have to beat these guys if I want to play. Ultimately, I committed to being the best.
