Tedy Bruschi remembers when Tom Brady was the Patriots’ ‘irritating little brother’
"His voice would get so high," Bruschi said. "And it would sound like an 8-year-old boy just complaining and you're trying to get the team fired up at the same time. It was really comical."
After seven Super Bowl titles, it’s hard to imagine Tom Brady as a scout team quarterback.
But that’s precisely what he was at the beginning of his NFL career more than two decades ago.
The five-time Super Bowl MVP was once a backup trying to prove the Patriots made the right choice by selecting him in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL Draft.
Former Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi shared a few stories of what young Tom Brady was like with Julian Edelman and Sam Morril on the Games With Names Podcast this week.
“People just see him, I don’t know, you used the term ‘celebrity quarterback’ and that’s what he turned into and that’s great and everything,” Bruschi said. “But he used to really play the little brother role, the really irritating little brother role in terms of scout team quarterback, always talking about what he could do and always talking trash during two-minute situations.”
Bruschi said teammates used to laugh at Brady’s voice when he tried to pump the team up.
“His voice would get so high,” Bruschi said. “And it would sound like an 8-year-old boy just complaining and you’re trying to get the team fired up at the same time. It was really comical. That’s how we saw him to start.”
The two-time All-Pro linebacker said despite Brady’s success, he still pictures the younger version of the quarterback.
“I definitely witnessed the transition,” Bruschi said. “But I still see him as that kid who came up when nobody thought he could.”
Brady was already a three-time Super Bowl champion by the time Edelman was drafted in 2009.
“I saw a completely different version of that,” Edelman said. “He was 34 by that time and I saw the development of the celebrity quarterback and I became the little annoying brother that used to piss him off. That’s where that transitioned in.”
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