If there were ever an example of greatness, it would be Tom Brady. Starting from nothing as a backup QB on a lossless team his freshman year of high school, Tom Brady faced adversity every step of the way.
At the University of Michigan, Tom had to watch from the bench as Brien Griese led the team to a national championship. Then, after being the starter for the team his whole junior year, he faced a position battle his senior year.
After overcoming the position battle, he led the University of Michigan to an Orange Bowl win over Arkansas.
But it wasn’t smooth sailing from there. Brady was chosen with the 199th pick in the draft. Most picks in that range aren’t expected to last on teams more than 2 years.
Not Brady. When star QB Drew Bledsoe was injured, Brady stepped up. He threw five 300+ yard games in a row. When Drew came back healthy, he didn’t get his job back. It was Tom who led the Patriots to their first-ever Super Bowl win.
From there, the rest is history. Tom would go on to win a record 7 super bowls, three more than his childhood idol and the previously considered greatest of all time, Joe Montana.
Although it’s a history most of us lived through, there’s so much to learn. So, this week, I’m really excited to share the Tom Brady Profile. In typical product growth fashion, we extract the lessons tech workers can take away from the story.
I am an expert on Michigan Football, but I am no expert on Football itself. As a result, this week it was wonderful to collaborate with my good friend Andrew Bowker. If he wasn’t a PM, he’d be a football coach. I could think of no better person to break down these lessons with us.
Early Life
Lesson 1: To Be the Best, Aim to be Like the Best
Halfway between San Francisco and Sand Hill Road in Palo Alto lies San Mateo. In the shadow of these two prosperous technology hubs, Tom Brady was born and brought up to be a football player. While the weather is just right to practice year-round, the region lacks the commitment to football of the south or midwest. Most high school players dream of becoming tech billionaires, not football stars.
So, it’s rather surprising that amidst this crucible of global tech talent that Tom grew up in the 80s and 90s, he turned out to be a football star. Part of this was a gift from Tom’s father, and part a gift from his sisters.
Tom’s father was an avid fan of the San Francisco 49ers. Tom and his father went to several 49ers games during Tom’s childhood. The 49ers QB duties were helmed by Joe Montana. Up until Tom Brady, Joe was considered the greatest quarterback of all time. This gave Tom a real role model for his life. As his sister, Maureen said: “Our family worshiped Joe Montana.”
But plenty of kids grow up idolizing sports stars.
Tom’s sisters were equally an influence. As he wrote about in his High School essay, “The Way My Sisters Influenced Me,” all three excelled in sports. His oldest sister was an all-California level pitcher, and his other two sisters played three varsity sports each. The athletic shadows cast by Tom’s sisters were long.
Lesson 2: Build a Well Rounded Base of Skills
High School
As a youngster, Joe Montana played football, basketball, and baseball. So, too, did Tom. At his private, catholic, all-boys school Junipero Serra, Tom played all three sports.
Like Montana, Brady spent his first two years of high school football as a backup. His freshman year, the JV team did not win a single game, yet Tom still could not make it on the field. This did not prevent Tom from having big dreams. As he wrote in his freshman year essay:
One day, I’m going to be a household name.
Eventually, with an injury to the starting quarterback, Tom would get his crack at starting for the varsity team as a junior. You guessed, it just like Joe. But no one compared Tom to Joe in high school. In fact, the athletic leadership at Junipero Serra thought Tom’s future was as a professional baseball catcher/ pitcher, not a quarterback. Serra had produced several baseball stars, including Barry Bonds.
As a result, Tom and Serra did not get serious about football recruiting until the summer before Brady’s senior year. By then, the two-sport athlete was looking at a scant few available quarterback scholarship positions at major universities.
Eventually, Brady Sr. helped compile a tape, verified by a quarterback expert, and put into the hands of college coaches. Brady Sr. actually mailed tapes.
One thing the Brady parents were sure of was that Tom would have the opportunity to go to a strong school academically as well. So, after the interest came in, the list was pared down to five schools: Cal-Berkeley, UCLA, USC, Illinois, and Michigan.
During Brady’s senior season, only one of the head coaches actually came to watch Brady play: Mike Riley of USC. But Bill Harris, Michigan assistant, also came out several times. First, he came to the high school to retrieve all the game tape of Brady. What he found was a QB who was pretty good, even at his worst. Then, he met with Brady at school and with his parents.
After all that went well, Bill arranged Tom to visit the University of Michigan in January 1995. A few weeks later, shortly before National signing day, Brady called Harris to tell him he was going to be a ‘Michigan Man.’ As Brady Sr said:
I guess there were more highly recruited prospects, but Tommy never had any doubt about his abilities
College
Lesson 3: Adversity is the Crucible for Diamonds
That lack of self-doubt would prove important for Brady after he flew 2,400 miles across the country to a much chillier Ann Arbor, Michigan.
In Ann Arbor, Brady would play games at the biggest home stadium of his life: the Big House. With record attendance of 115,000 (a 2013 battle versus Notre Dame that I attended), the stadium fits far more than any of Brady’s future NFL homes.
Of course, that attendance is due to the stellar product on the field. The University of Michigan has been drawing 100,000 plus crowds for over a hundred years. As the winningest program in college football history, there were no shortage of star quarterbacks when Brady arrived.
In fact, there were 6 QBs ahead of Tom on the depth chart. After redshirting (waiting a year and just doing academics), Brady’s college career started like his high school one. He was on the bench. His first pass was intercepted and returned for a touchdown. He ended the year with 5 passes, and his second year with 15 passes.
Michigan was helmed by Brian Griese, who held a 17-5 record as starter for the University of Michigan. The University of Michigan won all three of its games against arch rival Ohio State University under Griese. In Griese’s final season, 1997, the University of Michigan had an undefeated season and won the national championship.
Like high school, finally, in Brady’s third year, he was the starter. Brady started every game of his junior year, winning 10 of his final 11. He also set Michigan records for most pass attempts and completions in a season, for a total of 214. He capped the year by leading Michigan to a 45-31 victory over Arkansas on national television in the Citrus Bowl.
Despite Brady’s success, Michigan had another star recruit for primetime – local legend Drew Henson. In Brady’s senior year, Michigan coach Lloyd Carr made a bizarre decision: To play Brady in the 1st quarter, Henson in the 2nd quarter, then award the rest of the game to the hot hand. This went on for the first 5 games of the season
It was one of the most mentally grueling times in Brady’s life. But Brady withstood the adversity. He went to the team’s football facility every night to watch extra film.
And then his turning point came. In the sixth game, against Michigan State, Michigan was down by 17. Brady nearly brought Michigan back, throwing for an incredible 241 yards in the final 18 minutes. The next game, Brady locked up the starting job for the rest of the season by throwing for 307 yards.
Brady’s final game in college would prove to be his best. On the national stage in the Orange Bowl against Alabama, #8 Michigan was the underdog to #5 Alabama. It was the Big Ten vs SEC rivalry the country wanted to see.
In a back and forth game, Brady led Michigan back from 14-0 and 28-14 holes. Then, as the game went into overtime, he led Michigan on a final game-winning drive. It was a thrilling cap to Brady’s season, taking Michigan to the final stage and succeeding.
But as any fan of college football knows, team success does not mean QB draft success.
Lesson 4: Weaknesses Don’t Have to Crowd Out Strengths
The Draft
Before the 2000 NFL Draft, the leading analyst Mel Kiper Jr. gave Tom a 5th round draft projection. Mel projected that 10 other QBs would go before him. Analysts across the board were concerned about Tom’s mobility and athletic abilities.
Despite Brady’s on-the-field success and proven mental fortitude, his game did not stack up with the best that year. The scouting reports were brutal:
The measurables were similar. At the NFL combine, Tom ran a 5.24-second 40-yard dash, which was the second slowest QB at the combine that year. It was the 0.7% percentile among QBs.
It wasn’t just speed, though. Brady had a 24.5-inch vertical leap and a broad jump of 8 feet, ¼ inch. Those clocked in at the 2.9 and 45.3 percentiles of QBs, respectively.
Since then, only 65 players measured at NFL combines have run slower 40 times, shorter vertical, and shorter broad jumps than Brady. Brady had one of the worst sets of measurables, ever.
With the abysmal combine performance, Tom didn’t end up a 5th round draft pick. He ended up a 6th round pick. The New England Patriots took him 199th overall. Six other QBs were selected before Tom. Of course, none came close to achieving what Tom ultimately would:
- 18th: Chad Pennington, played 89 NFL games with a 90 passer rating
- 65th: Giovanni Carmazzi, played 0 NFL games
- 76th: Chris Redman, played 31 NFL games with a 79 passer rating
- 163th: Tee Martin, played 3 NFL games
- 168th: Marc Bulger, played 96 NFL games with an 84 passer rating
- 183rd: Spergon Wynn, played 10 NFL games with a 40 passer rating
- 199th: Tom Brady, played 318 NFL games with a 98 passer rating
There are a total of 256 picks in an NFL draft: 7 rounds of 32 + an additional 32 “compensatory” picks. This puts Tom’s 199th pick in the 78th percentile. Typically, teams expect to cut players taken in rounds 5-7.
It was not a good start to Brady’s NFL career.
Early NFL Days
When Tom arrived in the New England Patriots camp in the summer of 2000, he did not find a team clamoring for his arrival. Helmed by the highest-paid QB in the league, Drew Bledsoe, the Bill Bellicheck led Patriots were firmly invested in another QB.
But Brady stayed ready. In his first season, he barely got to sniff an NFL defensive line, throwing a meager 4 passes. But in 2001, Brady would make NFL history.
In the second game of the season, Patriots’ star QB Drew Bledsoe was badly injured. Suddenly, Tom had his opportunity. He couldn’t seal the deal in New England’s first game, making 5 pass completions out of 10 attempts.
But he finally had his NFL starting opportunity. In Tom Brady’s first game as a starting NFL quarterback, he led the 0-2 Patriots to an extraordinary 44-13 win over the 2-0, Peyton Manning-led Indianapolis Colts. It would set the tone for the rest of his NFL career, battling against the great QBs of the 2000s and 2010s, led by none other than Peyton Manning.
The next game would not be as great. Brady threw for a mere 69 yards against the Miami Dolphins, in one of the worst games of his career. But Brady, as he would show throughout his career, maintained his resolve through adversity.
He came out slinging for 300+ yards the next four games, bringing the Patriots to a 4-4 record. As news of a potential Drew Bledsoe week 11 return circulated in the media, the pressure was on Brady to defend his job, and he was stepping up to the challenge.
With solid performances in week 9 and 10, Bill Belicheck shocked the NFL when he announced that the 6th round QB making $193K a year would be starting over the star QB making $10M a year. It was a bold decision that drew lots of criticism.
With the starting job now firmly his, it was off to the races for Tom and the Patriots. They did not lose a single game the rest of the year, including the Super Bowl. Bill was “right”.
The weaknesses that held him back at the draft – athleticism – did not crowd out Brady’s strengths: mental resilience, toughness, competitive spirit, and a heck of an arm. For his escapades, Tom was named to the Pro Bowl in just his second year in the NFL.
Lesson 5: Raise the Tide for All Ships
Firmly a Star
After leading the Patriots to a Cinderella Super Bowl victory in 2001, Tom Brady’s star was firmly planted on the map. The Patriots traded away Drew Bledsoe for a draft pick, and in doing so, gave the keys of the franchise to Tom Brady. He went from fighting doubters and adversity his first few years of high school, college, and the NFL, to becoming the household name he promised to be as a freshman in high school.
For some, once they reach Mt. Everest, they stop climbing. Not Tom.
In 2002, the Patriots would experience a classic Super Bowl hangover. The team ended the season 9-7 and didn’t make the playoffs. But Tom continued to improve, ending the year with 28 touchdowns compared to 18 the season prior.
After the 2002 season, Tom took the team’s failure personally. From that point on, Tom Brady would never have a season where his team failed to make the playoffs. To correct things, Tom realized he needed to raise the tide for all ships. As a successful QB, he knew he needed to get even better at improving those around him. Being the best doesn’t mean anything if you can’t bring anyone with you. Football is a team sport.
It worked. In 2003, Tom would lead the Patriots to an extraordinary 14-2 season. They would go on to win the Super Bowl. It was a miraculous season with a miracle ending. Tom ended the season on the cover of Sports Illustrated, which called that year’s Patriots team, “A Team for the Ages.”
In 2004, Brady and the Patriots would pull off a similar set of miracles. In fact, Tom would elevate his play even further, raising his 86 QB rating in the first four years of his career to a 93 in his fifth year. With an even better Brady, the Patriots would go 14-2, again, and win the Super Bowl, again. Only 1 other team in history has won 3 championships in 4 years – the 1992/93/95 Dallas Cowboys.
By his fifth year, Tom Brady had stacked up three Super Bowls, as if they were easy things to win. In this period, countless players – from David Givens and David Patten to Daniel Graham – would have career years catching the ball from Tom, and then fade into oblivion without him. Tom managed to pull the max potential out of his teammates, especially Wide Receivers and Tight Ends. Later in Tom’s career we would see more examples of players who seemed like all-stars catching passes from Tom: Wes Welker, Danny Amendola, and Chris Hogan all played their best football as a Patriot.
It was an amazing case of raising the tide for all boats. Tom insisted on the highest standards with his teammates. And, they were willing to meet the standard because they saw his work ethic and how he went above the standard himself – especially those who were fortunate enough to attend one of Tom’s pre-season “Montana trips”.
Tom aligned everyone around their common goal of winning Super Bowls, and by age 27 he had done it to a historic rate. By comparison, Peyton Manning in his 18-year career only managed to accumulate two Super Bowl wins. Even for the best, winning the Super Bowl is hard. Tom won three early in his career. Sports media even tossed out the idea that he’d be a hall of famer if he had retired in 2005.
If you’ve followed us to this point, you know nothing is always smooth sailing.
Lesson 6: If You Lose, It’s On You
With back-to-back Super Bowls, many Patriots players were looking for bigger paydays and left for greener pastures. The team experienced severe personnel turnover and managed to get knocked out of the Divisional round of the playoffs by the Denver Broncos the following year.
Brady took the blame for the loss. After the game, he said:
When you lose, you want to go down fighting. You want to go down playing your best and we didn’t do that. We made it easy for them.
He always used ‘we’ to describe the team, implying his personal guilt as much as team members.
After the brief hiatus of a bad season, the Patriots would rehaul their receiver corps in the offseason. They acquired Donte Stallworth, Wes Welker, and most notably – Randy Moss.
The additional offensive firepower would allow Brady to come back in 2007 with his best season ever. After throwing an average of 24 touchdowns his first six seasons, Brady would go on to throw a whopping 50 touchdowns. The Patriots went on to the first ever perfect 16-0 season and Tom Brady won his first MVP honors, given to the best single player in the entire NFL.
Naturally, with such a dominant team, the Patriots found themselves in the Super Bowl at the end of the season. They ended it in dramatic fashion, with Brady throwing a touchdown to Randy Moss with 3 minutes left in the fourth quarter. Up 14-10, the team’s next title looked to be in hand.
But with 2:39 left, the New York Giants led a game-winning drive. David Tyree made the infamous “helmet catch,” on the drive. It was a thrilling game, but a bittersweet end for Brady and the Patriots. As always, despite the MVP season, Brady took the blame:
They have some great pressure schemes, obviously some great pass rushers. Once we kind of got the idea of what they were doing, I thought we handled it much better but we just didn’t get the ball in the end zone enough.
Even after firmly establishing himself as the best player on the field at all times, he took responsibility for the loss. It would have been the only undefeated season ever.
Lesson 7: Do What Works For You
Tom Brady grew up like every other American kid. As he told Men’s Health:
I believed if you want to get good, you gotta go squat and bench, and it’s all I ever did.
But this led to severe tendinitis due to lifting heavy weights combined with constant football throwing. It was in 2009 that the first piece about Tom Brady’s unique diet and exercise plans began to surface. Ornish lifestyle medicine explained that Tom mainly ate plants, steered away from caffeine, white sugar, and flour.
As the Patriots and Tom continued to ascend throughout the 2010s, Tom continued to evolve his own unique approach to total fitness. The information would slowly trickle out to the public. In a 2013 piece on ESPN, Seth Wickersham explained that Brady rarely drank alcohol. Instead, two thoughts swirled around his mind: “how to win another super bowl, and how to raise balanced kids in an unbalanced celebrity world.”
In 2015, Alex Guerrero, Tom Brady’s close friend and personal trainer started to ramp up the marketing. The world learned that Tom was focused on playing Football as long as he can. To do so, he was going to rather extreme lengths most are not willing to:
- Going to sleep at 8:30 pm
- Following a seasonal diet focused on raw food
- Having an 80% alkaline and 20% acidic diet
The third one is easily the subject of the most ridicule. Most experts can get behind sleeping alot and eating healthy foods. But having a balance and harmony around acidity is hardly scientifically proven. Tom’s focus on reducing inflammatory foods like tomatoes led to publications producing pieces like Sports Illustrated’s, Tom Brady is a picky eater.
In reality, Tom was just adjusting his diet to what worked for him. Although eating that balance of acidic foods may not be important for most, it helped Tom perform best at his level.
All the optimization of his diet and sleep paid off. After a 10 year gap, in a thrilling win over Russel Wilson and the Seattle Seahawks, Tom Brady and the Patriots finally won another Super Bowl in 2015. It was a validation of Brady’s immense discipline for him to win a Super Bowl at age 38 – considered “old” for an NFL player.
But he wasn’t done yet. The world had never seen a player – in any major sport – perform so dominantly into their late 30s and early 40s. Brady would go on to win 3 more Super Bowls including one with the Buccaneers at the age of 43. Although many considered him a hall of famer in his 20s, Brady was an even better version of himself in his 40s.
Lesson 8: Make Sacrifices for the Team
One of the underreported stories of how the Patriots returned to the Super Bowl after a decade-long hiatus was that Tom Brady actually restructured his contract to give the Patriots $24M in cash to spend. He took less money so the organization could build a better team around him.
The tactic worked. This allowed the team to surround Tom with talent that would otherwise be too expensive. This was a tradeoff other teams with top QBs struggled with. They couldn’t afford offensive weapons because the QBs required too much salary. Tom however, was able to reach 5 additional super bowls in the later stage of his career winning 3 of them.
Tom put the team before himself beyond just money. Each year, Tom invited a few key players to Montana to bond, learn, and practice chemistry before the season. He understood the game was more than just on field performance. It was about building trust.
One of the most interesting ways this has played out for Tom is that amazing players want to come play for him. His sidekick Rob Gronkowski came out of retirement and followed him to his new team the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Together, the two were the star duo of 2020’s Super Bowl win.
This year, had Antonio Brown not run himself off the field, Tom might just have collected his eighth Super Bowl. Up until that point, the Buccaneers looked like the best team in the league.
It was an amazing victory lap for a QB who had already established himself as the best of all time around the 2016 time frame to win so much more, and play at an MVP level until the age of 44. The Brady family’s childhood Idol Joe Montana played until age 38 and accumulated 4 Super Bowl wins. Tom firmly surpassed him with 10 total super bowl appearances and 7 wins.
Final Word
If you’re reading this, it’s likely you’re a product manager or a tech worker of another domain. It’s likely, then, that you share Tom’s aspiration: to be great at what you do.
But amidst the “hustle culture” and sensationalized content circulating TechCrunch, Blind, Twitter, Linkedin, and Forbes contributing to self-fabricated unrealistic expectations and pressure to “succeed”- remember these lessons.
Remember that Tom was an underdog. In his first seasons of high school, college, and the NFL – Tom was not a starter. Now he’s the unanimous best football player in the history of humanity. The GOAT – Greatest Of All Time. You don’t need to have everything figured out at the beginning. Just be committed to a journey of learning and growth.
His story emphasizes timeless lessons of greatness that can apply to everyone. That you can achieve high levels of success AND have fun AND help others AND be physically healthy AND be mentally healthy AND have weaknesses AND experience the full spectrum of human emotions. Look outside of our tech bubble ever so often. There’s a lot we can learn from the GOATs to help us live a meaningful and fulfilling life.
As the Lindy effect shows, just because these ideas are old does not make them less worthwhile. In fact, the alignment of Tom’s lessons with timeless ideas make these ideas all the more solid:
