Drew Bledsoe On NFL Hits, Almost Leaving Nike, & Hatred of Oregon Ducks

Football icon Drew Bledsoe discusses highlights and lowlights of his legendary career.

Former Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe poses for a photo at the New England Patriots Hall of Fame induction ceremony for Tom Brady at Gillette Stadium. / Eric Canha-USA TODAY Sports

FanDuel, an Official Sports Betting Partner of the NFL, is announcing a loaded roster of offerings to celebrate NFL kickoff and help fans watch and wager all season long, including a free trial offer for NFL Sunday Ticket from YouTube and YouTube TV and new product features.

FanDuel is America's only sportsbook to partner with YouTube and roll out a new NFL Sunday Ticket offer for fans who want to catch more action at kickoff. FanDuel customers who bet $5 will receive a three-week free trial for NFL Sunday Ticket from YouTube and YouTube TV, allowing fans to watch and wager on their favorite teams around the league.

As part of the exciting announcement, Kicks On SI spoke with NFL legend Drew Bledsoe about his career, love of Nike, and hatred for one college football team.

What made you want to partner with FanDuel to promote their partnership with NFL Sunday Ticket?

"It's the first time I've done anything in the sportsbook arena. I stayed away from it from an optics standpoint, like the NFL did, honestly. But they did a good job of promoting gambling responsibly, and we all recognize that it is something that is very important.

Then, I feel it's just a really cool promotion. For a $5 wager, you get three weeks of Sunday Ticket free on YouTube and YouTube TV. What a killer promotion that is. I've been a fan of moving Sunday Ticket to YouTube and YouTube TV simply because it works. It's a great interface. All I want from streaming services is for them to work properly, which it does."

Before we get into your career, what are you most excited about for the upcoming season?

"I'm such a fan of the NFL because it's the original reality TV. You get to watch this stuff unfold and the storylines are so great. If you look at just the AFC East: Is this year the Dolphins breakthrough, and can Tua (Tagovailoa) live up to the big contract?

What will the Jets look like if they get Aaron Rodgers for more than three plays? Will they make a move or is this another situation where quarterbacks go to die? The Patriots have a new staff and quarterback situation. Can they turn it around?

And if they can, how long is it going to take? And then the Bills have been knocking on the door for a few years. They seem primed for a Super Bowl but have injuries at the wrong time and come up short. So, there are so many storylines across the board that I'm just so excited to see play out."

How do you think your career would have been different had you played in the current era?

"(Laughs) I don't know, man. I do admit jealousy for quarterbacks that play these days. They can't touch the receivers, they can't even look at the quarterbacks, and they're throwing it about 25-30% more than they did back in the day. I think it would have been a heck of a lot of fun to see what we could have done in this era...

Although, quarterbacks in my era take pride in that we actually got hit. To be a quarterback in our era, you to have some toughness to you. You weren't going to get a flag if someone ran by you and called you a name. You had to take hits and get up and keep playing."

Toughness is an understatement. You almost died after taking a hit in a game.

"People forget that I went back in that game after taking the hit that almost killed me. I take a lot of pride that they never had to come get me off the field throughout my entire career. I always kept getting up and playing."

If you had one do-over in your professional career, what game would it be?

"The beauty of getting older is I have very selective memory, so I try to only remember the good games. But if I had one do-over, it would have been the end of the 1997 regular season against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

If we win that game, we get a home playoff game. If we lose that game, we have to go to Pittsburgh. And they got us again.

And that game ended in a really crappy way with an interception by a nose tackle who wasn't even supposed to be there, by the way. That was not his assignment. That was a bit of a horror film for me. If that happens, maybe Pete Carroll hangs around longer."

You were in multiple Nike commercials in the 1990s. How do you think those hold up?

"(Laughs) Somehow, we found a box of old VHS tapes, and we had a lot of my old commercials digitized so we could go back and watch them. Man, there was bad stuff in there. Did you see the scarecrow one?

I did; it was for Hibbett's Sports.

"I thought that one was kind of funny. They actually had a stuntman who was that scarecrow, and I don't know why they had to have the actual dude hanging up on the cross. Someone told me to start throwing footballs at him, and I was lobbing them because he had a trash can over his face, so he couldn't see when the balls were coming. They freed his arms up so he was able to put his hands over his nuts.

They told me to make it look realistic, so I started pelting this guy with footballs, and he doesn't even see them coming. I felt bad, but he was cool with it. He was like, 'That's what I signed up for, throw it hard!'"

How was Nike as a sponsor?

"They were great; I'm a northwest kid. We flirted with Reebok multiple times because they were right down the road from us in New England. But I was always a Nike guy growing up anyway. I don't think our flirtations with Reebok were ever going to happen; I was always going to be a Nike guy."

On the subject of Nike, had you played college football in the NIL era, do you think you would have ended up at Oregon instead of Washington State?

"(Laughs) Maybe someplace, but never Oregon! Man, I hate the Ducks. I hate them for a very specific reason - they were really bad in the early 1990s, but they played great against me. I always took that personally. I love everything about Nike, love Phil Knight, all of that, but I'll never admit that I could have been a Duck.

It would have been interesting though. I would love to sit here and tell you that the dollars wouldn't have mattered and I would have gone to Washington State to be with Mike Price and all that stuff. But shoot, man, I was 18, and my parents were school teachers. They start throwing around these kinds of dollars; it would make an 18-year-old's head spin real quick."

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