Sean Payton wanted New York Giants to draft Tom Brady in 2000

The former Saints head coach details how he wanted to draft the legendary quarterback back when he was with the New York Giants.

There have been a couple of shocking decisions across the NFL this offseason and Tampa Bay has been involved with a few of them. Over the last month, star quarterback Tom Brady has returned to the football field while former head Bruce Arians elected to move to a front-office role. 

However, there was another coaching change that no one saw coming in 2022 that has lost some buzz in the wake of Brady and Arians' decisions. Former New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton chose to step down from the franchise on January 25.

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Throughout the last few weeks, Payton has been appearing on a number of shows to talk about his decision and to further push his name into the limelight for a job covering the NFL. Last Friday, Payton was a guest on the 'Green Light' Podcast with former professional defensive end, Chris Long.

During the show, the veteran coach spent a large portion of the episode talking about the NFL Draft and telling stories about different players that he had been involved with throughout his career. One of those players was none other than current Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback, Tom Brady, who was a draft prospect out of Michigan at the time. Check out the full episode HERE.

Brady and Payton shared an agent, who asked the coach to provide the quarterback with some advice leading up to the NFL Combine. At the time, Payton was the offensive coordinator with the New York Giants. The situation transpired into Payton making a case to draft Brady in a room of personnel that had him pegged as a seventh round pick or undrafted free agent outside of one scout.

“All right, so I’m in New York and my agent is Don Yee, and Don also represents Tom Brady. Don would periodically call me with a client that he just signed, and he said, ‘Hey, will you call up Tom Brady? He’s at Michigan and I’ve got him, and just help him out with things that would be important for him at the combine. Basically, I remember it being a half an hour phone call on what's important, make a good impression, be prepared to answer some football questions. The interviews were much more informal at that time."

"Now I'm a little bit connected to this player only because Don introduced me. We were doing [scouting] Brady, now this is going around the room and everyone's seen Tom run the 40 at the combine. Everyone's seen, you know, you get the body, weigh in pictures, all of that. So, you have a guy who is not fully developed yet who was pretty much a one-year starter. You could tell that he needs the weight room. But Lloyd Carr [Michigan head coach] said this, I'll never forget it, he said he's the toughest player that he's ever coached. That meant something."

"I had a grade, like a late three, an early four on the player. The problem was, I'm sitting in the middle, latter part of the room and man, I've just listened to seven different scouts and other people give this guy a free agent grade, maybe a seventh-round grade, and here I am. Look, it gets back to having an opinion. So, I kind of went through the report, and I kind of see this guy at the end of the third round, this is why, this is my vision, and I think that he'll play in this league. When I finished, Whitey [a scout] said, 'boy I couldn't agree with coach more, I have the same grade.' and right at that time I thought, 'aww frick. I'm teaming up with Whitey here to fight this battle.'"

"I thought he was the best sixth-round pick in the history of our league."

Instead of the Giants listening to Payton's advice, Brady was selected by the New England Patriots in the sixth round. Do we need to talk about what happened next? Brady has gone on to appear in ten super bowls, winning seven total championships with the Patriots (6) and Buccaneers (1). 

Intriguingly enough, New York was one of two teams (Philadelphia) to spoil Brady's appearance in the big game, and the franchise did it twice. The Giants led one of the major upsets of all time by taking down the undefeated Patriots in 2007 with an epic fourth-quarter drive led by Eli Manning and finished by catches from David Tyree and Plaxico Burress. They did it again in 2011. 

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Since then, Brady has come out victorious in four of his last five super bowl appearances. He'll be looking to make that five out of six in 2022 with the Buccaneers.

Stick with BucsGameday for more coverage on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers throughout the offseason.

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