People are misrepresenting what happened in NO in 2001. Weiss told Brady we're gonna go for it. Then Bill via Charlie warned him to be careful with the football (in other words no foolish attempt at heroics because OT is better than a pick 6. Drew told Brady just f'in sling it. Which is exactly what Drew would have done and we all know what that outcome would have been...
Bledsoe was not a very good QB in 2000 or 2001. Had he been he'd have gotten his job back. He was briefly good in Buffalo because he was motivated to show BB up. That motivation ebbed as that season wore on. By the following season they were having issues with Drew. At one point they were timing his release with a stop watch to try to light a fire under him to improve his short and intermediate game. By the end in Buffalo he couldn't even follow directions for handling a coin toss. Again in Dallas he was motivated initially to prove himself yet again, but the motivation never lasts a season with Drew. He reverts to form and ignores his coaches and tries to prove it's talent and not coaching that matters. Got him publicly benched in his last ever start on MNF by the genius who drafted him...
Drew never wanted to be a backup or a mentor and at the end of the day he only wanted to play his way. He never worked at his craft nor was he receptive to coaching. He wanted to be treated like a man, a big man actually, and he **** all over the one HC who tried to do that...
Some of you are living in convenient memory land. He wasn't the worst QB to ever wear the uniform nor was he the biggest a-hole to. But he wasn't nearly as wonderful as some of you want to remember him. He was complacent, stubborn, entitled, tall and he had a strong arm... He was ambivalent towards Brady because he honestly could not comprehend him as a threat until it was too late. And down the stretch Brady had a lot more to do with maintaining that relationship on a somewhat functional level than Drew did. Even some of the veterans who were Drew's guys had to tell him to knock off the wounded soul routine before it impacted their cinderella season. While we were led to believe Brady rebounded quickly in the week leading up to that SB, the reality is he got that ankle shot up to the hilt because he and not the guy who thought he played well in Pittsburgh was starting that game if BB had to send young Tommy out there wearing a friggin' prosthetic leg to hand the ball off...