NFL fate may have come full circle in the 2025 Las Vegas Raiders draft, with Tom Brady assuming the role his former coach took more than two decades earlier, and Raiders quarterback Geno Smith, who just signed a two-year, $75 million contract, taking the place of the QB Brady succeeded on the New England Patriots.
The reason is a draft pick pushed by Brady who is now being called the potential “steal of the year.” What are we talking about? Is Smith’s job really on the line?
For the answer, we need to go back in time 25 years.
Brady May Be Keeping His Own History in Mind
In the 2000 NFL Draft, then-brand new Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, and the New England organization, used the 199th pick to take a flyer on a lightly regarded Michigan quarterback. That QB, of course, was Brady.
Belichick, very quietly, had big things in mind for his new, largely overlooked signal-caller.
He could not do much about the situation, however, because just five weeks before the draft, Patriots owner Robert Kraft handed Bledsoe what was at the time the largest contract in NFL history â $103 million over 10 years. Bledsoe was the No. 1 pick in the draft in 1993, out of Washington State, and his selection turned the sputtering franchise around.
Bledsoe took over a team that won just two games the year before he was drafted, and took it to the playoffs in his second season â and to the Super Bowl in his fourth. It certainly looked like he wasn’t going anywhere, and that the Patriots planned on sticking with Bledsoe until he retired.
Belichick had other ideas. In a turn of events that has passed into football legend, Bledsoe was seriously injured early in the second game of the 2001 season â the first game when the NFL resumed play after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Belichick put Brady in the game and the rest is football history.
But what is not as well known is that Belichick planned to replace Bledsoe with Brady well before the injury, according to reporting by author Jeff Benedict in his book The Dynasty.
In fact, Belichick tabbed Brady to start from Week One of the 2001 season, but with Bledsoe’s freshly inked contract, and the fact that Belichick was entering his only his second season in New England coming off a 5-11 campaign in his debut, he lacked the clout to make such a bold move.
Why Brady Pushed For Little-Known Quarterback in Draft
Now, almost 24 years after his NFL debut, Brady reportedly saw something of himself in North Dakota State quarterback Cam Miller. Though Brady, a Raiders minority owner, took a mostly hands-off approach to the draft, according to a report by Dan Pompei of The Athletic, he pushed Vegas general manager John Spytek to draft Miller.
He backed Miller even though Smith was signed to a big-money contract, but the Raiders had just taken a quarterback only two picks earlier, Tommy Mellot of Montana State.
According to NFL experts Andrew Mize and Nick Rudman of the Saturday Morning Inspection NFL podcast, the Raiders pulled off the “steal of the year” by taking Miller.
Spytek told The Athletic why Brady pushed for Miller’s selection.
âHe liked the way he threw it, his technique, throwing from the ground up and his motion,â Spytek told Pompei. âAnd he thought he had the potential to improve.â
Brady also liked the fact that Miller is a proven winner, with two national championship in the FCS, the second tier of college football, already on his resumé.
“When you have Tom Brady singing his praises when the advanced analytics show he has a chance to be a great player and his scouting report lends himself to be a big steal, the Raiders highly likely they got a really great opportunity,” the podcast hosts said. “Cam Miller is definitely a guy Raider Nation should keep an eye on.”
Like Heavy Sports’s content? Be sure to follow us.
This article was originally published on Heavy Sports
The post Tom Brady, Raiders Send Brutal Message to $75M Geno Smith With ‘Steal’ of Draft appeared first on Heavy Sports.