The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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"The thing I will never forget is he stared at the line the whole time. … He wasn't mad as much as he was determined. He had that game-face Tom." He'd bring that face out more than a few times as a fifth-year senior. Carr made the determination to give Henson a full quarter in the first halves of the early contests that year, breaking him in while Brady looked on. A Glimpse At The Future On the surface, the beginning to 1999 went smoothly. The Wolverines avenged themselves with Notre Dame and Syracuse, and jumped off to a 5-0 start. The quarterback situation clearly ground Brady's gears, and at one point, Falk noticed. "One night I was walking around the locker room, and I looked in Tom's eyes," Falk said. "I could see he was upset. So I called him into my office and I said, 'Tom, here's the deal. You're a leader on this foot- ball team. Everybody looks to you. You're the guy that is going to control the attitude of this team. What you need to do is go out and just play your best every day.' "With that, Tom exploded and talked to me about the way he felt for about 15 minutes. When he got done, I said, 'Okay, you've told me how you feel. Now go back out in that locker room and be the leader on this team. You have to control yourself and show those players you're still the leader on this team.'" Brady continues employing the lessons learned in those days, Falk opined. "If you look at what he went through here at Michigan, that may have helped in New England," Falk said. "When he went there, he had to beat out another Drew, Drew Bledsoe. "Some of the things he learned here at Michigan helped him become the leader he is today. You ask any Patriot, and they'll say, 'He's the first one in the building in the morning and he's the last one to leave at night.' That's the type of leadership he was able to develop here at Michigan." Carr knew the tightrope he walked that fall. When the Henson question arises, he chooses his words carefully. "I could never have asked more of any player than what I asked of Tom Brady," Carr said. "He was a fifth-year senior. What I asked Tom Brady to do that year, and the way he handled it, I could never have asked more of a player." In the fortnight that followed Michigan's 5-0 start, the Wolverines surrendered the op- portunity for a second national championship season in three years. They stood one Woodson and an X-ray machine away from another title. U-M had nobody who could stay with Mich- igan State wideout Plaxico Burress in a 34-31 defeat in East Lansing. The Wolverines dug a 27-10 hole during the early quarterback shuffle and couldn't make the comeback despite two fourth-quarter touchdown passes by Brady. "We just fell behind by too much, and Tommy ran out of time," Flannelly observed. "That's my favorite team, of the teams when I was here." Two weeks later, the Wolverines built their own commanding lead at home over Illinois, 27-7 with six minutes remaining in the third quarter. But top tailback Anthony Thomas broke a finger and couldn't continue, and the Illini stormed back in a 35-29 shocker. "We didn't have an X-ray machine at the stadium, so we had to send Thomas to the hospital," Flannelly recalled. "We didn't have another running back at the time. They started scoring every time they had the ball." Hopes for a national championship — and as it turned out, a chance at a Big Ten title — vanished just like that. Something else arose during Michigan's drive to a 10-2 record and a No. 5 national finish. Brady began becoming the Brady of the following two decades. He rallied the Wolverines from a 27-17 deficit at Penn State to win 31-27, firing the game-winning 11-yard touchdown pass with 1:46 remaining. He then got the job done in a 24-17 win at home against Ohio State. "He brought us back a couple of times," Falk said. "At Penn State, coming from be- hind to win that game was a helluva thing. That's how the guy was. He was always fighting, always keeping a positive attitude, and he kept the team together." In the Orange Bowl, Brady cut loose and gunned the Wolverines past then-No. 5 Ala- bama 35-34 in overtime in a fashion the world would soon come to know. He went 34-of-46 passing for 369 yards with four touchdowns, carving up the Crimson Tide in Super Bowl preview style. "If you go back and watch the Alabama bowl game now, there are clear signs of what Tom Brady would become," Flannelly said. Shared Pride For A Champion Who Stayed Everybody knows what's happened since. NFL teams managed to fuel Brady's fire even more, overlooking him until New Eng- land grabbed him in the sixth round of the draft, the 199th overall pick. He told Kraft the organization made the right call, and that's an understatement. Nine Super Bowls and six championships later, Brady's still going. And as for U-M? The most prolific quarter- back in NFL history could have used his right middle finger for something other than grip- ping the football in the days that followed. He didn't. He took all the struggles from earning the starting job, the angst over keep- ing it, and everything else about his Michigan experience and employed it as rocket fuel. He came back to speak to the team when Brady Hoke served as head coach. At Flan- nelly's behest, Brady chatted up Jim Har- baugh for two hours when he was wrestling with the decision over whether or not to return to Ann Arbor. In 2016, Brady came back for the Colo- rado game, serving as an honorary captain. "They had me go pick Tom up at the airport," Falk recalled. "The first thing he wanted to do was throw the football with his son in Michigan Stadium. "He was throwing touchdowns to him, and his boy was just having a great time." • Games played (40) • Total touchdown passes (73) • Scoring tosses in a single contest (6 on Jan. 14, 2012, in a 45-10 blowout of the Broncos) • Total passing yards (11,179) • Total completions (1,005) • 300-yard passing games (16) • Contests of three or more touchdowns thrown (11) • Wins by a starting quarterback (30) • Starts by a signal-caller (40) • Conference championship appearances by any player (13) • Total passing yards in the Super Bowl (2,838) • Total completions in the Super Bowl (256) • Total passing attempts in the Super Bowl (392) • Total touchdown passes in the Super Bowl (18) • Consecutive completions in the Super Bowl (16, in the 21-17 loss to the New York Giants in 2012) THE WOLVERINE 2019 FOOTBALL PREVIEW ■ 31