Tom Brady's Storied Career, As Told Through His Madden Ratings
Tom Brady has officially announced his retirement after a week of rumors and two decades of elevating the sport of American football. Whether you loved him as a Patriot, grew to appreciate him as a Buccaneer, or passionately rooted against him as a fan of a forever-bumbling AFC East rival, Brady's accomplishments are unmatched in football and arguably some of the most impressive feats in sports history. We wanted to look back on his storied 22-year career through the lens of his annual overall (OVR) Madden ratings. From no-name rookie to GOAT, here's how Brady performed in Madden each year since he first arrived in the league he would go on to reshape forever.
In case you haven't heard by now--like if you were living on Mars for the past 22 years--Brady was drafted in the sixth round, 199th overall, by the Patriots in the 2000 NFL Draft. He entered the league as an apparently unremarkable QB, and his debut Madden rating reflected that. Brady threw just three passes that year in spot duties behind Drew Bledsoe, connecting on one of them for six yards. No one--least of all the New York Jets--knew who he would go on to become.
Perhaps due to his lack of playing time to that point, or maybe due to the darts-on-a-dartboard nature of virtually unknown players in Madden, Brady's overall rating actually went down six points in Madden NFL 02, which coincided with the start of the 2001 season. It wouldn't be long before he would make his proper debut, though, coming in for an injured Drew Bledsoe after the Jets' Mo Lewis clobbered the starting QB and sent him to the bench in Week 3. The rest is history. By the time Bledsoe would be healthy enough to return, he had already lost his job to the young upstart Tom Brady.
Brady would go
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