A Season in the Sun by Lars Anderson

Author:Lars Anderson [Anderson, Lars]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

The Mastermind

He strolled along the sideline on Empower Field at Mile High in Denver, Colorado, his eyes bright with curiosity. These brown eyes have been the most useful tools in the career of Jason Licht. When he was a walk-on offensive guard at the University of Nebraska from 1989 to 1991, he closely watched NFL scouts who came to practices to identify and assess players with pro potential, noting how the scouts examined everything from ankle movement to hip flexibility to knee dexterity.

He saw the scouts monitor how each player communicated with his teammates on the field, how each reacted to getting beaten by his opponent, and how each conducted himself when he played well. Licht knew he didn’t have the talent to play in the NFL, but the idea of becoming a scout intrigued him. Maybe one day, he thought during one Nebraska practice when a half-dozen scouts were in attendance, I’ll give scouting a try.

Now on the sideline in Denver on September 27, Licht’s eyes darted from one Buc player to the next as they warmed up before kickoff. For a few minutes he trained his attention on Brady, and he still marveled at how far the quarterback had come from when he first met him a few days after the 2000 draft. At the time, Licht was working in the scouting trenches for New England, covering the Southeast as a college area scout. Though he wasn’t even sure if the head coach knew his name, Licht was in the draft war room when Belichick made the decision to draft Brady in the sixth round, even though New England had just signed quarterback Drew Bledsoe to a record ten-year, $103 million contract. “I’ve expressed over and over again my desire to play my entire career with the New England Patriots,” Bledsoe said after the contract was announced. “It looks like that is a very real possibility.”

Licht talked a few times to Brady during his rookie training camp, chatting in the hallway or cafeteria about how his transition to the NFL was going. Charlie Weis, the Patriots’ offensive coordinator, was hard on Brady during his first camp, constantly yelling at his rookie quarterback for making one mistake after the next. “Then we’d watch the practice on film as a staff,” Licht said, “and there were times when Charlie was like, ‘Oh shit, Tom was right. I shouldn’t have yelled at him there.’”

New England kept four quarterbacks on its roster in 2000, a rarity in the NFL. Brady was the last player to make the cut. “We didn’t want to put Tom on the practice squad because anyone could have signed him,” Licht said. “So as difficult as it was to do, we went with four quarterbacks.”

Licht left the Patriots organization in 2003 to become the Eagles’ assistant player personnel director. For years, his enduring image of Brady was Weis shouting at him while Brady struggled to learn a new offense. Six years later, Licht returned to the Patriots in 2009 as the director of player personnel.

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