You might hear someone tell you Tom Brady’s age (45!) and it doesn’t really affect you, because the guy still looks pretty fit and healthy. Then, to fully grasp the length of Brady’s tenure on Earth, you need to realize that this man appeared in a video game for PlayStation. Like, the Original PlayStation.
Brady, born 1977, was selected by the New England Patriots in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL Draft — as the 199th pick — and spent his first season in the league as a QB series Wednesday. In fact, he’s gone too far out of the NFL’s dissecting order, which is his first appearance in madness—crazy 01released on PS1—he’s not even named, he’s just listed on the Patriots depth chart as “QB #12”.
A year later, when he moved to the back-up position, he took over from the injured Drew Bledsoe, leading the Patriots to the championship and the rest is history. Note that his rise to stardom happened so quickly that he doesn’t even appear in most versions of crazy 02, the year he will go on to win the Super Bowl; in the PC, PS1, PS2 and N64 versions, the Patriot had only three QB above him in last season’s depth ranking, meaning only the Xbox and GameCube versions — released a few months later, After the 2001 season had begun and Brady had QB started the Patriots — there was him in the game.
Brady retires as the statistical leader in almost every category important to QB, from yard passes to pass attempts to TD passes, while also leading the league in tee-off controversies. , crypto scam confirmation, and weird ways to kiss your kid in the mouth.
To honor his cause—or, for many of you, to celebrate his retirement, announced today—I’ve put together this slideshow showing his video game career, from his early PS1 days to NFL2K series, madness and some other stops in between. It won’t be every game from every year, that would be boring—and recent madness the games are amazingly repetitive—but it will still be a fun little walk through the memory lane. Unless you remember playing any of these early games, in which case I apologize for reminding you how old you are.
