The Pick Who Became Tom Brady: An NFL Secret, Finally Revealed

Summary

Podcast Summary: Pablo Torre Finds Out

Episode: "The Pick Who Became Tom Brady: An NFL Secret, Finally Revealed"

Date: November 29, 2024 | Host: Pablo Torre | Guests: Chad (anonymous exec), Maury Povich, Lee Johnson

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Episode Overview

In this investigative narrative, Pablo Torre embarks on a quest to uncover the true origin of the NFL’s most legendary draft pick—how Tom Brady ultimately became a New England Patriot through the sixth-round “compensatory selection” in the 2000 NFL Draft. Torre explores the mysterious, secretive process the NFL uses to assign compensatory draft picks, tracking the trail through league history, obscure free agent movements, and unforeseen butterfly effects, ultimately revealing the unlikely connection between Tom Brady’s destiny and journeyman punter Tom Tupa.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Reexamining a "Famous" Origin Story

• The Familiar Myth: Pablo starts by noting how the Tom Brady draft pick is a well-worn story—so familiar it has become almost fossilized in football memory. Yet, he points out, an essential detail is usually overlooked: how exactly did the Patriots get pick 199?

  • “Someone important has been missing from this picture for 25 years.” (00:33)

• Robert Kraft’s Iconic Memory: Kraft recounts meeting Brady post-draft, with Brady telling him:

  • "I'm the best decision this organization has ever made." (01:14)

2. What are Compensatory Picks?

• Compensatory Selection Explained: Pablo describes the unique system where the NFL secretly awards extra picks to teams that lose valuable free agents (“owner’s compensation”). The calculations are confidential and, per Pablo, "shrouded in mystery." (06:26)

• How Secret? Teams often don't know what picks they'll get until a memo is released—and often rely on Twitter for clues.

  • "Billion dollar corporations are reading Twitter to figure out...compensatory draft picks." (09:20)

• Anonymous Executive (“Chad”) Provides Inside Insight:

  • “There will be no one who will divulge the information for you and you’ll wander the earth forever...” (00:06 / 10:47)
  • Chad likens the process to "Christmas morning"—a gift no one can predict (08:58).
  • No team is certain about their picks until the last minute—even the most data-driven ones are “guessing, looking at Twitter, or asking their friends.” (09:35)

3. The “Compensatory Maury”—Tracing the Paternity of Pick 199

• The Candidates: Barnwell’s past reporting helps narrow down which lost Patriot could have “fathered” the pick:

  1. Linebacker Todd Collins
  2. Punter Tom Tupa
  3. Defensive tackle Mark Wheeler (12:14)

• Process of Elimination:

  • The Patriots replaced Tupa with Lee Johnson, seemingly negating Tupa’s impact via the compensatory formula.

• But—A Twist with Lee Johnson:

  • Johnson was cut (not a free agent), making him ineligible for the compensatory formula.
  • "If your contract is terminated, you’re not considered a compensatory free agent." (26:36 – Chad)

• Re-examining Tom Tupa:

  • Tupa signed a record-setting contract with the Jets and became a first-team All-Pro, making him the most valuable of the departed Patriots.
  • Chad agrees with Pablo’s deduction:
    • “It doesn't seem like you’re wrong.” (27:48)
    • “I do.” (28:04)

4. The NFL’s Ultra-Secret Compensatory List

• One Man, One List: Only a single person at NFL HQ (Steve Vail, now retired) saw the full value-ranking of all players. Even top execs like Chad never saw it. (18:34-21:47)
• Frustration & Mystery: The lack of transparency leads to widespread confusion—even among GMs, as illustrated in recent seasons by public complaints over misassigned picks.
  • "We got a raw deal...No recourse." (19:44)

5. The Butterfly Effect—Jets’ Misfortunes Lead to Brady’s Rise

• The Domino Chain:
  • Tom Tupa leaves Patriots for Jets (thanks to a big contract).
  • Tupa, a former QB, is pressed into emergency QB duty when Jets’ starter Vinny Testaverde is injured.
  • Because of quirky roster rules, Tupa (the punter) plays QB for most of a crucial game, performs well, but is benched for Rick Mirer, who loses the game.
  • Jets finish 8-8, miss playoffs by one game. Bill Parcells retires; Belichick is briefly Jets head coach—then jumps ship to the Patriots.
  • Patriots receive a high compensatory pick…used by Belichick to draft Tom Brady.
• Pablo’s tongue-in-cheek summary:
  • “You [Jets fans] did it to yourselves...You decided to give Bill Belichick's favorite free agent punter the most money that an NFL team had ever paid a punter...All of that is what led to New England hiring Bill Belichick, who promptly used that pick...to draft Tom Brady.” (40:29)

6. Final Discovery: Official Confirmation

• After months of dead ends (including “writing a letter to Santa” a.k.a. Steve Vail), Pablo receives confirmation from an NFL insider:
  • "Tom Tupa, you are the father." (44:26 – Maury Povich; 44:30 – Pablo Torre)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Robert Kraft (01:14):
  • “This skinny bean pole of a young man walked over to me and said, hi, Mr. Kraft, I'm Tom Brady…looked me like a laser, eye to eye and he said, that's right. And I'm the best decision this organization has ever made.”
• Chad (06:26):
  • “There are just as many rules that are spoken in whispers, not necessarily documented anywhere.”
• Pablo Torre (13:49):
  • “Now, there is no large manila envelope and no DNA test, unfortunately, which can reveal which of these three men is responsible for pick number 199.”
• Lee Johnson (17:27):
  • “But I thought, oh man, this kid, this guy's gonna be a flop.”
• Chad (26:36):
  • “If your contract is terminated, you’re not considered a compensatory free agent.”
• Maury Povich (44:26):
  • “Tom Tupa, you are the father.”
• Pablo Torre (40:29):
  • “You decided to give Bill Belichick's favorite free agent punter the most money that an NFL team had ever paid a punter...All of that is what led to New England hiring Bill Belichick, who promptly used that pick...to draft Tom Brady.”

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Important Segment Timestamps

• The Forgotten Origin of Pick #199: 00:33-02:43
• Explaining Compensatory Picks with "Chad": 06:26-11:55
• Filtering Candidates for the Comp Pick: 12:14-18:34
• The NFL’s Secret Compensatory Formula: 18:34-21:47
• The Lee Johnson Revelation: 23:26-26:47
• Unraveling the Tom Tupa Twist: 26:52-28:06
• Jets' Butterfly Effect and Dominoes: 29:04-40:04
• Final Confirmation from NFL Insider: 43:52-44:30

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Takeaways & Tone

• Journalistic Playfulness: Pablo’s blend of obsessiveness, humor, and relentless curiosity drives the story—a personal “talkumentary” full of sports minutiae transformed into dramatic storytelling.
• Meticulous Investigation Meets Maury Povich: The episode is part forensic investigation, part tongue-in-cheek day-time talk show paternity test, fitting both the seriousness of NFL history and the silliness of trying to “solve” it.
• Conspiracy, Chaos, and Football Fate: The episode illustrates how one team's single odd decision, a quirky NFL rule, and a dramatic chain of events led to the greatest quarterback pick of all time—showcasing the randomness (and secret riggings) that underpin even the most storied sports legends.

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Summary Bottom Line:
The infamous “Pick 199”—used to select Tom Brady—existed as the direct compensatory result of the Jets signing punter (and former quarterback Bill Belichick favorite) Tom Tupa to a record contract. The NFL’s secretive, convoluted compensatory draft system—and a whirlwind of football butterfly effects, accidental coaching moves, and mysterious free agent moves—directly set up the greatest player-in-a-draft-pick story in American sports. As Maury Povich would declare, “Tom Tupa, you ARE the father.”

Transcript

[Pablo Torre]

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre. And today we're gonna find out what this sound is.

[Chad]

I think this is a Sisyphusian task. There will be no one who will divulge the information for you, and you'll wander the earth forever trying to figure this out.

[Pablo Torre]

Right after this ad.

[Maury Povich]

You'Re listening to Giraffe Kings.

[Pablo Torre]

There are some origin stories that are so familiar by now to us that they just kind of hang in our brains. Like these old paintings, these artifacts almost, that we see all of the time in documentaries, in speeches, in books and broadcasts that we don't even really stop to look at them anymore. And so today's episode is gonna be about the most famous origin story and the most famous draft pick in the history of the biggest sport in America. Because it turns out that something important, someone important has been missing from this picture for 25 years.

[Robert Kraft]

This skinny bean pole of a young man walked over to me and said, hi, Mr. Kraft, I wanna introduce myself. I'm Tom Brady. I said, you're our six round draft choice. And I always remember he looked me like a laser, eye to eye and he said, that's right. And I'm the best decision this organization has ever made.

[Pablo Torre]

I am the best decision this organization has ever made. I mean, are you joking me? You're the 199th pick in the draft.

[Tom Brady]

The sixth round. 199. And I always joke when they called me, they said, tom, you know, hey, Thomas is, you know, Bill Belichick. We're, you know, pitching a sixth round. Like, we'll see you Monday. Like, get ready to go.

[Pablo Torre]

And to be clear, taking Tom Brady with pick number 199 of the 2000 NFL Draft, that turned out to be more than simply the best decision the New England Patriots ever made. It was the biggest decision, the biggest domino that I believe changed the NFL's timeline entirely. If Bill Belichick did not use that pick on Brady, perhaps because Brady's shirtless photos at the combine were just that indicting. For instance, just imagine the amount of money that entire generations of JET fans might have saved on therapy.

[Maury Povich]

Playing golf when you're in last place.

[Pablo Torre]

What else you gotta do, you know?

[Maury Povich]

Gotta make yourselves feel better. They're burning Brady.

[Pablo Torre]

Not to mention the cost of Tom Brady effigies like this one, which they hanged and burned in this parking lot before a game in 2014. Because of course, they did. All of which is why the Pro Football hall of Fame has already acquired the 6th round draft card where the Patriots registered the decision to take the greatest quarterback ever, enshrining this literal artifact before the man before touchdown Tom himself. And it is also why we should recognize how the Patriots acquired pick number 199 in the first place. Because how this decision really came to be, it turns out, is an active mystery. It is a mystery involving another decision and another player and a suspiciously secret rabbit hole of a system. A system that has denied and infuriated the smartest analysts and most plugged in executives all around the NFL. In other words, for 25 years, nobody has known how the Patriots actually ended up with Tom Brady. And as my friend Bill Barnwell, the brilliant eastern analyst, once wrote, we'll never know until now. All right, so the entrance to this rabbit hole that we're all about to tumble into together. A rabbit hole which has made me feel kind of like Maury Povich of sorts for NFL draft picks, which I will explain later, it happens to be this artifact that I've already mentioned to you. Tom Brady's physical draft card. Cause if you look at this thing one more time, down at the second line, right below round number six, New England, and right above Brady comma Tom. Yep, right there. You're going to notice two words that almost always get overlooked when we talk about Tom Brady, despite being in all caps clearly and despite being written in red ink. And those two words are compensatory selection. A compensatory selection in so many words, is a pick with a very personal and human backstory. Because the way the NFL draft normally works, as you may know, is that there are seven rounds, 32 picks each, one for each of the 32 teams in the league. The worst team, of course, picking first because drafts are socialist quietly, and the best team picks last. All of that pretty straightforward. You know this stuff. But the first thing to know about a compensatory selection is that they are not one of those normal picks. A compensatory pick is assigned to a team by the league office after a series of confidential and year long calculations, it turns out, calculations incidentally, that are so sensitive that one high ranking team executive would only talk to me on tape if I vowed to guarantee his anonymity. Which is why I did agree to deepen our deep throats voice and also allow him to pick his own alias, Chad.

[Chad]

Chad. Chad's a good, funny, random name.

[Pablo Torre]

Chad. All right, Chad, I want to explain why compensatory Chad is here.

[Chad]

I feel a little nervous, quite honestly.

[Pablo Torre]

I've interviewed whistleblowers, people who actually are part of like international investigations into oligarchs, they didn't get the protection that we are offering you today.

[Chad]

Pablo, I'm not sure anyone that's been on your show has been forced with the potential repercussions of a league or entity as powerful as the National Football League.

[Pablo Torre]

I wanted to be offended at this, but Insofar as the NFL's 32 teams did combine for more than $20 billion in revenue last year, as I found out, Chad is not wrong. No American sport has ever been better than the NFL at making money or exerting control. For instance, it took players suing the NFL to introduce the concept of free agency in the first place. The concept that we all know now. Players with expiring contracts could freely sign with other teams. That happened in 1993, not that long ago. And by 1994, in response to that, the NFL had installed two other concepts. A salary cap which limited spending, and the invention of the compensatory pick, where a team that lost a player in free agency and did not sign a replacement in free agency is eligible for a kind of, we'll call it owner's compensation, essentially kind of the opposite of workman's comp, which happens to be one of 32 newly invented draft picks, bonus draft picks which can slot in as high as the end of the third round or as late as the end of the seventh. But the reason why, why you'd get one or the other, it's shrouded in.

[Chad]

Mystery, the rabbit hole here if you will. And the reason that we are talking is because this is a system for which there are some established and well known rules. But there are just as many rules that are spoken in whispers, not necessarily documented anywhere. And we also have an end result that is never published in terms of how pics have been handed out.

[Pablo Torre]

Which is crazy to me because the NFL as an industry is so hyper analyzed.

[Chad]

This is most similar to Christmas morning. We come downstairs, we have no idea what our gifts are going to be. We asked for certain things we think that they might be in the box, but until we open them, until the league sends out a certain memo with all the picks, most teams are referencing Twitter to figure out what picks they think they're going to be getting.

[Pablo Torre]

Billion dollar corporations which hire the smartest minds available in sports. Data driven people are reading Twitter to figure out whether they're making the right call on a strategic decision involving compensatory draft picks.

[Chad]

There are probably no teams that have clarity or certainty about who's going to receive a pick and where the picks are going to be until the picks are announced. There are a few teams who make a very concerted effort to calculate this and have models and other teams call them to ask them what they think their model is going to say. There's no question in my mind that most teams are guessing, looking at Twitter, or asking their friends around the league what they think about how the picks are going to come out.

[Pablo Torre]

And after mining the mind of Chad for months now, I can relate to most teams. But what I am really trying to do here in my aforementioned capacity as compensatory Mori is more than simply guess. What I'm trying to do is reverse engineer the compensatory paternity, let's say, of pick number 199. What I'm trying to do here is identify the former Patriots player who signed with another team as a free agent before that 1999 season and then turned into Tom Brady during the 2000 NFL Draft.

[Chad]

I think this is a sufficient task. There will be no one who will divulge the information for you and you'll wander the earth forever trying to figure this out.

[Pablo Torre]

That is an answer that Pablo Torre finds out never takes sitting down.

[Chad]

Pablo Torre will not find out, Chad.

[Pablo Torre]

A you B B you're going to help me here. And C I also should not forget C we did have a head start before the last break. You heard me quote the pessimism of our friend Bill Barnwell, who I consider the sharpest NFL analyst in our industry. And that quote about how this is never going to get solved was not encouraging. But the reason I was able to quote that is because Barnwell himself actually peered into this rabbit hole in a Grantland article back in 2015. And what you should know about what Bill Barnwell has previously found out is that we can narrow this mystery down a bit. We can narrow it down to three potential fathers who are now standing atop our compensatory Maury stage.

[Maury Povich]

And it's all next right here on the Maury Public show.

[Pablo Torre]

These are three plausible candidates, three free agents who left the Patriots before that 1999 season. And they are the central casting linebacker Todd Collins, a guy who left the Patriots to sign with the St. Louis Rams. Frank Malacoat spent part of last week with linebacker Todd Collins. But ain't this Southern Comfort exterior? There's an animal waiting to be unleashed.

[Maury Povich]

I guess that line but you got to love to hit people. I mean, it's kind of sounds thick or whatever, but that's what we get paid to do Is, you know, to, to hit people.

[Pablo Torre]

The veteran punter Tom Tupa, who joined the jets of all teams and actually play quarterback in Week 1 of the 99 season, even though he did not have the right footwear, you know, as a punter because starter Vinnie Testaveri got hurt.

[Maury Povich]

That's Tom Tupa shoes you're looking at, those are punter shoes. Look at that. See left foot that looks like a slipper. The right foot, one you kick with.

[Pablo Torre]

And finally, we have defensive tackle Mark Wheeler, the 285 pound giant who left the Patriots for the Eagles, but is otherwise so generally obscure, frankly, that the only YouTube video I could find about the guy had 44 views and also was generated by a bottle.

[Bill Belichick]

Wheeler was drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1992 in the third round as the 59th overall pick. Over eight seasons, Wheeler played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles.

[Pablo Torre]

Now, there is no large manila envelope and no DNA test, unfortunately, which can reveal which of these three men is responsible for pick number 199.

[Maury Povich]

In the case of four month old Isabella Stephen, you are the father.

[Pablo Torre]

But what we do know is that pick number 199 was the highest pick, the most valuable pick of the multiple sixth and seventh round compensatory picks that the Patriots received that year. Which is crucial for our investigation because the NFL office, the way they actually assign these picks, these cost controlled Christmas gifts behind closed doors, it's mind blowing in a different way. Because what the NFL office does, it turns out, is quietly keeping and updating an enormous master list of every player in the league. We're talking offense, we're talking defense, we're talking special teams, all the positions, all of whom get combined into this one master list. And they rank all of these players from most valuable to least valuable in order. The rub, as you might imagine, is that this list is completely confidential, like it's the fantasy football big board of God himself.

[Chad]

The picks are roughly determined by stacking every player in the National Football League from most highly paid to least. And there is a point system that correlates to those tiers. And then players can accumulate extra points for how much they play, different types of honors they receive at the end of the season.

[Pablo Torre]

So for instance, there is a bonus for being honored as first team all pro according to the Associated Press. We also know, for instance, that the more snaps you play above a certain threshold, statistically, the more points you will receive. But as arcane as all of this is, as this compensatory formula actually is, and a bunch of it is also now explained in page 399 of the most recent collective bargaining agreement. The logic here is actually pretty straightforward because the more valuable a free agent like Todd Collins, let's say, winds up being in his first season away from the Patriots with his new employer, the more valuable the pick the Patriots should get to compensate for his loss. This is again, so long as the Patriots did not sign a free agent replacement for Todd Collins on their own, which would just disqualify them logically from receiving this kind of owner's compens, losing him to that other team.

[Chad]

If teams have lost more than they've gained, the players that are in a tier that hasn't been crossed off by a player they gained would equal a Peck.

[Pablo Torre]

And this is where Barnwell offered us one more observation that proved helpful because it booted one of our three potential fathers off of the compensatory Maury stage. Because, no, the Patriots did not replace Todd Collins or Mark Wheeler by signing a similarly tiered free agent replacement, but they did sign a similarly tiered free agent replacement for Tom Tupa. Quote, the Patriots lost punter Tom Tupa, but they signed fellow punter Lee Johnson to replace him. End quote. The former Bengals punter Lee Johnson, whose locker in New England, you should know, would eventually be right next to a 6 foot 4, 225 pound rookie quarterback from Michigan named Tom Brady.

[Lee Johnson]

But I thought, oh man, this kid, this guy's gonna be a flop.

[Pablo Torre]

Didn't think anything of him. Which is a truly tremendous confession by former Bengals punter Lee Johnson. Thank you, Lee Johnson, for admitting that. But with Tom Tupa crossed off our list, now, thanks to this punter responsible for that scouting report, our mystery compensatory free agent is now a coin flip. It's Todd Collins or it's Mark Wheeler. And neither of these guys started a single game in that 99 season. Neither of these guys was playing on a particularly notable contract. Wheeler had actually retired by the time that Brady met Lee Johnson at Patriots camp. Collins was retired by the season after that. And so only the NFL's actual comp list from that 1999 season could conclusively determine the information that we need, which is the former Patriot that is more valuable than the other one. And so, as a journalist, I had one more question about all of this. Who gets to see this list?

[Chad]

It's A great question. 345 Park Avenue, NFL headquarters. That's it.

[Pablo Torre]

Have you ever seen this list?

[Chad]

Never.

[Pablo Torre]

Do you know anybody that has seen this list.

[Chad]

I know that there's one person in the league office who is solely responsible for calculating said list. Who sees it? No idea.

[Pablo Torre]

But just to be clear, there is a secret list that the NFL keeps of the most valuable players in the league ordered from top to bottom. And this feels like the thing that any football fan would want access to. And this is a secret that they will never reveal. Why?

[Chad]

That's a great question. Not exactly sure why it's kept a secret as far as how the final results are tabulated, but they're never shown. And this year was as an example. There was a mistake on the initial list of the way picks were assigned. There were multiple teams who did press conferences explaining they disagreed with the way the list was calculated.

[Pablo Torre]

We got a raw deal. We had separate zooms with the league trying to go through how it was calculated because by even their accounts, as we were checking with them through the year, we clearly had a third rounder.

[Chad]

And so no recourse.

[Pablo Torre]

So I'm not here to relitigate the complaints of Bill's general manager, Brandon Bean, who is the guy whose voice you just heard there. And I'm not here to relitigate the complaints of the Cincinnati Bengals who woke up on compensatory Christmas morning in March of this year, as Chad was alluding to, only to find that Santa had given them a sixth round pick when they really deserved a third. This was a database error, as it was termed, that actually got caught by an eagle eyed analyst on, yes, Twitter named Nick Court. What I'm here to do is merely point out that this is frustrating. It is frustrating for the data driven teams doing whatever they can to get this young cost controlled labor. And it's frustrating also for a league office that is trying to keep all of those teams in check.

[Chad]

There aren't many situations that come up where we don't know the rules ahead of time.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, knowing the rules ahead of time is one way to become better at playing a game. Unless of course, the whole point is to deter you from treating this as a game to be played. I, I would suppose, don't disagree. And so what I needed to know a lot more about was the one person in the league office that Chad had referenced before, the one person in the league office who is, quote, solely responsible for making the list in question and checking it twice.

[Chad]

There was one Santa Claus in the league who oversaw tech and various components and also oversaw the compensatory pick calculation.

[Pablo Torre]

And what was his name?

[Chad]

Steve Vail. But Steve is retired and now we don't know who Santa Claus is.

[Pablo Torre]

Steve Vail, According to his LinkedIn profile on my computer right now, had served as the NFL's vice president of labor information since 1994. A meaningful year, you may recall, because it means that Steve entered the league alongside the invention of the compensatory selection itself. And so what I did last month in the throes of reporting this rabbit hole of a story, is write a letter to Santa. I kindly inform Santa that I had become trapped inside the mystery of Tom Brady's true origin story. And I inform Santa, furthermore, that. That only he could cash a check that my investigative ego had written.

[Chad]

Tori will not find out.

[Pablo Torre]

I'm saying that, Chad, a f you. Santa did not reply to me. And I'm also just not going to lie to you here. At this point, things were looking bleak. At a certain point, I kind of felt like I was hallucinating, frankly. Tom Brady's voice began haunting me.

[Tom Brady]

You know, picking a sixth round, like, we'll see you Monday. Like, get ready to go.

[Pablo Torre]

Then Chad's voice also started haunting me.

[Chad]

Feel your pain. I've had this pain for a large part of my life trying to deal with this.

[Pablo Torre]

And all I could really do as a struggling journalist at this point was dig deeper, I guess. And as my algorithm was getting entirely messed up, pretty much unusable for anything other than looking at this story, I stumbled upon a clue.

[Lee Johnson]

I've been on a 84 championship. I've been on a Super bowl team. I've been on multiple NFC or AFC championship teams, and they're all similar.

[Pablo Torre]

You may now recognize this voice, same as the now jarringly mellifluous voice of none other than Lee Johnson, the guy who thought Tom Brady was going to suck ass. Lee Johnson is the free agent the Patriots signed to replace Tom Tupa in 1999, punting Tom Tupa again, out of this investigation.

[Lee Johnson]

And I've also been on some of the worst teams in the NFL. The 80s of the Bengals were awful.

[Pablo Torre]

You had some famous quotes back then.

[Lee Johnson]

I did.

[Pablo Torre]

So famous.

[Lee Johnson]

You can go read them yourself.

[Pablo Torre]

You can go read them yourself is what Lee Johnson was saying at the end there, followed by all of that knowing laughter from the guy he was talking to. What it suggested was that I should also know what those famous quotes about the Cincinnati Bengals were. I should also go and read them. So I did go read them. And I'm so glad I did, because what Lee Johnson said changed everything. So this is the part of the story where I Take you back to December 6, 1998. An unseasonably warm day, it turned out, in the state of Ohio. And after the absolutely miserable Cincinnati Bengals lost to the visiting Buffalo Bills in front of 55,000 fans, a reporter asked the starting punter, Lee Johnson, a question, a question that you might ask if you are also miserable because maybe you've been covering a team that had just lost eight straight games. If you were a fan, the reporter asked, would you have come here today? No, Lee Johnson replied, according to multiple press accounts, no way. Why would you? You're saying losing is okay? I'd sell my tickets. Lee Johnson, the very next morning, lost his job as the punter of the Cincinnati Bengals. And I don't mean to say that he was benched. I mean to say that Lee Johnson was cut. The dude's contract was terminated. And he said later, quote, I'm sure I was released because of what I said. I meant what I said, end quote. Now, all of this is a remarkable decision, obviously, in its own right, and it sent me back down into our rabbit hole with a question, a sudden clarification, actually, for compensatory Chad, if you are cut from a team, do you count towards the compensatory formula?

[Chad]

Your contract needs to expire on its own. So if your contract is terminated, you're not considered a compensatory free agent. You wouldn't count towards the formula, which.

[Pablo Torre]

Is to say that Lee Johnson could not have canceled out Tom Tupa.

[Chad]

That's sensible. That makes entirely too much sense.

[Pablo Torre]

Here's some information that I did not know about Tom Tupa until I started going deep into the world of Tom tupa. Because what Tomtoopa signed, Chad, was a $6.1 million deal over four years, which was the most ever for a punter at the time. And when you look at his statistics, in 1999, the season he went to the jets, he was a first team all pro. He was excellent. He played all the time, punted all the time, made a lot of money, the most ever for a punter. And so it stands to reason that of Mark Wheeler and Todd Collins and Tom Tupa, that Tom Tupa, then by the power of inference and logic, and the power vested in me, Tom Tupa would have been Tom Brady's number 199 overall draft pick. Am I wrong if we think he.

[Chad]

Was the highest paid plus, we know he had an honor playtime. We know these other guys didn't play sensibly. It doesn't seem like you're wrong.

[Pablo Torre]

So Just to be very clear here, it sounds like you agree with me that it has to be Tom Tupa.

[Chad]

I do.

[Pablo Torre]

Okay, so this is big, right? This is where I need a recap for you. What we just discovered. Because Lee Johnson got fired. Fired for saying the sort of unrepentant stuff that Lee Johnson apparently can never stop himself from saying. Which meant that he could not finish his contract with the Bengals. Which means in turn that he did not cancel out Tom Tupa in the compensatory formula by rule. Which then means that Tom Tupa and his giant contract and his all Pro season in 1999, it all makes him the most valuable player logically, on our compensatory Maury stage, Tom Tupa is the guy responsible for Tom Brady is what we just found out. But now, dear listener, it is time for this story to get even more eerie. Because you may recall that Tom Brady was the 6 foot 4, 225 pound quarterback who went to Michigan, the guy who eventually earned the nickname Touchdown Tom. What you should know now is that Tom Tupa was a 6 foot 4, 225 pound quarterback who went to Ohio State, Michigan's rival, and himself eventually earned the nickname 2.2. Thirty years ago, Tom Tupa was living the trajectory that Lee Johnson had envisioned for Tom Brady. Basically, he had sucked so much that he had disappeared from the NFL altogether. But in 1994, and yes, there's that year again, it's the dawn of not only the COMPX system, but also the two point conversion. The head coach of Tupa's hometown Cleveland Browns, a man named Bill Belichick, gave Tom Tupa a chance to make his team as a punter. And so in week one against Tupa's counterpart, who happened to be Lee Johnson and those miserable Cincinnati Bengals, Bill Belichick sent Tom Tupa into the game as the holder on a point after attempt. And history was made.

[Maury Povich]

Extra point time.

[Pablo Torre]

Go for the extra point.

[Maury Povich]

Right, Bill?

[Pablo Torre]

Bob, I think Bill's got something up his sleeve.

[Maury Povich]

It's the fourth former Buckeye QB Tom Tupa, 11 nothing browns.

[Pablo Torre]

That is the first two point conversion in NFL history. Lee Johnson's kickoff After Derek Fenner. Belichick would trust Tom Tupa to run that same exact fake in which he took the snap and ran right up the gut for two points three times that season. And a lasting personal bond between coach and punter was born. In fact, when the Cleveland Browns fired Belichick in 1996 and the Patriots picked him up as an assistant coach, Tom Tupa made sure to follow Belichick to New England. Welcome back to Foxborough. 14 Nothing. As we open the second quarter, Tupa.

[Maury Povich]

Had his goal line in pun formation.

[Lee Johnson]

The big question is, Paul, is it another fake?

[Maury Povich]

Okay, let me, let me. Yeah. No, he will not fake this, I promise.

[Pablo Torre]

Two point Tupa was the real thing. Let it be known he was the starting punter of the New England Patriots and he was no longer the guy who ran all of these fakes. Three years later, before that fateful 1999 season, the dude became the single highest paid punter in NFL history. As I was just marveling to Chad once he left the Patriots. And the thing I just need to reiterate for you here, is that the team that paid Tom Tupa this record setting amount, an amount so big that it ostensibly handed the patriots pick number 199, was the new York Jets. The New York jets at the time a projected super bowl contender. Quote. It was a no brainer, Tom Tupa said, which was true because of all the money. Yes. But also because of the specific coach that he was once again going to be joining with the Jets.

[Bill Belichick]

I know our program's good. I'm confident in what we can do with the players in terms of developing young players here and building a stronger program. And with the jets commitment to this program, I think we've got a great future.

[Pablo Torre]

Tupa was reuniting with the guy who had resurrected and now funded his new NFL career, Bill Belichick, for a third time. Belichick was another nomad, another guy who had gone to the jets, and he was there to set up shop with his mentor, Bill Parcells. Which now takes us back to the very first thing that I told you guys about Tom Tupa, which was about the shoes that he immediately had to fill at quarterback, remember in week one of that fateful 1999 season, a game which happened to be against, cosmically, the New England Patriots exactly 25 years ago.

[Maury Povich]

Today, that's Tom Tupa shoes you're looking at. Those are punter shoes. Look at that. See left foot that looks like a slipper. The right foot, one you kick with.

[Pablo Torre]

The whole reason Tom Tupa was even out there was because in the second quarter, the jets franchise quarterback, the actual guy they were hoping to see play, Vinny Testaverde, had torn his Achilles on a seemingly routine handoff.

[Maury Povich]

Holding his leg on the ground is Vinnie Testaverde. Well, the way he's beaten that turf, it's not good news for the New York Jets.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, it was Completely catastrophic for the New York jets, actually. Because what happened was that obscure NFL rules at the time made it so that using your emergency quarterback before the fourth quarter meant that you could no longer play either your first or second string quarterbacks. And this is meaningful because in yet another cosmically fateful roster decision by the New York Jets, Tom Tupa, their punter, was actually listed as their second string quarterback, which they did in order to open up an extra roster spot for special teams. Which was clever, right? Unless Vinnie Testaverde happened to suddenly get hurt mid game last year.

[Maury Povich]

And now Tom Tupa is gonna be. I, I asked Bill Parcells, we did the Green Bay New York jets preseason game and what did I say? I said, coach, what would happen if Vinny Testaforti went down? And what was his answer? He goes, and I remember space. He couldn't. He didn't even answer the question. He didn't want to deal with the fact what it would be like without Tester Birdie as his quarterback.

[Pablo Torre]

But the real reason that all of this was so completely catastrophic for the New York jets was not because Tom Tupa suddenly had to play quarterback again. Tom Tupa actually was killing it.

[Maury Povich]

First down and more midfield. Knocked out of bounds inside the 35 yard line. Tupa has time, throws for the end.

[Pablo Torre]

Zone, has a match two point. Tupa had turned into Touchdown Tom Ta over the middle.

[Maury Povich]

Touchdown. Good job by Tom Ta faking the defense into a outside throw and lays it in for the touchdown. And the jets will now go for two.

[Pablo Torre]

By the fourth quarter, Tom Tupa had thrown two touchdowns for 165 yards with no interceptions and had a passer rating of 143.7. The jets were only trailing by five entering the fourth, at which point jets head coach Bill Parcells made another big decision. Because in the fourth quarter, according to the aforementioned obscure rule, he could finally put in his real emergency quarterback. The guy he would have liked to see without any penalty. A guy by the name of Rick Meyrer. And so the jets put Rick Meyrer into the game as soon as the fourth quarter started, as soon as possible. And Rick Meyrer proceeded to throw the game away.

[Maury Povich]

That was Rick Meyer's first completion. He's going for his second one now. Warren down the side. This is intercepted. Steve Israel picked it off twice. Meyer over the middle, pops up into the air and intercepted. Three and a half minutes to play and the Patriots with a shot.

[Pablo Torre]

Rick Myra threw two picks. He threw two picks. He completed just four passes of 11 attempts. The guy, the bed is what he did. And the jets lost by two points. It was a game that they should have won. And I can tell you this because I rewatched it in full. And I think that if Bill Parcells had kept two point Tupa in the game, they would not have lost by two. I say this with full confidence, but I also wouldn't even be telling you about any of these things about Rickmirer unless something else had happened further down this absurd chain of dominoes several months later now, because the New York jets, again a would be super bowl contender, finished 8 and 8. And they missed the playoffs entirely by one game. One game. At which point an exhausted Bill Parcells retired, vowing to never coach again. And he handed the reins to his heir, Bill Belichick, the dude who became the jets head coach for exactly one day.

[Bill Belichick]

I'll read you the statement that that I gave to them. Due to various uncertainties surrounding my position as it relates to the team's new ownership, I've decided to resign as the.

[Pablo Torre]

Head coach of the New York Jets.

[Bill Belichick]

I've given this decision very careful consideration and like to wish the the entire New York Jet organization, the players, the coaching staff and the new ownership the very best of luck for prosperous future.

[Pablo Torre]

You may now be able to guess what happened just three weeks later.

[Bill Belichick]

Hopefully this press conference will go a little better than the last one I had. First of all, I want to thank everyone for coming out tonight. I know it's late and short notice. I know the last three weeks have probably been trying for all of you, but that's all behind me. I'm tremendously excited to be here, to be a part of the New England Patriots organization. This is a first class operation. I've had a outstanding experience in 1996 when I was here with the Patriots and with Robert.

[Pablo Torre]

All of which finally brings us to April of 2000. This is just four months after that introductory presser in New England when Bill Belichick, the new head coach and general manager of the Patriots, found himself holding a compensatory pick late in the sixth round. And with pick number 199 of the 2000 NFL Draft, the new England Patriots looked down at their draft card, at the space right beneath the words compensatory selection written in all caps in red ink. And they made the decision that changed everything.

[Robert Kraft]

This skinny bean pole of a young man walked over to me and said, hi, Mr. Kraft, I want to introduce myself. I'm Tom Brady. I said, I know who you are. You're our Six round draft choice. And I always remember he looked me like a laser eye to eye and he said, that's right. And I'm the best decision this organization has ever made.

[Pablo Torre]

And I think you probably know the rest. All right, so before we go near the end of the episode here, I do feel obligated to address what I believe is the first thing that fans of the New York jets found out today, which is that you guys did it to yourselves, right? You did. You decided to give Bill Belichick's favorite free agent punter the most money that an NFL team had ever paid a punter. You then had him almost deliver a win in the first game he ever played for the jets, but then you benched him in the fourth quarter when you needed him the most and you failed to make the playoffs that year. And all of that, all of that is what led to New England hiring Bill Belichick, who promptly used that pick that the Patriots got as compensation for losing that same free agent punter you paid all that money to to draft Tom Brady. That's how it happened. And so, yeah, I apologize on some level for what your therapy bills may now become. But I'm also not done. Because the second thing that I feel obligated to address here as I now lobby, to rename the Butterfly effect after Tom Tupa, the Tupa Effect. It's what I believe lots of you skeptics may still be thinking about me, which is that I didn't really finish the journey that Barnwell started and that my whole grand conclusion here is still just a giant guess. And I get it. I do. I'm the guy who told you that only the NFL office has access to, you know, God's secret compensatory big board. I'm the one who made this whole thing about how, you know, someone from the inside can be the only person to know for sure how the league ranks the value of Tom Tupa versus Todd Collins versus Mark Whee. I am that person. But I do have one last update for you on that note. An update for you and for compensatory Chad, actually. Because while Santa, former VP of Labor Information Steve Vail, never did reply to my letter, I did not stop writing letters because that's. That's just my brain. I wrote letters to various other people who might have seen the list, and I also got nothing back. But one day, one day very recently, after hearing me explain in increasingly desperate tones what I'd been trying to investigate in my capacity as compensatory Maury Povich Someone inside the NFL office did something that shocked me, they replied. They rode back to Pablo Torre Finds Out Opening this Ark of the covenant for the first time in 25 years quote below are the 2000 season compensatory picks awarded to the Patriots, the NFL office wrote in a detailed email, along with the player lost in the 1999 season that resulted in such an award. All of which means that I can now declare something officially. I can officially declare that in the case of pick number 199 in the 2000 NFL Draft, aka Tom Brady, the greatest draft pick who has ever lived, the actual compensatory Maury has something to say.

[Maury Povich]

Tom Tupa, you are the father.

[Pablo Torre]

That is what I found out today. And so, in conclusion, you Chad.

[Chad]

Paul.

[Pablo Torre]

I'm Pablo Torre, and this was, by the way, the real Maury Povich, not some AI bot. So thank you to the real Maury for rejoining Pablo Torre Finds out, which is produced, as always, by Meadowlark Media. We'll talk to you next time.