TOM BRADY

Tom Brady was not given one snap at quarterback on a winless freshman team at Junipero Serra High School in San Mateo, Calif.

He was seventh on the depth chart when he enrolled at Michigan and struggled so mightily for playing time that he hired a sports psychologist to help him cope with frustration and anxiety. He heard 198 other names called before the New England Patriots took a flier on him in the sixth round of the 2000 draft.

"Throughout my football career," Brady says, "i have always has been looking up at other people."

Not anymore.

After an improbable climb to the pinnacle of his profession, he is without equal among current NFL quarterbacks when it comes to winning championships, having surpassed boyhood idol Joe Montana by becoming the first to win three Super Bowl rings before his 28th birthday.

"There is no quarterback I would rather have," Patriots coach Bill Belichick says simply.

How can it be that the two-time Super Bowl MVP reigns supreme after being for so long a passer no one particularly wanted?

If there could be a glimpse into Brady's soul, it would almost surely reveal a raging fire, fueled by all of those coaches and all of those teams that did not think he was quick enough or strong enough or good enough. He will never forget the rejection of his past.

"I would say every day he feels that pain," says his sister, Nancy. "I think that people will never know how much being considered a backup by some of the people that he really respected hurt him."

Says his father, Tom Brady Sr.: "His competitive nature kicks in every time somebody says he can't do something, and as a result he works harder. He's the guy who trains every single day to prove people wrong."

For Brady, 29, unwavering dedication was the only way to crack the lineup and complete an against-all-odds rise to stardom.

To this day, he leads by example. He remains the player to beat when it comes to winning the coveted parking spot given to the most devoted member of the Patriots' offseason program.

"If I'm not up at 6 am or I'm not trying to win the parking spot here," Brady says, "then someone else is going to win it and I'm going to have to drive in every day and see their name up on the wall rather than mine."

"If another team wins the Super Bowl, it's going to be painful to watch those guys celebrate. I'm not going to be happy for them."

Brady's greatest strength is his ability to will his team to victory:

•When New England was tied 17-17 with the heavily favored St. Louis Rams with 1:21 left in Super Bowl XXXVI to close the 2001 season, he hit five of eight passes for 53 yards in a final drive that led to a 20-17 triumph and his first MVP award.

•When the Patriots were tied 29-29 with the Carolina Panthers with 1:08 remaining in Super Bowl XXXVIII, he converted four of five throws for 47 yards to position Adam Vinatieri's game-winning field goal as part of a dazzling 32-for-48, 354-yard, three-touchdown MVP performance.

•With a 58-20 record and .744 winning percentage entering this season, he joined Roger Staubach (85-29, .746, from 1969-79) and Montana (117-47, .713, from 1979-94) as the only passers in the Super Bowl era (since 1966) to win at more than a 70% clip.

Brady has performed his late-game magic so often — he led the Patriots to victory on 21 occasions when they faced a fourth-quarter deficit or were tied through 2005 — that it is virtually expected. "If we have the ball in our hands," veteran offensive tackle Matt Light says, "we always feel we have a chance to win."

A critical juncture in Brady's life came when he was a sophomore at Michigan. He was concerned about his seeming lack of opportunity and was considering transferring. He met with coach Lloyd Carr to discuss whether he had a future with the Wolverines.

Carr responded: "Go out there and do everything you can to control what you can control and quit worrying about how many reps you get or the other quarterbacks get, the skills they have and you don't. Worry about things that you do well because thats all you can control."

Brady uses his intelligence and work ethic to master each week's game plan. His knowledge of defenses allows him to almost immediately recognize whatever look is presented and quickly make whatever adjustments are necessary.

He is fanatical about preparation, so much so that then-offensive coordinator Charlie Weis jokingly complained about the quarterback's late-night calls to his hotel room in the days leading to New England's 24-21 decision against the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl XXXIX.

"I don't want any unknowns. I don't want any guesswork. When I go out onto the field, I want to know exactly what we're going to do versus every defense we could face," he says. "And when I feel like I'm prepared like that in my mind, I feel like it's just execution from there, and if I can go out and execute and that's the stuff I work on, then we're going to do exactly what we set out to do."

There are never loose ends.

"I don't take the field if I'm not prepared," he says. "It's as simple as that."

Brady's glittering 10-1 postseason record stems largely from his ability to limit turnovers when the stakes are highest. He has been picked off only five times in 11 postseason appearances, an interception percentage of 1.36 that is the best in playoff history.

As much as he has accomplished, Brady wants more. He is not content with either his lofty position in the game or his number of championships he has won.

As painful as the journey has been for Brady, as much as each snub gnawed at him, he would not change a thing:

"At the end of the day, you can hold that Super Bowl trophy up and you know you've done everything the right way and you've paid the price. When the situation came up and the pressure was at the highest, you performed your best."

TOM BRADY

Brady's Success A Testament To Dedication & Hard Work

Kevin Krystofiak was the starting quarterback of the freshman football team at Junipero Serra High in Calif., in 1991. The team went 0-8 that season. "I was a really bad quarterback," Krystofiak said.

That does not say very much for Brady, who spent the year as Krystofiak's backup.
"The thing about Tom," Krystofiak said, "is that he was never given anything."

When someone is as accomplished as Brady -- it only makes sense that he got every break along the way. But Brady is actually distinguished by all the breaks that went against him, starting in '91, and how he responded to each one. The setbacks are what separate him.

As a sophomore, Brady started at quarterback for the JV.

After the season Brady promptly went home and convinced his parents to find him a personal trainer, as well as an off-season quarterback coach.

In two seasons on the varsity team, Brady's record was a modest 11-9. He signed with Michigan. He was beaten out first by Scott Dreisbach, then by Brian Griese. Brady charged into the Michigan football office, looking for head coach Lloyd Carr, intent on transferring to Cal.

Instead of transferring, he sought out a sports psychologist. From the psychologist, he learned to worry less about the other quarterbacks on the roster and more about himself.

"That was the low point," said Scot Loeffler, who played with Brady at Michigan. "But those hard times paid off.”

As a junior at Michigan, Brady finally won the starting quarterback job.

During his Senior season Brady was the starter, but Coach Carr made him share the position with Drew Henson during his senior year. Brady played the first quarter, Henson the second, and then Carr decided who would start the third.

Brady ended up proving the rotation ridiculous. Halfway through the season Carr decided that Brady should be taking all the snaps.

The fact that Brady was not the full-time starter during his senior season, that he weighed only 190 pounds and that his delivery was a little bit unorthodox, scared some NFL scouts away.

New England picked him in the sixth round, 199th overall, behind quarterbacks such as Giovanni Carmazzi and Spergon Wynn. Not long after the draft, Brady ran into Patriots' owner Robert Kraft for the first time, Brady extended his hand, introduced himself, and said in all seriousness: "Mr. Kraft, I'm the best decision your organization has ever made."

It was cocky, but he believed in himself. Heading into his first training camp, Brady was listed as New England's fourth-string quarterback. By the end of his first season, he was not much better.

Desperate to learn the offense and improve his delivery, Brady worked tirelessly with New England quarterbacks coach Dick Rehbein. But in August '01, during training camp at Bryant College, Rehbein died of a heart attack.

On the eve of the '01 season, Coach Belichick announced that Brady, would back up Bledsoe. In the second game of the season, Bledsoe was injured, and Belichick announced that Brady would start against the Indianapolis Colts.

The Patriots thumped the Colts, 44-13, but it was not all happily ever after. They lost the next week at Miami. Three weeks after that, Brady threw four interceptions in the fourth quarter of a loss to Denver. But just as Brady responded at Serra High School and at the University of Michigan, he reset himself and won 11 of the next 12 games, including his first Super Bowl.

Since then, he has become the definition of success. It's hard to remember a time that Brady was not the face of football. But Brady remembers his lean years vividly. They are what still drives him.

Before his last Super Bowl, three years ago in Jacksonville, Brady was asked if he had any flaws, and his response was surprisingly candid. "There are plenty of things I'm deficient at," he said. "I'm not very fast, never had the best arm, and never been very strong.”

"He went from being a backup in high school, to almost transferring from Michigan, to splitting time with a freshman quarterback during his senior year, to being a sixth-round draft pick to going to the Super Bowl," Krystofiak said. "He never quit and he never made excuses, he just kept working and believing in himself."