Sean Payton was on Chris Long’s Green Light podcast and was asked about the best prospect he missed out on.

Payton mentioned that when he was QB coach for the Giants in 1999, he tried to get the team to draft Tom Brady, but didn’t have enough sway in the room at the time. Typically I’d put in audio or video of the clip, but holy hell does Sean Payton take forever to tell a story. So here is the condensed quote instead:

“All right, so I’m in New York and my agent is Don Yee, and Don also represents Tom Brady. Don would periodically call me with a client that he just signed, and he said, ‘Hey, will you call up Tom Brady? He’s at Michigan and I’ve got him, and just help him out with things that would be important for him at the combine. Basically, I remember it being a half an hour phone call on what’s important, make a good impression, be prepared to answer some football questions. The interviews were much more informal at that time.

“Now I’m a little bit connected to this player only because Don introduced me. We were doing [scouting] Brady, now this is going around the room and everyone’s seen Tom run the 40 at the combine. Everyone’s seen, you know, you get the body, weigh in pictures, all of that. So, you have a guy who is not fully developed yet who was pretty much a one-year starter. You could tell that he needs the weight room. But Lloyd Carr [Michigan head coach] said this, I’ll never forget it, he said he’s the toughest player that he’s ever coached. That meant something.”

Wow. Imagine instead of having to live with two Giant Super Bowl wins we’re instead dealing with six and the last 20 years being ruled by Tom Brady.

Now let’s take a couple things into consideration. The NFC East would’ve been a rock fight. Brady played in the AFC East the majority of his career, probably the worst in football over the last two decades. Does he sit behind Kerry Collins the Super Bowl QB until 2003? Do the Eagles even get to the Super Bowl in 2004 if Brady works his magic?  Do we win the Super Bowl in 2017 when Brady is still playing at his peak? It’s probably Giants vs. Eagles in the NFC Championship. That’s a strong core of Tom Brady, Tiki Barber, Amani Toomer, Plaxico Burress, Michael Strahan, Osi Umenyiora, and Justin Tuck over a career with Tom Coughlin at the helm. The Giants probably rule the late 2000s – early 2010s era and maybe longer. But coulda, woulda, shoulda. The draft is full of what-ifs. If Howie Roseman drafts Russell Wilson or DK Metcalf who knows how that plays out. Thank God no one listened to Sean Payton.