New Boston College head coach Bill O’Brien is already familiar with Massachusetts. It’s where he grew up and where he made a name for himself as an NFL coach. In particular, he made a name for himself as the offensive coordinator for the New England Patriots, working with quarterback Tom Brady.
While making an appearance on the College GameDay Podcast, O’Brien looked back on that time with Brady, sharing his favorite Tom Brady story.
“I have a ton of Tom Brady stories, I just told this one to the quarterbacks here,” Bill O’Brien said. “Tom Brady, as everyone knows, is a great player and a great person and all that. He’s got an incredible memory. So, one day, we were sitting there, I forget what year it was. It was kind of early in my time coaching him and we were playing the Buffalo Bills.”
Bill O’Brien came to New England in 2007 as an offensive assistant. He would be a wide receivers coach in 2008 and by 2009 he was the team’s quarterback coach. He later would also become the offensive coordinator before leaving to be the head coach at Penn State.
“The Buffalo Bills, I think Dick Jauron was the head coach, and we were talking about a play. Tom says, ‘Yeah, we ran that play.’ this is probably 2009 or 10. So, he says, ‘We ran it. It was a play called Crunch Stock. Yeah, we ran Crunch Stock. We ran that in 2002 when Dick Jauron was the defensive coordinator for some other team. We hit Troy Brown on a cross.'”
In 2002, Jauron would have been the defensive coordinator of the Chicago Bears. It was a game that Tom Brady knew very well, even if he had no real reason to. It wasn’t a memorable moment in an otherwise forgettable game in a season where New England didn’t even make the playoffs.
“And I’m thinking to myself, wait a minute, we’re in a meeting and so he was talking about eight years ago. I said, ‘What do you mean you ran it?’ [He said], ‘Yeah, it was the third play of the game. We were on our own 30-yard line. We were going away from the lighthouse, I think it was on the right hash, we were in a left-handed formation.’ I said, ‘Get out of here. There’s no way that you remember that play to that exactness. Like no way.'”
Not necessarily liking that Bill O’Brien didn’t believe him. Tom Brady told his coach to look the play up, which he did, proving Brady right about the play.
“He’s like, ‘Look it up.’ You could go onto the video system and go to 2002, go to the third play of whoever it was, might’ve been the Bears, whatever team it was, go to the third play of that game, ball’s on the 30-yard line, they’re going away from the lighthouse, he hits Troy Brown Crunch Stock on a cross,” O’Brien said.
“I was like, it’ll be hard to ever see a Tom Brady ever again in football. His memory, his competitiveness, his leadership, his personality, who he is as a guy, but that’s one of my favorite stories about Tom Brady. His memory was unbelievable.”
More must-reads: