Football from Tom Brady's first NFL touchdown pass going up for auction
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May 7, 2021, 12:59 PM
8 min read
Share to FacebookShare to TwitterEmail this articleThe football that Tom Brady threw to complete his first touchdown pass in the NFL is going up for auction with Lelands on Sunday.
It's a unique piece of sports history that has been with the seller, who wishes to remain anonymous, since the game on Oct. 14, 2001, when the New England Patriots played the San Diego Chargers.
The seller grew up in Rhode Island and has gone to Patriots games since the late 1970s with his family. He and three of his high school friends first bought season tickets in 1992 as college students and have kept the tickets to this day.
He's a loyal fan of the Patriots and jokes that his wife almost divorced him 100 times because of how devoted he was to the Sunday games and tailgates with friends.
In the beginning, the tailgates were what the group of friends looked forward to as the Patriots went 2-14 in 1992 and 5-11 in 1993. The team had improved by the 2001 season, but the 25 to 30 friends still enjoyed the tailgate.
On that fall day in October, the seller made his way to Lot 11 right when the parking lot opened in the morning. Eventually, they dispersed to their respective seats and the seller made his way down near the field in the south end zone.
"Looking from the 50-yard line to the south end zone, the left field goal post, I sat to the left of that," the seller said. "[Place-kicker] Scott Sisson, we called him Missin' Sisson. I caught a lot of balls in that stadium because he would miss field goals."
The game was only the third one Brady started after Drew Bledsoe was injured in the second game of the season against the New York Jets, so most Patriots fans didn't have high expectations for Brady. From the moment Bledsoe was injured, however, the seller tried to convince his friends Brady was going to be the guy going forward, although he met with much resistance from his audience.
Brady had gone two games without throwing a touchdown as the starter, and there was now 4:01 left in the second quarter with New England and San Diego tied at 3 apiece.
The Patriots were driving at the San Diego 21-yard line when Brady took the snap, looked for Terry Glenn the whole play and threw a dart to him in the front of the end zone. Glenn threw his arms in the air and celebrated with his teammates. He then made his way near the back of the end zone and threw the ball into the crowd.
"It was a melee. I stood up on my seat, I pushed my buddy to my left," the seller said. "The other two guys, I handed them my beer in a gentle way. I jumped up, tussled with a group of other fans around me and I came down with the ball."
At the time, it was just another football. He was excited he had caught the ball and proud to see that, at age 29, he still had hands from his high school football days.
It wasn't until he went to the postgame tailgate, when he opened his trunk to show the football off to his friends, that one of them reminded him it was Brady's first touchdown.
He kept the ball in a safe place in his house and even played a very careful game of catch with the football in the backyard. It wasn't until the end of the 2003 season, when New England beat the Carolina Panthers in the Super Bowl, that the seller knew he had something special.
Immediately after that game, he put the ball in a safety deposit box at his local bank. There it stayed, rarely brought out of its safekeeping. The ball became something of a superstition for the seller and his friends, as he would take it out the Saturday before each Super Bowl the Patriots appeared in, take a picture of it and send it to his friends.
The Patriots have lost the Super Bowl only once when the seller took a picture of the ball, and they were 0-2 in the two games when he didn't.
"I was out of town for the Philly game [in 2017], and I just missed the bank closing for the Giants game [in 2007]," the seller said. "I had kids' sports and just couldn't get there before the bank closed. That's what caused the David Tyree helmet catch, because I couldn't take a picture of the ball."
As time passed, and with neither of the seller's kids expressing interest in keeping the ball in the family, they decided it was time to move on and allow someone else to enjoy this piece of sports history.
Lelands has photo-verified the football based on markings and writing on the football that was specific to the Patriots at the time. As Glenn celebrated in the end zone, a photographer captured the moment with Glenn holding the football with the laces out and the markings clearly shown. There are four main points that were identified on the ball. The Patriots wrote "PATS" in marker on one side of the ball near the laces, two dots on the end of the laces, the letters "L" and "N" on one side and a two-digit number on the other side identifying which game ball it was for that day.
