It’s not uncommon as an aspiring athlete to be compared to one of the league’s greatest, even if it’s not the one you were hoping to be compared to.
Such was the case for a younger Jarrett Stidham.
Stidham, who likely will be the New England Patriots quarterback heading into Week 1 of the 2020 NFL season, wasn’t even in high school when he was told he threw the football like Tom Brady.
That’s, of course, some pretty high praise for someone who wasn’t even in high school yet. But the now-23-year-old wanted to hear he threw it like Peyton Manning.
“When he was in seventh or eighth grade I told him he threw the ball a lot like Tom Brady and I thought it was kind of ironic because he sometimes kind of got upset like, ‘Peyton Manning is my guy. Peyton Manning,'” Stidham’s personal QB’s coach Kelan Luker said, via WEEI.com’s Ryan Hannable. “I was like, ‘Well, you don’t throw like Peyton Manning, you throw like Tom Brady.’ He just didn’t realize who Tom Brady was at that time.”
Little did seventh or eighth grade Stidham know he’d be backing up Brady — a six-time Super Bowl champion– as a member of the Patriots in 2019.
Stidham may only have had a year behind Brady, as the 42-year-old found a new home in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in free agency, but we’re sure he took in all he could from the 20-year veteran to help give New England a fighting chance in 2020.
