On February 6, 2002, hundreds of thousands of New England Patriots fans jammed the streets of downtown Boston to celebrate their Super Bowl XXXVI victory. But despite the crowd chanting his name, twice at a City Hall Plaza pep rally alone, Drew Bledsoe was nowhere to be found, leaving everyone wondering.

You see, he was the quarterback who came into Foxborough as the first overall pick in 1993. He was the one touted to bring them their first championship in franchise history. He came close in 1996, but never became the one. Of course, it hurt. Ironically, it was all his to take. If only a brutal hit and a life-threatening injury that very year hadn’t taken it all away from him, as he relives the flight for his life.

“On the way to the hospital, sitting there [I’m] bleeding out internally,” the former quarterback narrated on the Gerard vs Evil podcast. “My brother was looking at me, and all of a sudden, I just felt lights out, and he thought I was done.

“They got me to the hospital, put a tube on my chest, and immediately started pumping blood out, recycling it, and putting it back in. And when I first got there, they said I had over two litres of blood inside my chest cavity. And they think my size, I probably have like a total of seven litres of blood in my body. So, over a quarter of my blood was just floating around in my chest cavity. I was bleeding out about a liter an hour.”

As the team won the Super Bowl XXXVI, the very next day, Bledsoe packed his bag for Whitefish, Montana. By 11 am on that Wednesday, he was sitting on a chairlift and looked around. There was no one but him. He put his goggles and helmet on and sat there, crying…

“It was the first time I just kind of let it all come crashing down on me,” Bledsoe confessed in the 2021 ESPN+ documentary Man in the Arena. But it wasn’t the toll of the Super Bowl win alone that took over him.

Season 2001 was the year for the Patriots. Led by Bledsoe for eight years since he was a rookie, New England, under head coach Bill Belichick, was turning the page over from Pete Carroll. But the year the team won their first ring, Bledsoe met with an unfortunate fate.

What happened on September 23, 2001?

In their Week 2 matchup against the New York Jets in September 2001, the Patriots trailed 10-3 in the fourth quarter. With 5:11 left in the game, Bledsoe threw the ball for eight yards on a 3rd and 10. But right then, Jets’ linebacker Mo Lewis tackled him. He stayed in the game for another drive but was removed under concussion protocol. But when he was in the locker room with his brother, things got worse.

As he was packing up his stuff, Bledsoe continued to complain about his shoulder. Dr Thomas Gill IV, who was a team physician at that time, thought it might have been an abdominal injury or a ruptured spleen. Soon, Bledsoe had begun breathing rapidly.

In reality, the veteran sheared a blood vessel in his chest that caused a hemothorax, where blood starts collecting in the chest cavity. If Bledsoe was not treated immediately, as Gill told Fox News, he “could have died.”

The quarterback recovered for a few days in the hospital, not knowing he had ushered in the arrival of the player who would go on to define the sport as the fresh-faced, slightly pudgy Tom Brady took over. Even the second-year QB was shocked by Bledsoe’s injury:

“It was the loudest hit I could ever remember hearing,” Brady said in 2016, recalling this day. “Drew was so tough, and he got up and came to the sideline and his face mask was smashed. I saw and heard the hit, and it was a crushing hit.

“It wasn’t until mid-week when we knew the extent of what Drew was dealing with. Again, I was just taking things as they came, and I tried to make the best of the situation, as it was tough for everybody, with somebody I respected so much, like I did Drew.”

But Brady not only took over the roster, over the next two decades, but he also created the league’s most renowned dynasty. What’s interesting is that none of it ended Bledsoe’s Patriots career.

The former QB1 filled in for an injured Brady and helped the Patriots win the AFC Championship Game against the top dogs of the division, the Pittsburgh Steelers, that very season. However, Brady still held on to the starting job, eventually winning Super Bowl XXXVI, his first of six with the Patriots.

When he did not get his role back in the team, Bledsoe was traded to the Buffalo Bills the next year to continue his NFL journey. Anyone else in Drew Bledsoe’s place would have resented Tom Brady, even though the latter simply took what came his way. But Bledsoe selflessly became the bigger guy and supported Brady and his team.

Drew Bledsoe on winning the Super Bowl under Tom Brady’s shadow

Because Brady gave the Patriots six Super Bowl wins, many often forget that Bledsoe himself came close to winning one in the 1996 season. It was his fourth season in the NFL, and he had racked up 4,068 passing yards that year. Bledsoe was meant to be the man who would eventually bring the team a Super Bowl win. However, when the Patriots won in 2001, Bledsoe was there only as a backup. But he didn’t hold his team back from something that was working well without him.

“Took me a long time to put that ring on,” Bledsoe added. “I do take a lot of pride in that season because I could have blown it up. I was the leader of the team, captain, franchise guy. Could have been an a—–e and torn the whole thing down. Instead, I did right and supported my guys and supported Tom.

“I did get to play in the Championship game, which was good. But it was very bittersweet. … We won a championship, but I’m not the guy on the field. That hurt.”

It took years for Bledsoe to finally wear that ring. Now, he is proud of it and brings it out now and then. But it was also the end of his Patriots career. Bledsoe eventually moved to the Buffalo Bills, where he earned Pro Bowl honors the next year. He retired in 2007 with the seventh-highest passing yard total at that time. Drew Bledsoe gave the NFL Tom Brady, but he is also the legend who never got to be the one.