We’ll talk about this later: 23 years later and we’re still talking about Tom Brady’s combine

Each week, we’ll break down something that happened during the Ohio State game (and occasionally other games and events) that we’ll be talking about for a while—you know, the silly sideline interactions, the awful announcing and the weird storylines that stick with us for years to come. We’ll also compare each of these happenings to memorable moments in pop culture, because who doesn’t love a good Office reference?

The NFL Combine is keeping football fans clinging to something entertaining until the NFL Draft and the long drought that will follow until the preseason begins. For Ohio State fans, there’s intrigue in watching much of their offense in the week’s events, including quarterback C.J. Stroud, wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba and offensive tackles Paris Johnson Jr. and Dawand Jones.

In reality, there is little excitement in watching the top athletes in the draft class competing on objective measures of athleticism. It is exciting to see the occasional defensive lineman run a bananas 40-yard dash time or see amazing feats of strength from prospective quarterbacks. Then there was the time John Ross III, the undersized receiver from the University of Washington, ran a 4.22-second 40-yard dash time.

What’s far more entertaining about the combine, though, is what we gain from hindsight. To paraphrase Michael Scott, “He [the NFL Combine] is like the ugly girl in the movie who takes off her glasses and she’s hot! And you realize she was always hot, she was just wearing glasses. And you were the blind one.” Misogyny aside, it’s exactly what we see from the combine. The image of Tom Brady at the 2000 combine lives rent free in my head.

His performance in the events themselves didn’t inspire much confidence (a 5.28-second 40-yard dash, for instance). But that’s the fun of it, right? Because it is so absurd that the GOAT was so, so bad at all the measurables which are predictors of NFL success.

Given his success throughout his career, as Ohio State fans,we have to hang on to the memory we can count on of Brady being at his worst.