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University of California Golden Bears starting quarterback Davis Webb, who is poised to star in the College Football Sydney Cup at ANZ Stadium on Saturday, told The Roar why Tom Brady is the quarterback who inspires him the most.
“Tom Brady is my number one favourite quarterback,” Webb said of the four-time Super Bowl winner with the New England patriots. “The reason I admire him so much is the adversity he overcame to become the player he is.
“I’ve gone through a lot of adversity in my college career, but I saw him persevere through that sort of thing and end up being one of the best quarterbacks to have played this game.
“He became better as a player each and every year through harder work and being a great teammate and I really try to do that with my game every day.”
Brady was not picked up from the 2000 NFL draft until the sixth round and began his first season with the Patriots as their fourth-string quarterback.
By the end of his first season he had moved to second on the depth start, and when starting quarterback Drew Bledsoe was injured during the following season Brady took over and never looked back. He has gone to six Super Bowls with New England.
Webb, who lost the starting position at his previous college, Texas Tech, but has made a great career move to Cal this year, says he has borrowed from Brady to try to improve his own game, mainly in the areas of attitude and application.
“In college football he was a back-up quarterback some weeks, he was a starter and got benched, he was a sixth-round draft pick – pick 199 coming out of college in Michigan – just stuff like that,” Webb says.
“And then he was a back-up in the NFL and had to wait his turn. There are a lot of qualities there that are to do with persevering through adversity and he ended up being the best quarter-back to have ever played this game, in my opinion.
“There are a couple of quotes of his that I really like. They’re on my screen-saver on my phone and I look at them every day when I wake up.
“It’s mainly about attitude, but I also try to pick up little things from him that I think can work for me, different play and scheme concepts.
“But at the same time everyone’s different. I’m a different quarterback, I’m not Tom Brady. I’m not Cam Newton, I’m not going to be able to run for 300 yards a game, I’m going to be able to throw.(Click to Tweet)
“I just kind of do my own thing and play within the system that our head coach and our offensive co-ordinator instils in us and I just kind of go with it.
“The main thing I’ve learned from watching Tom Brady and hearing what he says is that if you’re a hard-working guy and you’ve got a determined mindset, then you’re going to be very hard to stop.
“I have daily goals, weekly goals and yearly goals and they just range from simple things like shaving your face every day and eating with your teammates at a certain time, to watching a certain amount of film each day.
“Weekly goals include meeting with the receivers on a Thursday to talk about the game plan and yearly goals can be stats, or stuff that you want to achieve after football, whether that is to be an NFL draft pick or a college head football coach one day, stuff like that.
“As soon as I got to Cal I made sure I texted all the receivers and teammates to say let’s go and lift some weights, let’s bond together and spend as much time before the season starts so we can get to know each other.”
Webb, 21, aims to be drafted into the NFL for next year and there is every chance he will begin that campaign strongly because Cal are red-hot favourites to open the US college season with a big win over the University of Hawaii Rainbow Warriors in Sydney.
“I try to worry about things I can control and that’s being a great teammate and competing each and every day and playing a great game on Saturdays,” he said. “That’s all I can control and I’ll let other people decide whether they want me as a quarterback in the future.
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