Meet Tom Brady's first believer
— -- The multiple Super Bowl winner picked 200th in his draft, Bart Starr, had a role in the discovery of the multiple Super Bowl winner picked 199th in his, Tom Brady. As head coach of the same Green Bay Packers he once quarterbacked to greatness, Starr was the one who decided that a small-college lineman he had cut from his roster, Dick Rehbein, would make for a heck of an assistant.
Rehbein was the one who decided more than two decades later that Brady would make for a heck of a New England Patriot.
Rehbein died eight weeks before Brady made his first-string debut in Foxborough, Massachusetts, early in the 2001 season, but his wife and two daughters still find comfort in the staggering success of the man who has a chance Sunday to become the first quarterback to advance to a sixth Super Bowl. Betsy, Dick's older girl, still recalls her old man returning from Patriots practices in 2000 and telling stories about this skin-and-bones rookie who had a certain something about him.
"My dad would talk about Tom Brady almost as if Tom was his own kid," Betsy recalled. "He would talk about Tom driving this yellow Jeep Wrangler, making fun of this little boy he was watching grow up. It's really cool to see Tom as an adult now with his own family. He's a megastar and a household name, but it seems like yesterday when he was that funny, young, cute guy with the yellow Wrangler."
Sarabeth, the younger daughter, gets the biggest kick out of watching Brady when the opposing team has the ball. "My favorite part isn't watching Tom actually play," she said. "It's when he's happy and joking and laughing on the sideline. I like to think that even in the short time my dad knew Tom, he influenced him. Maybe Tom thinks of my dad now and then on how to be a father and husband and human being."
Pam, Rehbein's wife, deals with conflicting emotions when she watches the non-prospect her husband raved about after a scouting trip to the University of Michigan, the non-prospect her husband pushed Bill Belichick to draft until the Patriots coach made the call late in the sixth round. Big games involving the Patriots can summon painful thoughts of what might've been, at least until Pam remembers what Brady's standing among the sport's all-timers means to her daughters.
"I really wish Dick was still here to see this," Pam said, "but my husband's legacy is with Tom, and I feel proud that my girls have something to associate their dad with. It's an awesome thing for them to have."
Now remarried and working as a realtor in Orlando, Pam Rehbein keeps part of that legacy stored in a glass hutch containing old photos and clippings, playbooks and plaques. She doesn't like to visit her storage room -- it's there for the girls, Pam said. It hurts too much to live in the past, and besides, they moved away from Massachusetts and headed south 10 years ago for a reason.
"There's no NFL team in Orlando," Pam said. "I felt I needed to start over."
She grew up a Packers fan and lived the coaching life with Dick from Green Bay to Minnesota, from Minnesota to the New York Giants and from the Giants to the Patriots. It was an accidental career arc for Dick, the former Division II All-American center out of Ripon College who planned to attend law school at the University of Pittsburgh after failing to survive Starr's final training camp cuts in 1977. As tough as it was for Dick, son of Green Bay, to be released by his idol, Starr made it up to him by praising his intellect and offering him an entry-level job.
Dick Rehbein would ultimately become Green Bay's special-teams coach and the league's youngest full-time assistant, whom Starr passionately defended when criticized in the media -- he scolded one critic and called Rehbein "as sharp a guy as we have in this organization." Fired with Starr in 1983, Rehbein made a brief stop with Los Angeles of the USFL before resuming his NFL journey and earning a reputation as a likable, even-tempered teacher who could reach all kinds of players in all kinds of systems. With the Giants, Dan Reeves kept him after Ray Handley was fired, and Jim Fassel kept him after Reeves was fired.
