Tom Brady, who played for Bill Belichick for almost two decades winning six Super Bowls, was quick to praise his former coach.

He should. For all the haters out there, it was Belichick who took a chance on a skinny kid from Michigan by way of California who set the NFL on fire.

“I’m incredibly grateful to have played for the best coach in the history of the NFL,” Brady posted on his Instagram account. “He was a great leader for the organization, and for all of the players who played fo him. We accomplished some amazing things over a long period of time, many of which will be hard to replicate. he worked every day to help us achieve the ultimate goal, in the ultimate team sport. And, although we were successful, some of the greatest lessons I learned were in the moments where we faced the most challenging adversities. He set the tone for the organization to never falter in the face of adversity, and to do what we could do, and what was in our control, which was to go out and DO OUR JOB.

“I could never have been the player I was without you Coach Belichick. I am forever grateful. And I wish you the best of luck in whatever you choose next.”

Would Brady come out of retirement to play for Belichick’s next team? Probably not, but you never know.

Belichick drafted Brady with the 199th pick of the 2000 NFL Draft. The rest is history.

As the Herald wrote, something about Tom Brady caught the Patriots eye. After watching him at Michigan, their curiosity was piqued to the point of selecting him in the sixth round of the 2000 draft.

Maybe it was luck. Maybe it was the urging of the late Dick Rehbein, the quarterbacks coach for Bill Belichick who was dispatched to evaluate Brady and recognized something special.

Obviously, the Patriots hit the jackpot, taking Brady with the 199th pick. They selected a player who turned into one of the greatest quarterbacks of all-time, if not the greatest, and a player who has made them championship contenders for nearly two decades.

In a quarterback-driven league, that’s some feat. It’s also the rare route to discovering a franchise quarterback, as opposed to the norm. Nowadays, it’s a struggle to find The Guy.

We also wrote that if scouts at the NFL combine were able to test a player’s confidence level, Tom Brady would have been viewed differently.

Instead, in 2000 he was just skinny, lacked mobility and didn’t have enough arm strength.

Had scouts been able to statistically measure leadership ability or heart, Brady wouldn’t have been passed over 198 times in the draft, including six by Bill Belichick, until he was picked by the Patriots in the sixth round.

It was evident from the start that the young kid from California was different, however. Patriots president Jonathan Kraft remembered the first time he talked with his father, owner Robert Kraft, about the quarterback.

Jonathan was at the Patriots old office in Boston when he got a call around 7 p.m. His father told him how Brady said he would be the best decision “your franchise ever made.”

“And here’s the funny thing,” Jonathan recalled. “I said to my dad at the time. ‘Wow. Did he sound cocky?’ And my father said, ‘You want to know something sick? There was something about the way he said it, I think I believe him.’ True story.”

Brady was right.

No “genius pick,” but one Belichick made and stuck with!

Mind meld in 2009. (Matthew West/Boston Herald)