What did Tom Brady offer Buccaneers fan Byron Kennedy in return for 600th TD ball?

Tom Brady won again this week, though Bucs fan Byron Kennedy may have trumped him in their scale of wins.

Byron Kennedy was the lucky fan to receive Tom Brady's 600th touchdown ball. After Tom Brady became the only quarterback in NFL history to reach that milestone with a pass to Mike Evans, the wide receiver tossed the ball into the crowd as he would do with a routine pass. It completely escaped his mind that the ball was a historic artifact whose bid rate would be in the millions, never mind the fact that Tom Brady himself would probably like it as memorabilia. Thus came the whole rigmarole of recovering that ball from Byron Kennedy.

Byron Kennedy earns cool haul in return for Tom Brady's 600th TD ball

Once Byron Kennedy got the ball, he was in no mind to return it, and who could blame him? Most of us would have wanted to hold on to that historic football as a prized collection. But Byron Kennedy could not say no to one person's entreaties: Tom Brady. When he found out that the quarterback himself wanted it back, he made up his mind to return the ball, but drove in a hard bargain.

In his own words:

"I was just so happy to get a touchdown ball from Mike Evans. I had no idea how significant it actually was. The [Buccaneers staff member] came up and basically said, 'Can we get the ball back?' And my first reaction was 'No.' I told him, 'You can't have the ball back. I'd never gotten a football like this, this is the coolest thing ever. No.' We went back and forth a little bit and he was basically saying, 'Tom Brady really wants the football.' Like I said earlier, you can't say no to Tom Brady. He's asking for his 600th touchdown football back, he's the one who earned it. I just got lucky and happened to be there at the right time."

But having relented to return the football back to Tom Brady, Kennedy succeeded in receiving from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers the following items:

• A couple of signed jerseys and a helmet from Tom Brady.
• A jersey signed by Mike Evans plus his game cleats.
• Season tickets for 2021 and 2022 for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
• 1000 USD gift credit from the Bucs team store.

Tom Brady made the deal even sweeter for Byron Kennedy by adding in some monetary compensation in the form of a cryptocoin worth more than 60,000 USD.

It all made a pretty sweet deal for Byron Kennedy, who was the lucky guy to be in the right place at the right time.