Brady is Frustrating Like No Other

It always seems to be this way.  Tom Brady shreds teams during the regular season.  We are on that page together. 11-1 record after coming back from the four game suspension.  Yup.  28-2 Touchdown to Interception ratio.  Yup on that one too.  Highest completion percentage since 16-0 to boot.  He is the greatest regular season quarterback of all time.

But then you get him into the playoffs and things change.  With the 34-16 drubbing of Houston a couple of days ago, Tom Brady has played in 32 playoff games.  The math is easy now because that is two complete seasons.  His record turns to 11.5 and 4.5.  His TD/Int ration goes to 29/15.  His completion record drops by almost 3 percentage points.  What's the deal?

A couple of things are at work causing Brady to go from regular season MVP to Phillip Rivers.

1.  Teams Finally Execute the Game Plan.  We all know the best way to stop the Patriots' defense.  Getting to Tom Brady.  Now sacking him is too easy.  What I really mean is hitting him every chance one gets.  This takes patience and a lot of hard work.  During the regular season, team defenses struggle to execute that game plan because teams are too banged up and conserving energy.  Once the playoffs come around, teams put all of that aside and go after him with reckless abandon because they don't have anything else to lose.

2.  Patriot's Meta Schedule.  This is one that has been dragged around for years.  The Bills, Jets and Dolphins all suck.  Now not every year, but you can generally count on 2 of the 3 teams to suck every year.  This leads to an easy 5-6 wins every year.  What also is at work is that the AFC has a lot of bad teams, not just int he AFC East.  The Raiders and Browns have been bad for years.  Same with the Jaguars and Titans.  The Chargers and Bengals, while making the playoffs, are always soft.  Really, except for the Ravens, Steelers and Broncos, the entire conference is soft and the Patriots get 2 games against them.  Its not a division thing, its a conference thing.

3.  Brady Isn't Clutch.  Now this is a red herring, but this stands to reason.  He does have the third most game winning drives in history with 49 (only Manning and Marino have more).  But the Houston game is a perfect example of the clutchness issue.  He never seems to have good games int eh playoffs.  He always seems to do just enough to win most games, but you never say that Tom Brady was the reason that the Patriots won the so-and-so game.  The 2007 and 2011 Super Bowls are other good examples of this phenomenon.  Some players are just not as good when it counts.

So as the Patriots enter into the AFC Championship against the Pittsburgh Steelers (and their own shaky QB), it will remain to be seen if Brady can look like the Brady that will win the MVP.

DeflateGate and the NFL's Genius Marketing Ploy

Let me start off by saying that I have never been a fan of the 2 week break between the Championship games and the Super Bowl.  My opinion is that the NFL should either play the game the following weekend (and let injuries be what they may), add a second bye week so the NFL season ends up 18 weeks long or have the Super Bowl fall on the President's Day weekend (with a two-week break) so people have the following Monday off.  The two week break is just too long, particularly for hungry sports media and fans.

Deflated Footballs anyone?

Which brings me to DeflateGate.  By the time this is published, this is an old news story.  You know why?  Because after the weekend between the Championship games and the Super Bowl, teams and fans start arriving at the Super Bowl location, Media day starts and all of the hoopla associated with the Super Bowl begins in earnest.  The NFL doesn't need anything to keep fans and advertisers tuned in starting the Monday of Super Bowl week.  Which was part of the problem all along.

Stories were popping up everywhere last week.  Brady likes the balls under inflated.  A ball boy took the balls into the bathroom and the NFL has video.  The balls were checked before the game.  Belichick actually sounded convincing and human-like in answering the questions.  (He wasn't too worried about the DeflateGate during the first week.).  Where did all of these stories originate?  The Colts? the Ravens? D'Quell Jackson?  Bob Irsay (well, maybe)?  No.  It was the NFL!  The same organization that failed to inspect the balls properly.  The same organization that took weeks to decide what to do and is still hemming and hawing.  The same organization that failed to interview any of the players involved.  The same organization that has been battling a image problem for years...

Many will say that the slowest sports news week during the season in the week after the AFC and NFC Championship games.  The NBA and NHL are in the middle of their seasons.  Baseball and soccer are outdoor sports no one plays in the Winter.  There were no Olympics or other news stories that could distract the media from the stories that the NFL did not want anyone to talk about - Concussions, Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson.  What better way to get the media in a frenzy about the sport than to leak a story about how the Patriots - notorious cheaters - some how cheated their way to the Super Bowl?!  You have a harmless violation that people can have very strong opinions about.  You have a wonderful villain.  And you have a readership that is thirsty to talk about anything football.  No one is talking about Ray Rice, or Adrian Peterson, or the latest guy to get arrested for domestic violence.  They are all talking about Tom Brady, Bill Belichick and Robert Kraft and their deflated balls. 

The NFL got off scot-free.  It was a genius marketing ploy.

I don't have any misconceptions.  Our favorite team is hated - HATED - outside of New England.  We are not going to be getting any breaks this week.  Almost every former player on TV has some axe to grind because of the Patriots or the players involved.  Yes, I'm talking to you Ray Lewis, and Marshall Faulk, and Mark Brunell and Troy Aikman.  Brady and Belichick have been around for so long that they are hated by everyone who played football between 1986 and the present.  That's another story for another time.  Did they cheat?  Yes, of course.  Every team does it and the Patriots allegedly got "caught."  The NFL failed to check the balls and the slight deflated balls that Brady likes using were permitted.  Did it mean anything to the game or the outcome?  No, but it doesn't matter.

There are some smart people int eh NFL after all.

Patriots 23, Seahawks 17.  Pound the under on this one.

Maybe Tom Brady Isn't a Big Game Quarterback

I have heard this song before.  I have listened to sports radio over the last couple of day regurgitating all of the poor results from the Patriots 28-13 loss to the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC Championship.  My favorite of the week was "if Bernard Pollard hadn't hit Wes Welker so hard with the helmet to helmet hit, then Welker would have caught the next pass for a first down and then the Patriots would have gone on to score and so on and so on."  Seriously?

Better Days

Unfortunately, I have another theory.  It pains me to even think about it, much less write it.  Here goes.  Tom Brady is not a very good big game quarterback.  His statistics for the Ravens game weren't awful, but his completion percentage was a paltry 53.7% and he threw two costly interceptions.  You know how I know these things?  C told me.  Some will blame Gronkowski being out, even though he was out for 5 games with same injury during the regular season.  Some will blame the play calling that accentuated the Patriots best player (Brady) and abandoned the running game.  Some will blame the weather (warm, yet extremely windy).  The bottom line is that the best QB in the league (so many of us say) needed to rise above the problems and score more points than his opponent.  Was it me, or did you believe the game to be over once the Ravens went up by 15 in the Fourth Quarter?  You're shaking your head just like me.

And this isn't the first time.  In the 2012 Super Bowl, while Brady did throw 2 Touchdown passes and at one point completed 16 passes in a row, he also could not drive the ball against the Giants in the second half, culminating in a poor third down throw to Wes Welker, where if Welker caught the ball, the Patriots would have been in field goal range and in range for a possible win.  And remember that unbelievable intentional grounding penalty in the First Quarter that resulted in a safety? And I'm not the first one to write about Brady's struggles after this game.

2011 wasn't any better.  Against the Jets, Brady again could not get anything going.  A late touchdown drive (late as in garbage time) in the Fourth Quarter to make the score 28-14 was the only thing that stopped this game from being a horrible game for Brady.  He looked shaky all day, constantly hopping around rushing his throws.  Things got so bad that Patrick Chung called a fake punt that had no chance of succeeding.  I can still hear the obnoxious drunken Jets fans after the game.

I will give Brady a pass in 2010 since he was still hobbled by his surgically repaired knee (and the loss of Wes Welker in the last game of the season was a real game changer).  The Patriots were never in that game against the Ravens.  Brady did not have a good game though with three interceptions and a devastating fumble that led to the Ravens jumping out to an early 14 point lead.  That year was not our year.

And the perfect season?  Remember that Brady broke the record for most touchdown passes in a season with 50.  Against the Giants, Brady was merely average.  While leading the league in QB rating (117.2) and completion percentage (68.9%) during the season, his completion percentage dropped to 60.4% in the Super Bowl and his QB rating fell below 100.   Teams don't win the Super Bowl with sub par games from the star players.

All in all, Brady is one of the best Quarterbacks in the National Football League.  I just don't know if we're going to see a Super Bowl win again with him at the helm.  Brady is 35 years old with a model wife and two kids.  He's in the twilight of his career, and we're looking at the wrong side of the mountain.  It's still better than watching the Jets and Bills, though.