BRADY WINS SEVENTH RING
BUCCANEERS’ AGELESS QUARTERBACK CLAIMS SEVENTH CROWN
tom brady lifts the lombardi trophy after his tampa bay buccaneers defeated the kansas City Chiefs 31-9 in super bowl lv at raymond james stadium on sunday in tampa. the super bowl win was brady’s seventh overall and his first with the buccaneers.
TAMPA BAY 31, KANSAS CITY 9
Brady. Gronk. Super Bowl win. Sound familiar? Of course it does, only this time with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The ageless Brady on Sunday night impressively added another coat of gloss to his peerless NFL legend, misfiring on only seven passes as the Bucs resoundingly beat last year’s NFL champions, Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs, 31-9 in Super Bowl LV.
No other NFL quarterback has played in more than five Super Bowls or won more than four.
In front of about 22,000 socially distanced fans at Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium, the 43-year-old Brady won his seventh Super Bowl.
That’s 13 per cent of all Super Bowls ever played since the first one in 1967.
In the decisive first half, Brady tossed two touchdown passes to Rob Gronkowski, his teammate and close friend for most of the last decade with the New England Patriots.
Brady hit his trusty go-to tight end — who came out of a one-year retirement this year to join his old QB on a talented Bucs team — on scoring strikes of eight and 17 yards.
Brady was sharp, poised and dialed in all night. He completed 21-of-29 pass attempts for 201 yards, three TDS and no interceptions — for a sizzling 125.8 passer rating.
Tampa Bay led 21-6 at halftime and 31-9 after three quarters. The rest was garbage time, essentially, when Mahomes produced most of his yardage.
Indeed, it wasn’t just the Brady and Gronk show.
On offence, the Bucs’ ground-and-pound game became more and more a nightmare for defences in these playoffs, after the Bucs ranked just 28th in rushing out of 32 teams over the 16-game regular season. Ronald Jones and Leonard Fournette constituted a wicked running-back tandem against the Chiefs.
Fournette finished with 89 yards, Jones with 61.
It’s the second Super Bowl win in Buccaneers history, the other coming in 2002. And they won it this time, by sheer coincidence, on their home field (Super Bowl sites are named years in advance). Tampa Bay was the first team to ever play at home in a Super Bowl.
Bucs head coach Bruce Arians, 68, is the deserving mastermind. He’s also the oldest coach ever to win a Super Bowl.
He had only become a full-time head coach in 2013 in Arizona at age 60. After a one-year retirement in 2018, the Bucs hired him before the 2019 season.
Brady joined him there 11 months ago, signing in Tampa Bay as a free agent after 20 memorable, success-soaked seasons in New England.
Arians is the primary offensive architect for the Bucs. But he keeps trying to convince anyone who’ll listen that his offensive co-ordinator, former NFL QB Byron Leftwich, is the one primarily sequencing and calling all those great plays, with his and Brady’s input.
No less responsible for this victory were Tampa Bay’s fast, ferocious defenders — who never got their due all season. Not even after an integral role in road playoff wins last month at Washington, New Orleans and Green Bay. It’s a first-rate defence, at every level.
Buccaneers defensive co-ordinator Todd Bowles — the former New York Jets head coach — devised a masterful scheme to pressure Mahomes and frustrate the entire Chiefs offence.
Bowles’ Bucs shut down and frustrated Mahomes and crew throughout, perhaps as no NFL team has done over the past three seasons. Certainly not in a game.
It appeared Bowles’ idea was to pressure Mahomes relentlessly — to take advantage of a banged-up Kansas City offensive line — as well as take away the short flats as much as possible, where the Chiefs love to feast on quick short passes or creative runs with their speedy playmakers.
Not on this night. Mahomes had nine yards passing after one quarter, 67 after two and just 114 after three — by which time the game had been pretty much decided.
Mahomes finished with no touchdowns, two interceptions and 270 yards, most of it in garbage time. He’d averaged 316 in the regular season to lead all NFL passers.
Following a spectacular halftime performance by Toronto’s The Weeknd, the Chiefs — trailing by 15 — kept their short-pass rhythm going to start the third quarter, and got rookie running back Clyde Edwards-hilaire going, too.
But K.C. again couldn’t cash it in for a touchdown, settling for another Harrison Butker field goal from 52 yards out.
The Bucs grabbed tight control of the game on their opening drive of the half. Brady hit on all three passes, while Jones and Fournette began ripping off even longer runs.
Fournette capped the 74-yard, six-play drive with a 27-yard scoring burst off the right side of his line, sprung by a crushing block laid by pulling left guard Ali Marpet.
Tampa Bay 28, Kansas City 9.
Three plays after the ensuing kickoff, Mahomes was sacked.
On the next snap, a 3rdand-13, a pressured Mahomes threw to well-covered Tyreek Hill. The ball was deflected and all-rookie safety Antoine Winfield Jr. intercepted at the K.C. 25 with 6:20 left in the third.
To tell you how much it was the Bucs’ night, seven plays into Tampa Bay’s next drive, a shotgun snap flew far over Brady’s head. He recovered it before a Chiefs defender could scoop and score.
On the next play, Bucs placekicker Ryan Succop — whose longest made field goal in 19 previous games this season was 50 yards — drilled his attempt from 52 with 2:36 left in the third.
Tampa Bay 31, Kansas City 9.
It was desperation time for Mahomes and the Chiefs. But they couldn’t mount a comeback against those unrelenting Bucs play-disrupters.
Brady won six of nine Super Bowl starts for New England.
Now you can add to his resume, after 21 NFL seasons and counting, another memorable, standout performance in yet another Super Bowl victory.
His seventh.
Seven, for crying out loud.