PATS ENTERTAINMENT
Brady’s MVP show in record comeback caps emotional week
HOUSTON— What did Tom Brady see? He knew the ball wasn’t going to get there, and he knew he couldn’t catch the man who was going to take it the other way, but he tried. Brady has always tried. He shuffled and dove but Atlanta cornerback Robert Alford was gone, and for a few brief seconds Brady looked all of his 39 years, on his knees on the turf, helpless, watching the game run away.
Atlanta was faster. Atlanta was better. Their great linebacker Deion Jones explained, “It’s a matter of everyone zipping up the gaps correctly and arriving violently, and that’s pretty much it.” They were getting pressure on Brady, and arriving violently. The Patriots looked so slow. It was 21-0 when he fell to the turf. It was 28-3 in the third quarter. The biggest deficit ever overcome in a Super Bowl was 10. The last time it happened New England did it, against Seattle.
And then, Tom Brady authored his greatest work. He was a sixth-round pick once, a chubby kid. But he worked, every day. He took Drew Bledsoe’s job. He won four Super Bowls, and lost two more. He came here to win a fifth.
They were down 28-3 in the third quar- ter, but Brady — and Bill Belichick, and the defence, and the receivers, and the offensive line — dragged the Patriots back. At 28-20 Julio Jones defied gravity and tapped his toes on the sideline, but a sack and a penalty pulled the Falcons out of field goal range. Brady got the ball back, down eight points, one last chance.
One pass hit the turf. A bomb to Chris Hogan fell incomplete. On third down, Brady found Hogan for 16 yards. 2:40 left, two timeouts, the two-minute warning. Another first down. And then, the miracle: a pass was tipped, and Julian Edelman dove for it. He came down with it at midfield, between three Falcons. It hit a leg. It hit hands. It was his. It was New England’s helmet catch.
Atlanta didn’t look fast anymore, did they? With a minute left LeGarrette Blount pounded it in. 28-26. They got the conversion, to Danny Amendola. Oh my god, Tom Brady. 28-28, with 56 seconds left. He brought them all the way back, 25 unanswered points.
Atlanta couldn’t score. It was the first overtime in Super Bowl history. New England received the kickoff. Brady moved them, every throw perfect. They crossed midfield. They reached the 25. Darts. Bullets. Martellus Bennett couldn’t reel in a pass on the goal line, but there was a flag. Pass interference. Two-yard line.
One miss, fade route. A pitch to James White. He zigged, cut. Touchdown. New England won, 34-28, in the greatest Super Bowl there ever was. Brady finished 43-for-62 for two touchdowns, one interception and a Super Bowl-record 466 yards. He stands alone. The master.
This had been Brady’s week. It was Monday when he choked up and called his father his hero; Tuesday when he revealed that his mother Galynn had been seriously ill for 18 months, and that for the first time this season, she would attend a game.
Brady seemed a little more open, more human. Yes, he ducked questions about his apparent support for Donald Trump, and for his hidden antipathy for Roger Goodell. In the warmups Brady jogged the length of the field, flanked by backup quarterbacks Jimmy Garoppolo and Jacoby Brissett.
When they reached the end zone he hurled a fist pump like he had just scored a touchdown, and exhorted the Patriots fans in the stands. No quarterback had ever won five Super Bowls. He is the first.
When the game started, though, it was a shock. It was scoreless after a quarter, and then Blount fumbled, and in a series of flashes it was 14-0, Atlanta. Late in the half the Pats had a grinding drive kept afloat by three defensive holding penalties, and you thought, if they can get a TD before halftime, maybe. They needed it.
But suddenly the pocket was col- lapsing again and Brady looked for Amendola on a slant, and he knew what had happened before the ball didn’t get there. He hit the turf. 21-0.
It was as if New England’s aura of invincibility cracked, and the cracks spiderwebbed across everything: Drops, penalties, sacks. After halftime Falcons receiver Taylor Gabriel shook Malcolm Butler, the hero of the Seattle Super Bowl, and left him sprawled on the side of the road. 28-3. The biggest second-half comeback in Super Bowl history was 10 points. New England, two years ago.
If you wanted this day to be political, you could do that. The three original Schuyler Sisters from the musical Hamilton inserted “and sisterhood” into their rich version of “America The Beautiful.” Lady Gaga opened the halftime show with “This Land Is My Land” by Woody Guthrie. Several commercials were focused on equality and unity, including one from 84 Lumber that literally included immigrants facing a wall, which Fox apparently nixed. It is online, in its stunning entirety. And if you wanted Tom Brady and Bill Belichick and Robert Kraft to stand in for Donald Trump and Atlanta to stand in for John Lewis, you felt like you could cackle over a rare win, on the biggest stage in American sports. Well. About that.
No matter what happened, Brady is the greatest. Belichick already was. During this week, as we all waded through the rivers of hype and salesmanship and American dissonance that the Super Bowl in one of the nation’s most sprawling megacity entails, Brady said something. He said, “I mean, the losses in this game are tough, and you’re going to live with those losses the rest of your life. Games that you lose, there’s regrets about every play in that game. When you win, you don’t think about any of those things. You have no regrets.”
That’s what he saw. Tom Brady knew, and it came true.