Tom’s carrying mediocre Patriots all by himself
THE JETS are on their way up. The Patriots are on their way down. There is only one reason a gap even still exists and by no means is it Bill Belichick. The difference between the Jets and Patriots is Tom Brady. And only Tom Brady. Brady is proving this year that no matter how poorly Belichick screws up personnel decisions, he will always have his back and bail him out. Brady makes everybody around him better, including Belichick.
The talent level between the Patriots, the defending Super Bowl champs who have won five titles in the last 16 seasons, and the Jets, who have not made the playoffs the last five years and won their only Super Bowl 49 years ago, is much closer than I possibly imagined after watching New England struggle to beat the Jets 24-17 on Sunday at MetLife Stadium.
“Not a lot of people know a lot about this team,” Jets wide receiver Jermaine Kearse said. “Nobody knows what we are about, how we play. This team, we just got put together, this team is coming together, we are all playing for one another, we go out there and we fight and compete every day. Obviously, we want to win football games. So when you talk about the margin of error or gap, I don’t know what you are scaling that off of. I feel like we can go against any team in this league.”
Brady creates a gap against any teams the Patriots play, but there used to be a huge edge in talent for the Patriots offense, defense and special teams over the Jets, but that has dissipated. The New England defense is vulnerable. At times, it even stinks. The offensive line is leaky. Gronk is great when he’s healthy.
If Brady was on the Jets, even in their rebuilding stage, they would be the favorites to win the AFC East and play deep into January. If you brought Gronk along with him, they would have a very good chance to get to the Super Bowl.
Remember, Brady won his first three Super Bowls before Gronk came to New England and Gronk didn’t play in the most recent victory over Atlanta in Jan- uary. The rest of the Patriots roster for years has been made up on interchangeable parts, often to control salaries, and Belichick has gotten away with it because Brady has been the constant. “We’re not trying to close the gap,” Todd Bowles said. “We’re trying to win the game. We lost the game.”
Who knows what would have happened Sunday if the Jets weren’t on the wrong end of a bizarre call that took Austin Seferian-Jenkins’ 4-yard touchdown off the board with 8:23.
Kearse called it a “B.S.” call and it’s hard to dispute that assessment. The NFL has reached the point where nobody knows what a catch or touchdown is anymore.
But it’s still clear how much better Brady is compared to every other QB in the league, even when he has mundane numbers like he did Sunday, especially now that Aaron Rodgers is possibly out for the season with a broken collarbone. “That sucks,” Brady said when he was told.
Comparing Josh McCown to Brady is ridiculous, of course, but two sequences in Sunday’s game are worth mentioning. After Malcolm Butler intercepted McCown at the Patriots 37 with just 35 seconds left in the first half, Brady hit Brandin Cooks for 42 yards on the fourth play of the series and then teamed up with Gronk for a 2-yard TD with nine seconds left. He needed just 26 seconds to go 63 yards to get the Patriots even at 14 at the half. Then, with the Jets down 24-17, they took over at their own 27 with 1:53 left with a chance to send the game into overtime. McCown moved them to the Pats 43 with 53 seconds left on a nice 32-yard completion to Robby Anderson. McCown then spiked the ball on first down. Then he threw incomplete, was sacked, then threw another incompletion.
So on a day when a victory would have put the Jets in first place by themselves in the AFC East with a 4-2 record and a four-game winning streak, they instead are at 3-3 and in last place in the division. Facing Brady for the first time this season further accentuates how costly these three victories could be long-term.
The Jets need a quarterback. The Browns and 49ers are still winless and have an insurmountable threegame lead on the Jets for draft position. If USC’s Sam Darnold and UCLA’s Josh Rosen declare for the draft, they almost certainly will go 1-2. Cleveland has to take a QB and the 49ers will take a QB if they don’t sign Kirk Cousins. The Giants could be in the battle for the No. 1 pick, too, if they don’t start winning some games.
The Jets players want to win now. The coaches want to win now. Their jobs depend on it and they are not worried who the quarterback will be next year. But if the Jets want to be in position to dominate the division once Brady retires, they need to come out of the 2018 draft with a potential franchise quarterback. GM Mike Maccagnan is doing a good job bringing good, young players into the organization.
“Our team went into this game thinking that we were going to win,” defensive lineman Leonard Williams said. “We weren’t going into thinking, ‘Let’s compete with these guys, let’s put up a fight.’ We watched them on film and we knew we had a chance to beat them and that’s what we came here to do.” he Jets came up short in a close game. Nobody in the locker room was happy about it. “We played hard, but we lost the game,” Bowles said. “No moral victories.”
His team is surprisingly competitive. Now they just need a quarterback who can beat Brady. GETTY
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