The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Offense has Brady concerned
Unit struggles in Sunday’s win over Eagles
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Only in New England is a 91 record a reason to panic.
The defending Super Bowl champions have the best record in the conference — tied for the best in the NFL — with a twogame lead over Buffalo in the AFC East as they try to earn their 11th straight division title. The Patriots beat the Philadelphia Eagles 1710 on Sunday in a rematch of their 2018 Super Bowl loss.
But the offense couldn’t move the ball. Tom Brady had one of his worst games of the season. The only touchdown came on a trick play. They still haven’t beaten anyone good.
And it’s not just fans who are upset.
Brady spat out a series of monosyllabic answers after the victory, crediting the defense with keeping the team in the game. When asked if he was discouraged, he said: “Well, we just played for three hours. So I think everyone is a little tired.”
Asked if he thinks the offense will sort out its problems, Brady said: “I don’t think it matters what I think, it matters what we do.”
Any other team would love to have the Patriots’ problems. But New Englanders are concerned that the team might not make it back to the Super Bowl for a fourth straight year.
The problem, for now, clearly is the offense.
Brady threw for 216 yards on 47 attempts, and he threw 14 incompletions in the first half — a career high. It was Julian Edelman completing a doublepass to Phillip Dorsett for a 15yard touchdown that was the game’s winning score.
The lack of offensive power is why team owner Robert Kraft is allbut begging tight end Rob Gronkowski to come out of retirement. And why the team was willing to take a chance on troublemaking receiver Antonio Brown, who lasted just one game before he was released.
But they keep winning. Coach Bill Belichick seemed less concerned about style points.
“That was kind of the way that game went,” he said on a conference call with reporters on Monday.
“It was kind of an oldfashioned, fieldposition game — not a lot of points, not a lot of scoring opportunities. We had a few more than they did.”
At 6foot5, 310 pounds and a brush of blond hair and beard, Strother is a bear of a young man. He was twice named secondteam AllIvy League. With the Bulldogs averaging 50 points a game the past month, and with previously undefeated Dartmouth falling to Cornell last weekend, Yale is rolling. Strother can be part of the first class to win multiple Ivy titles since1981.
“At the end of the day it’s not going to change the way we’re approaching this game,” Strother said. “We’re going to play just as hard this week whether we were 81 or 18. We’re looking to play to our standard and play for each other, especially the guys in the senior class I love dearly.”
And it’s Harvard. “Whether it’s up there, at Fenway Park or at home, it’s electric,” Strother said. “It’s a packed stadium, a lot of tradition, people coming back from both sides from the last fivesix decades of HarvardYale football.”
No, he didn’t have direct ties growing up to The Game. Yes, he’s from the other side of country in the
San Francisco Bay Area, playing high school football and basketball at Campolindo in Moraga. Still, he was very aware of HarvardYale.
“I wasn’t one of those people who didn’t know Ivy League schools played football — like the majority of the world,” Strother said. “Both my parents went to Stanford. To me, The Game was Cal vs. Stanford. Getting out here, seeing the dynamic with Yale and Harvard, it’s pretty easy to tell what the real Game is. This is really special.”
Both mom Sonja and dad Keller, a hammer thrower and rugby player in college, will be in New Haven for Sterling’s last game at Yale. It was be an emotional day for the 27 roster seniors whose relationship began with a group chat among high school recruits.
“Me and a couple of other guys were the ones who tried to engineer putting this big group chat together,” Strother said. “From the second we met each other in person our freshman summer of 2016 I knew these were going to be best friends for life.
“We’ve had a ridiculous number of experiences together. Obviously on the field with some of the immense talent we have at the skill positions, but primarily off the field, stuff you’d never see in the papers and television. Like the late nights, just talking until 4 and 5 a.m. The stuff in the locker room and on the bus, little things you don’t think you’d remember in the moment, but looking back four years later you go, wow, these are some of my most special times of my life.”
Strother talked about watching video with quarterback Kurt Rawlings, who has smashed passing records at Yale, making sure they’re on the same page, reading blitzes and coverages. Even before one of them is finished discussing some scheme, Strother said, they’ll finish each other’s sentences.
“We knew right when he came in he was seriously special, the way he could spin it,” Strother said. “He’s such a student of the game, holds himself to such a high standard. He’s an incredible teammate. We have a special football connection and he’s one of my really, really close friends, but there are dozens of guys on this team who know they can go to him and he’d drop whatever he was doing to help. That’s who he is to the core.”
Strother said if you examine videos you’ll see when
he’s moving to his left he’s not always the best with his shotgun snap accuracy.
“I hang it out in the abyss a little,” Strother said, laughing. “Every now and then, I’ll check, ‘How I’m looking back there?’ Kurt’ll grab me by the ear and go, ‘Get me the ball. Don’t make me reach out and jump around.’ Nah, he’s never like that. He’s really gentle.”
Spoken like the psychology major Strother is. His mom is a research psychologist. His dad is director of MST Services, which Sterling said uses Sonja’s research for programs to change the lives of delinquent teens and their families. They know about helping others. Now, it is the son’s turn.
“My mom and dad are really excited about (the marrow donation),” Strother said. “It’s perfect timing. I get to fly home for winter break the day after the procedure.”
His pelvic bone, where the marrow is extracted, will be sore. His “perfect storm” of saving a life and beating Harvard for the Ivy League championship will make sure there is no pain.