FOR THE BIRDS!
Hated Philly wins first Super Bowl, but hooray! Brady & evil Pats blow it
NICK Foles is better than Tom Brady — as a wide receiver, at least.
In the first half of Super Bowl LII Sunday night, Brady short-armed and dropped a third-down pass from New England receiver Danny Amendola on a trick play in open space on the right sideline with no Eagles defender near him. The Patriots failed to convert on fourth downand-5 from the Eagles’ 35, and Philly scored on the next possession to take a 15-3 lead.
Then on the Eagles’ final possession of the half, on fourth-and-goal from the Patriots’ 1-yard line, Philly coach Doug Pederson and Foles trolled Brady and the Patriots in the most appropriate way possible: The aggressive Pederson went for it and called a trick play that sent Foles out to the right as a receiver, and tight end Trey Burton floated a pass that Foles hauled in for the touchdown and a 22-12 Eagles halftime lead.
“We’ve been working on it 3-4 weeks,” Pederson said in an NFL Network interview. “The play is called ‘Philly Special’ and we executed it tonight.”
“Yeah, that was something we’ve been working on, and Doug and I were talking, and he was like, ‘Let’s just run it.’ It was a good time,” Foles said. “And the end was a little wider than I thought, so I was like, ‘I really need to sell like I’m not doing anything.’ And it worked, Trey made an amazing throw. I just looked it in and, yeah, we’ve repped it for a while, so I was excited to get it run in the Super Bowl.”
Meanwhile, Brady’s drop prompted easy jokes about his wife Gisele Bundchen’s comments after Super Bowl XLVI in February 2012: “My husband cannot f---ing throw the ball and catch the ball at the same time,” in response to drops by receivers, including Wes Welker.
Brady wasn’t wearing any glove or tape over the right hand he injured in practice prior to the divisional round of the playoffs, but that made no difference because he barely got his right hand on the ball that tipped off his left fingertips. “I’ve caught that in practice every time,” Brady said. Just not in the Super Bowl.