Brady-led comeback rallies Pats
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — It’s human nature these days to hand out undeserving participation trophies.
Perhaps the Patriots Nation and a number of NFL insiders will patronize the Jacksonville Jaguars, bless their little hearts. You represented Duval County very well, smirk-and-snide. Take your pizza slice, Blakey, grab a cool Coca-Cola, save some for the rest of the boys, and meet the coach in the bus.
But there’s much more to this narrative than complimentary parting gifts and consolation hugs after a 24-20 loss to the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship Game Sunday afternoon.
The Duval County boys shook the vaunted Patriots to the core playing on the road in New England and squeezed out a 20-10 edge early in the final quarter. And then it happened. “We got Tom Brady’d,” said linebacker Myles Jack.
It happens. A lot. Brady led a Patriots’ game-winning comeback drive for the 54th time in his career, a slice-and-dice effort that included two touchdowns to Danny Amendola in the final quarter, and the game-winner with 2:48 remaining.
The fact that this happened against the Jaguars is incredible. Not so much because of Brady. Blah, blah, blah. Been there, done that.
Everybody knew it was coming. What no one saw was how a 3-13 team, with a starting quarterback fighting to keep his job in the preseason, would end up in a late-January dance card against the Patriots.
“The more I think about it, the more I’ll hurt, the more it will weigh in my mind,” said Jags coach Doug Marrone. “…Outside of, God forbid, someone passing away that you feel close to, this is probably as bad a pain as you will have.”
The Jaguars won 10 regular-season games and emerged as AFC South champions in 2017 before knocking off Buffalo in the wild-card round before beating Pittsburgh on the road in a divisional playoff game.
Good stuff; great stuff, really.
And then it all unraveled in the final quarter in the thunderous soundtrack of Gillette Stadium that included Jon Bon Jovi’s animated lip sync to “Livin’ on a Prayer” from a suite.
“It’s been a special ride to do this, from an organization that hasn’t won in a long time,” said quarterback Blake Bortles, the Oviedo High and UCF alum who re-booted his NFL career.
It hurts for Marrone and Bortles and the rest of them because it came down to Football 101: The Patriots made big plays and the Jaguars did not.
There was a third-and-18 conversion on a pass from Brady to Amendola that led to New England’s first score in the final quarter. A couple of chippy penalties, including a 32-yard pass-interference penalty on former UCF cornerback A.J. Bouye that led to a Patriots score right before halftime.
A delay-of-game penalty on the previous series that negated a first-down conversion for Jacksonville, and likely cost the Jaguars at least three points.
Football is always a game that is the sum of all parts. Cobbled together, it is the reason the Patriots are celebrating back-to-back Super Bowl berths, and an NFL-record 10th Super Bowl.
“It’s hard to describe it because on one hand you could have won the game; on the other hand Tom Brady is Tom Brady,” Jack said.
The NFL gets the vaunted Patriots franchise in the Super Bowl two weeks from now. The Jaguars get to lament the one that got away, obliterated by Brady’s brilliance, a badge of honor/ battle scar that remains timeless.
And so much for “Handgate” and all the speculation that Brady wasn’t at the top of his game after injuring his throwing hand on a routine handoff in practice and needing stitches to patch things up.
“I didn’t come this far to end the season on a handoff,” Brady said. No, he would not. “Man, hats off to the Jaguars. What a great performance in defeat,” tweeted NFL veteran writer and columnist Peter King.
The Jaguars had their eyes on treasures much greater than conciliatory attaboys before they got Brady’d.
And there will never be shame in that.