The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Nothing new to see here: Brady bedevils Falcons
The torment of Tom Brady continues. He is robocall at dinnertime, every dinnertime. He is the closed two left lanes at rush hour, every rush hour. If your irritable bowel had a name, it would be Tom Brady.
That Brady, 44, once more Sunday dissected the Falcons is news only if you happened to miss the other eight times the greatest-ever quarterback took out their heart and used it for a stress ball. Following the 48-25 beating he and his chosen second home of Tampa Bay put on the Falcons on Sunday, he is now a personal and perfect 9-0 against them.
Hummer
All that changes are the names of his employer and those he bumfuzzles. Sunday, with five scoring passes, he got to torture the new Arthur Smith/ Terry Fontenot administration, one brought in to change this kind of thing. Give it time, it may yet, by the time Medicare is picking up Brady’s physical therapy. Which I believe is next season.
The price of trying to keep up with Brady was made plain in the fourth quarter, when a chance for the Falcons to win evaporated quicker than a teardrop on a Florida sidewalk.
Rallying from a 28-10 deficit — not nearly as complete or as dramatic as a certain Brady comeback from 28-3 — the Falcons had it within three with just more than a minute left in the third quarter.
But you blink on a Brady-led team and you find yourself caught up in a landslide.
The Falcons got stuffed on their next possession, unable to keep even a small drive alive by converting on third-and-1, and then compounded the sin by shanking a punt. Oh, sure, give Brady favorable field position. A mere three Brady completions later the Bucs had scored from 46 yards out and the first rumblings of an avalanche could be heard.
Now ever more desperate to get something going, the Falcons’ Matt Ryan threw a pair of interceptions that Tampa Bay returned for scores, bloating the Bucs’ lead and enriching all who had this defense on their fantasy team.
“Team like that they’re going to capitalize on everything you do wrong,” said Falcons back Cordarrelle Patterson, who had both a rushing and receiving touchdown Sunday.
The new Falcons coach will tell you the final score was a little deceptive.
“Yeah, it looks ugly in the boxscore on the surface of it, (but) in the context of the game, we had a chance in the fourth quarter,” Smith said.
“We got to convert (on third-and-short),” he said. “We didn’t convert. They did. That was the difference.”
It was a game for the Falcons that started ugly, got interesting and ended real ugly. The last perception is often the lasting one.
There were some positive omens Sunday. Having devoted the preseason to open tryouts for various backup positions, the Falcons’ starters — especially those on offense — came into last week’s Philly home opener looking unprepared for the real thing. But they appeared to be working out some of the kinks here in Preseason Part II, otherwise known as the regular season.
Where a week ago two early trips into the red zone went largely unrewarded — the Falcons settling
for the consolation of a pair of field goals — this Sunday they finished three drives in the end zone. For what it’s worth, they outgained the Bucs 348-341. And Ryan threw for 300 yards, more even than Brady (276).
But Brady, of course, had the far more satisfying day. Why, before these fans had finished applying their sunscreen, their quarterback had ripped off a six-play, 75-yard scoring drive to stake the Bucs to a lead they never relinquished.
The Falcons offered what slight resistance they could. In the first quarter, the somewhat rusty sack specialist Dante Fowler reached Brady and dislodged the ball for a strip sack. Working on an incentive-heavy deal where he gets paid a commission for sacks as if he were a siding salesman, Fowler has four more to go for his first $1 million bump. The Falcons’ D, in fact, sacked Brady three times, while Ryan was sacked but once. Another encouraging sign, for those who trade in that sort of thing.
But for the second straight week, Falcons backup QB Josh Rosen picked up the shovel and finished out the sad duty of cleaning up at the wrong end of a rout.
And, as always, Tom Brady stood there so irritatingly unbeaten.