Surprise! Brady plays GOAT at Super Bowl
It’s time to let go of Tom Brady’s post-Super Bowl LII snub of Nick Foles, juvenile and unprofessional as that was.
We all make mistakes. And it would be a travesty to deny Brady’s place in football history after what he did Sunday night, at age 43, in leading the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a 31-9 victory over the defending champ Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LV.
Tom Brady: T-H-E G-O-A-T. Seven Super Bowl titles, more than anyone and any franchise, for that matter. One letter for each title.
What Brady is doing defies logic. Most 43-year-old guys are moping around wondering how they lived so long. For guys in this group, the aging process is rearing its ugly head. Graying hair, receding hairline, loss of energy, expanding waistline and, you know, a lot of concern that it’s only a matter of time before trying the 800 number in those Cialis commercials.
Brady not only is playing football at this advanced age but doing it well enough to win a championship in the ultimate team sport. He completed 21 of 29 passes for 201 yards and three touchdowns Sunday at Raymond James Stadium, which was an advantage in that the Buccaneers won a lot of games there this season.
Brady has had statistically better Super Bowls. He torched the Eagles for a Super Bowl record 505 yards to go with three TDs the night he conveniently avoided the traditional postgame handshake with Foles, who was the MVP.
The journey to this Super Bowl crown was so ridiculously hard, it’s going to wind up as the script for a movie.
First, Brady switched teams, leaving the security of New England for Tampa and an organization that had talent but didn’t know how to win. The offensive line was a work in progress. The back end of the secondary was less than ordinary. The head coach, Bruce Arians, fits right in with a Florida age demographic. The 68-yearold product of Temple, where he was head coach for the first time, is the oldest head coach to win a Super Bowl.
Without the benefit of minicamps and only a brief training camp, courtesy of the pandemic, and with virtual meetings and a locker room only a fraction of players were allowed to access together due to social distancing protocols, Brady used all of his wisdom to not only keep the Bucs headed in the right direction, but peaking down the homestretch.
“I’m so proud of all these guys right here with everything we dealt with this year,” Brady said during the MVP presentation Sunday. “We had rough month of November but we came together at the right time. I think we knew this was going to happen, didn’t we?”
In a nutshell, the Bucs took away Chiefs gamebreaker Tyreek Hill, limiting him to just two catches until the final minute of the third quarter. At that point, the game was over.
The Bucs ran Leonard Fournette at a Chiefs defense that struggled to stop the run. Brady found Rob Gronkowski for two TDs, capped by a couple of thundering spikes.
Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, the MVP of the previous Super Bowl, was sacked three times, hit extensively and victimized for two interceptions. The Bucs made that jumbled offensive line of the Chiefs pay for losing a couple of tackles to injuries.
Oh, and please explain to me how the Eagles could pass on Todd Bowles as their head coach this season after the incredible job he did making future Hall of Famers Mahomes and Andy Reid look ordinary.
Was Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie even paying attention to Bowles during the interview? Was Howie Roseman? Don Slowinski? Sorry, Smolenski.
Mahomes didn’t reach 100 passing yards until the last minute of the third quarter, the Chiefs trailing by 22 points at that point. He wasn’t moving around well, either, the hits taking their toll.
The Bucs led, 21-3, at the intermission. It could have been 28-3. They were stopped at the goal line on back-to-back runs, after dropping a pass in the end zone.
For the most part, though, the Bucs made the most of the Chiefs’ mental mistakes. All told, the Chiefs committed eight penalties for 95 yards in the first half, including three in the last 49 seconds.
Interference penalties on Bashaud Breeland (34 yards) and Tyrann Mathieu, the latter in the end zone set up Brady’s one-yard pass to Antonio Brown.
Eight penalties is a disappointing game. Reid told his team that at halftime while The Weekend did its “Blinding Light” hit.
When the Chiefs could manage only a field goal on the first possession of the second half, there was little doubt of the outcome.
This isn’t a good time to pass judgment on Reid for another off-the-field tragedy with an immediate member of his family. Britt Reid, his 35-yearold son and the Chiefs’ linebacker coach, reportedly crashed into a couple of cars on the side of the road, the impact injuring three, a five-yearold critically. No charges have been filed thus far.
Reid was vying to become the first coach to win back-to-back championships since Bill Belichick beat him and the Eagles in 2004.
Instead, it’s another loss to The GOAT.
Let’s shake on that.