Brady nodded.
Brian Flores, the Patriots’ linebackers coach, was hopeful. Man, we’re going to score thirty points in the first quarter, he thought to himself.127
In the tunnel before taking the field, team cocaptain and special teams All-Pro Matthew Slater gathered with Dion Lewis, Julian Edelman, Danny Amendola, James White, and safety Patrick Chung. The six key players clutched hands as Slater spoke. He looked each of them in the eyes as he reminded them all of how they wound up there, about to play in the Super Bowl.
“Fellas, as we go out here, man, I want you all to think about the story, man, your story. D-Lew [Lewis]. Traded. Cut. J-Dub [White]. Couldn’t even get on the field your rookie year. Dola [Amendola]. Walk-on. You [Edelman]. No position. PC [Chung]. Had to go to another team, come back. Now you’re one of the best safeties in the league. Remember the journey, fellas. It all led to this.”
“Playmakers, on three. One…two…three.”128 The six turned and sprinted toward their destiny on the NRG stadium gridiron.
The team was led onto the field by a staffer waving a massive red, white, and blue flag with a simple message, the word One and the Patriots logo. Pyrotechnics fired into the air and the team’s Pat Patriot mascot sprinted out of the tunnel, fist raised high. Behind him was Brady, followed closely by Edelman, who was sporting a thick, black, bushy playoff beard, center David Andrews, and Amendola.
As number 12 led his teammates onto the Super Bowl gridiron for a record seventh time, he sprinted side by side with his two backups, Jacoby Brissett and Jimmy Garoppolo, end zone to end zone, screaming and shouting, “Let’s go!”
When Brady reached the far end zone, he pumped his fist in the air and leaped and shouted some more, pointing up to the Pats fans in the corner section. Brady had been booed loudly at this exact moment a year earlier at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California—the home of the 49ers—as the Patriots’ rival Denver Broncos and Peyton Manning took the field against Cam Newton and the Carolina Panthers for Super Bowl 50. It happened during a special ceremony to honor all the previous Super Bowl MVPs. Brady smiled through it, but deep down he was hurt by the negative reception in what was essentially his hometown.
But now the roar of the crowd was deafening one year later in Houston as rabid Patriots fans thirsty for redemption shouted their approval, eager to support their team and their quarterback in his quest for gridiron immortality.
Country music superstar Luke Bryan sang the anthem a cappella, standing on the NFL logo at the center of the field flanked by a military color guard, overlooking a massive American flag unfurled and stretched between the 35-yard lines. Brady, as he always does, listened intently, his head bowed, gently swaying back and forth.
Chris Long, with black war paint smeared down his face and his mane flowing out of a Patriots wave cap, held his hand over his heart as he looked straight ahead. The injured Gronkowski stood nearby, in street clothes, in a similar pose. Matt Ryan stared across from the opposite sideline, himself a picture of calm resolve.
Number 12 mouthed the final few lines of the anthem along with Bryan before a spine-tingling stadium flyover by the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds sent the crowd into a patriotic frenzy. Former president George H. W. Bush, a longtime Houston resident, was escorted onto the field after the anthem in a wheelchair, along with his wife, Barbara, to assist with the coin toss. The ninety-two-year-old former president had recently been released from Houston Methodist Hospital, where he had been treated for pneumonia. He received a thunderous ovation, in stark contrast to newly sworn-in Vice President Mike Pence, who was roundly booed when he was shown on the stadium big screen.
The former president’s appearance made for some emotional—and funny—tweets.
Having George H. W. Bush appear was such a special moment, Coach Belichick almost had a facial expression, joked author and National Review correspondent Jim Geraghty.
The Patriots captains called heads. President Bush flipped the coin into the air. It landed on the turf and head referee Kent Payne announced it was tails. The Falcons deferred and gave the opening kickoff to the Patriots.
On the sideline, Brady pulled on his helmet, buttoned his chin strap, and clapped his hands. This was the moment he had been anticipating for many, many months. And now it was here.
Chapter Twenty-three
Fire and Ice
First Quarter
As Brady prepared for his first offensive series, he may have been reminded of the genesis of Deflategate. Breaking: A league source tells me the NFL is investigating the possibility the Patriots deflated footballs Sunday night. More to come, Kravitz had tweeted at 12:55 a.m. on January 19, 2015. It seemed mundane to many, but it was that last line that raised red flags: more to come.
Brady’s mother’s cancer and that tweet were likely somewhere kicking around in the back of his mind, but flashes from thousands of cell phone cameras filled the stadium as Atlanta Falcons kicker Matt Bosher ran up to the ball and kicked off on the opening play of Super Bowl LI.
The ball sailed into the end zone, and Brady and his offense took the field. The next sixty minutes of football would further determine his place in history.
Tom’s first snap from scrimmage was an incomplete pass. He dropped back and cycled his eyes through his reads. First, he passed on what he saw in a hitch route by rookie receiver Malcolm Mitchell to his right, and then skipped over a Chris Hogan post route that would need more time to develop. Finally, he came back to his left to deliver an accurate enough but slightly high throw to Julian Edelman on a low crossing route into tight coverage that ideally would have arrived a second sooner. For any other quarterback, this wasn’t a bad play. But for the master of both timing and accuracy it was anything but masterful.
And it was also the start of one of the worst halves Tom and the Patriots ever played.
Now second down and ten yards to go from the New England 25-yard line, the towering Martellus Bennett ran a vertical clear-out route to Brady’s left with Edelman catching a delayed low crossing route behind the path left by the big tight end. This route forces the beefier linebacker nearest Edelman to try to stay with the speedy wideout as he runs all the way across the formation. Brady feasted on the scenario, hitting Edelman with a nine-yard completion.
On third and one, Brady hurried the offense to the line, trying to snap the ball quickly before the defense could get set. The direct run by LeGarrette Blount wasn’t blocked or run particularly well, with the quick tempo seeming to harm the offensive line more than help them. In the rush, the big guys up front weren’t able to locate Falcons middle linebacker Deion Jones in the blocking scheme as he knifed through the line, stopping the play for no gain and a forced punt.
It was a rough start as they went three and out and had to punt, giving the ball away to NFL MVP Matt Ryan and the league’s top-scoring offense.
Ryan’s first pass was a beautifully executed thirty-seven-yard dart to Devonta Freeman. But the Patriots defense pulled it together and forced Atlanta to punt from their own 40-yard line. Falcons punter Matt Bosher had only kicked twice the previous game in a 44–21 thrashing of the Green Bay Packers in the NFC championship game. But he showed no signs of rust as he got off a soaring boot that pinned New England on its own 10-yard line.
The teams would continue to feel each other out, like boxers stalking each other across the ring in the first round, trading short drives that ended with punts.
On Brady’s second drive, Josh McDaniels opted to get the ball quickly into one of the Patriots’ top playmaker’s hands, calling a speed reverse to Julian Edelman that netted just two yards. On second down, Edelman was double-teamed, leaving Amendola with single coverage in the slot. Amendola is a master at deception, using his hips to trick defenders as to where his route might go. He ran a “bow route,” named for its curved shape, and the idea behind it is to initially widen the defensive back through the initial release from the line of scrimmage, displace him from the path of the arc, and then “
bow” the route back to the vacancy. Amendola darted to the outside, then deftly bent back to the slot, just as Tom’s laser arrived for a thirteen-yard gain.
This was a perfect execution of the offense and what the Patriots’ fans had waited for.
The Krafts liked what they were seeing now from their quarterback and his receiving corps.
“On most other teams, the receivers are all very competitive, but Danny, Julian, and Chris Hogan all supported each other,” Jonathan Kraft pointed out to the authors. “Brady spreads it around, too. On another team, a receiver might take offense to that, but what receiver is going to go talk shit to Brady?”129
Robert Kraft agreed with his son’s assessment. “Usually the number one receiver, if there is one, is selfish. If they don’t get the ball in the first quarter, they get upset. This is a very unselfish group.”
Game on.
On the very next snap, Brady completed the first of what would be many deep outside comeback routes, this one to Hogan for fifteen yards. When the ball left Tom’s hand, the defensive back’s coverage was skintight, as if he were the receiver’s shadow. Hogan employed a technique known as “getting friendly” at the top of the route—a move in which the receiver comes back toward the quarterback instead of running away from the passer or stopping and waiting for the ball to arrive. Another subtle layer to Brady’s brilliance on the play was that there was a zone defender to Hogan’s side who could have gotten underneath the route to make it a much harder throw. But Tom sold the play-action run fake, which froze that extra defender. When he turned from his fake and saw the linebacker had bit to play the run, it was just a matter of getting the ball to Hogan before the defensive back could get out of his break. It was football as art.
Over the next several plays, the Patriots dutifully moved the ball into Falcons territory. But a devastating sack from Falcons defensive end Courtney Upshaw powering through offensive right guard Shaq Mason thwarted Brady’s momentum.
On third and eighteen, number 12 held the ball for over six seconds in a well-protected pocket, hoping for something to develop downfield with a chance of stealing a long conversion. Nothing materialized, and he was forced to take a one-yard sack to end the series, triggering another Ryan Allen punt.
Glimpses of the revenge tour Patriots offense ripping through an overmatched Falcons defense appeared briefly on the second New England series, but those hopes faded fast. Fortunately, the Patriots defense did their job again, eventually forcing Atlanta into another punt, bringing about the third Patriots offensive series of the Super Bowl with 1:36 remaining in the first quarter.
Brady started the drive by targeting Edelman once again on a nifty double-cut out route. The play was another example of the subtleties of high-level route running, and Edelman was one of the league’s best. His first juke turned the defensive back’s hips away from where Edelman knew he was inevitably taking the route: back to the sideline. The slot receiver darted back toward the sideline, leaving the defensive back doing a full 180 to recover. The window created by that turn was all Brady needed to deliver a thirteen-yard precision pass to kick off the series.
Next came a nice seven-yard run up the middle by the power back Blount, the first taste of running game success for New England. Another short run for Blount ended the first quarter, leaving the Patriots with third and one to keep the drive going. And then came one of those captivating plays that reminded the millions of NFL fans watching around the world that Brady was here to do something special.
Second Quarter
With Gronkowski out for the game with his season-ending back injury, it was abundantly clear through the first quarter of the game that Edelman was going to be a priority target, especially in critical situations. Edelman’s prescribed job was to run a short crossing route, moving from the offense’s left to its right. Not surprisingly, he received tight man-to-man coverage, but the gauntlet of linebackers in the area directly in front of Brady at first-down depth shut down the idea of any attempt to his close friend Edelman as the play was designed.
But great quarterbacking isn’t just throwing. Sometimes, it means being a musical conductor on the field.
With tight coverage all over the field and solid pass protection extending his pocket, Tom calmly improvised. He looked to Edelman, who had run his assigned route to no avail, and then motioned upfield with his left hand. Edelman took the cue and wheeled upfield, changing his horizontal route into a vertical one. The defensive back overplayed the short route, leaving only a deep safety in the middle of the field to contend with. Julian found the space and Tom delivered a perfect ball to cap off the improvised route, and the Patriots had their biggest offensive play of the day—a twenty-seven-yard completion down to the Falcons’ 33-yard line.
The play showed the synergy between Brady and Edelman—a critical creative connection made possible on the fly because of the thousands of practice reps the two had between them. The quarterback and his receiver had spent countless hours training in Foxborough as well as in Los Angeles and Montana, where Brady had homes.
“You have a clock in your head [judging down and distance] and I know what Tom likes and what he expects us to do,” Edelman explained to the authors. “I peeked over and saw that he was moving around the pocket, so I decided to take off deep and we were able to connect.”
Under ordinary circumstances, a play of that level could deflate or at least slow down a defense. Brady and company would usually follow up that sort of backbreaking play with another strike or two in the red zone and seven points. Instead, the best New England offensive play of the game to that point was immediately followed by a crushing turnover as Blount fumbled on the ensuing snap.
As so often is the case in the game of football, that turnover ended up being a particularly punishing gut punch. Not only did it thwart the Patriots’ first legitimate chance at getting on the scoreboard, but the Falcons turned it into seven points themselves with a drive the length of the field, ending in a five-yard Devonta Freeman touchdown scamper.
With an opportunity now for the Patriots offense to answer this early-game adversity, they once again failed. A quick three-and-out series led to another punt. New England fans and sports pundits were suddenly questioning the critics who had downplayed Atlanta’s speedy defense. The paper matchup said the Patriots should have no problem moving the ball against this Falcons D, but three series into the game and it was the New England offense that was looking overmatched.
Brady was being hurried, receivers were being jammed and knocked off their routes, the running game was stuck in neutral, and the whole offensive timing was a mess. There was no rhythm, no flow. It wasn’t quite the punishing defensive blitzkrieg that the New York Giants inflicted on the Patriots in the 2007 and 2011 Super Bowls, which had the quarterback running for his life, but it was equally effective.
On the other side of the ball, Matt “Matty Ice” Ryan was looking every bit the league MVP that he was. Questions about his ability to perform on the biggest stage were far from anyone’s mind as he had continued his torrid playoff run.
Atlanta began its next series with solid field position at its own 38-yard line. And in nearly the same brief time the New England offense had just been on the field, the Patriots defense surrendered a fast, five-play scoring drive for another Falcons touchdown, increasing the Atlanta lead to 14–0 on a nineteen-yard touchdown catch by tight end Austin Hooper. Again, the Falcons were making it look easy.
The Patriots defense was being exposed while Tom Brady was not only out of sync but truly struggling. Some would say it looked like maybe—just maybe—Father Time had finally caught up to the thirty-nine-year-old quarterback and that we were all witnessing his last stand. Was Tom Brady getting old right before our eyes?
The Super Bowl was not following the Patriots’ script, while the Falcons played with an edge and a purpose.
Brady and the Patriots offense got the ball back again, but what followed was as ugly an offensive series as you
’ll ever see from a New England team—although that truth was somewhat concealed by the two separate defensive penalties that artificially extended the drive. There was a pass drop. There was spotty protection, prompting multiple “just get rid of it” throws by Tom. There were poorly executed run plays. And then, there was perhaps the worst play the legendary quarterback had made in his storied Super Bowl history.
Aligned in shotgun formation with a three-wide-receiver set to his left, Brady took the snap. The edges of the protection closed in on him immediately, the rush advancing quickly. Danny Amendola was the inside receiver in the bunch, and he ran a quick angle route—first out and then back to the inside. Defensive back Robert Alford was sagging in his coverage and swooped in as Amendola broke back to the middle of the field.
Television announcer Joe Buck recognized something at that moment that Brady had not. “The Falcons overload the right side of the Patriots offense,” Buck told a nationwide audience.
Tom never saw the hidden defensive back in the chaos of the routes crossing one another. He threw a missile into the traffic that hit Alford square in the numbers. Alford had nothing but grass in front of him.
There was only one Patriots player left to stop him and it was Brady. The quarterback chased after Alford and attempted an awkward diving tackle. The Falcons player flew past him and dashed for the end zone as Brady flopped to the turf.
“He’s gone,” Joe Buck shouted. “There are no flags and the Falcons add to their lead.”
Brady rose to his feet, took his helmet off, and walked off the field in disgust. It was all slipping away. The legend looked old and tired. For sports fans and journalists alike, it was similar to watching Muhammad Ali getting battered around the ring by a younger, stronger George Foreman in the opening rounds of their epic fight in Zaire, in 1974. Atlanta was now up 21–0 in a game the Patriots were favored to win by three points.
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