New England Patriots
As the suspenseless game wound down, Brady was asked how he views the Patriots. His answer was far more reasonable than anything we’re going to hear on sports radio this week.
Tom Brady’s first game at Gillette Stadium as a broadcaster ended up being something that he rarely experienced during his 20 seasons as the Patriots quarterback: a complete debacle by the home team.
In his third season alongside Kevin Burkhardt — known to Brady, perhaps strictly, as “K.B.” — in Fox’s lead NFL booth, Brady had yet to call a Patriots game until Sunday. After their 45-27 loss to the Packers, he still has not called one in which his former team performed competently.
So there’s still that to look forward to, whenever he calls another.
It did make for an interesting broadcast, though not the one Patriots fans — who were hoping to hear Brady evaluate an excellent performance by quarterback Drake Maye, the AFC Offensive Player of the Month for October — had anticipated.
Maye threw the first of his three interceptions on the game’s second play, Christian Gonzalez and the pass defense got shredded immediately and relentlessly by Packers quarterback Jordan Love and receivers Matthew Golden and Christian Watson, and so Brady’s role as analyst turned into explaining what exactly went wrong on one mistake after another.
Brady was illuminating whenever he did so, further confirming that he’s figured out how to deploy his extraordinary depth of knowledge about quarterback play into concisely explaining what he sees on the field.
That includes being patient. When Maye threw his first interception, Brady did not speak for 48 seconds. Presumably he was watching a replay. When the play was shown again to viewers, he was ready, noting that Mack Hollins pulled up on the route.
“There’s a little bit of indecision on both their parts,’’ said Brady. “And that’s what leads to turnovers.”
On Maye’s most successful plays — hey, he did throw three touchdowns — Brady was quick to emphasize the design and tactics of offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, rather than anything Maye did. After a 36-yard completion to DeMario Douglas, Brady noted with some self-deprecation how McDaniels takes advantage of Maye’s mobility, which certain Patriots quarterbacks of the past did not have.
“What Josh McDaniels has incorporated with a much more mobile quarterback, is the ability to move outside of the pocket to the right, and outside of the pocket to the left,” he said, “and that helps the offensive line because the defensive line doesn’t just bear down on the middle of the pocket like they did for all those years when I was back there.”
Brady tends to react to plays before we know exactly what’s happening. On that first interception, he yelped, “Oh!” before the Packers’ Xavier McKinney caught the ball. He did it again on Maye’s third pick. It’s sort of like how Scott Zolak reacts on Patriots radio broadcasts, but Brady does it quickly, and without clomping all over Burkhardt’s call.
Brady still does say some weird stuff. He struggles with tenses and singular/plural. He used a term I still can’t quite figure out to describe how Maye should have thrown the ball on his third interception.
When Burkhardt mentioned the game was the 300th of sideline reporter Erin Andrews’s career, Brady sent her a virtual hug from the booth, then noted for some reason that they had hugged before the game.
After yet another Packers reception, Brady mentioned Christian Gonzalez turning “his bum” toward the sideline, which may not have been the word he wanted to use.
Brady has dropped a four-letter word on occasion, and perhaps he’s becoming wary of doing so. When he was shown signing an instantly created Topps Now football card commemorating his return to Gillette, he quipped, “I’m glad there’s no statistics on the back showing how many times I’ve cursed on air this year.”
As the suspenseless game wound down, Burkhardt asked Brady how he views the Patriots. His answer was far more reasonable than anything we’re going to hear on sports radio this week.
“Half the season they played like this,” said Brady in tone suggesting he gave it serious thought. “And half the season they haven’t turned the ball over, haven’t exposed the ball to the defense, have played physical on defense, and they played well.
“Right now, [they’re] just inconsistent, and which team are they going to get? The team that’s loose with the ball, loose with decision-marking, and can be getting beat by anybody?
“Or are you a team that takes care of the football, makes the other team play lefthanded in what they want to do, and then you become very tough to beat, a lot like they were last season?”
That’s a spot-on perspective for someone who has watched the Patriots all season, let alone someone who just called one of their games as a broadcaster for the first time. I hope we hear Brady — and his pal K.B. too — again soon.
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