Tom Brady On Andrew Luck: 'He Does A Lot Of Things That I Wish I Could Do'
BOSTON (CBS) -- The fictional existence of a Mount Rushmore of NFL quarterbacks is a topic that always drives debates and discussions throughout the football world. When fans and analysts are forced to narrow down the best of the best to just four quarterbacks, there will inevitably be one or two great players left off the list.
Such was most certainly the case this past summer, when the "Tom Brady Is Not A Top-Five Quarterback" story became a major national talking point, and it still continues now, with former NFL quarterback and current analyst Chris Simms saying Tom Brady's not in his top five, either.
While it's highly unlikely that Brady loses sleep over such stories, he must at least be aware of some of the chatter about his play. Yet he hasn't shown any hesitancy to heap praise upon Andrew Luck, one of the young QBs who's pushed Brady off a number of make-believe Mount Rushmores in recent years.
"He's a great player. He's in his third year and he's had a lot of success. Their offense is doing a great job this year, they're scoring a lot of points, especially at home, and he's kind of the ringleader," Brady said of Luck. "He does a lot of things that I wish I could do. He's big, fast, shrugs off blockers, makes a lot of extended plays. He's a great passer. I think they've thrown for more yards at this point in the year than any other team in history, so I think it speaks to what they're doing offensively."
With Brady, such praise is more than just lip service. The quarterback said late last month that after watching the success of the league's mobile quarterbacks, he decided that he needed to vastly improve in his ability to escape pressure and throw while on the run.
"If I can make some more of those plays, I think it'd really help our team," Brady said then, and he's continued to make a handful of plays each week that might not have been in his arsenal prior to this season.
"I think I've always tried to work hard on those things," Brady said on Wednesday. "I think I just have a little better understanding of how to accomplish that than I have in the past. I've tried to work hard on it this year and hopefully it'll keep paying off. ... It's just a constant pursuit of trying to be better at every little aspect of the game. You just can't stand back there all day and expect everything in pass protection to work out and throw the ball on time. There's going to be times when you have to be able to ad-lib and make some plays."
And when it comes to making some of those plays, Brady said that Luck is one of the best.
"A lot of guys who are really mobile do a great job of it -- you have the play that's called in the huddle and then you have the play when it breaks down. So really, the defense has to cover two plays on every play instead of one," Brady said. "Guys that are able to move really well like Andrew Luck, he makes a ton of those plays. And he's fast enough to out-run guys, and he's also strong enough to kind of shrug off blockers and throw with guys when they're wrapped around [his] legs and stuff like that. He's pretty phenomenal at that."
Brady's seen Luck's skills first-hand on two occasions, yet Brady has also seen his own defense get the better of Luck both times. In two games against New England -- one regular-season meeting, one postseason matchup -- Luck has completed 47 of his 91 pass attempts (51.6 percent) for 665 yards, six touchdowns and seven interceptions. The Patriots won both games by an average of 28 points, with Brady throwing three touchdowns and zero interceptions.
On Sunday, though, Luck will have home-field advantage on his side. Yet Brady hopes to even use that to his own advantage.
"I think that's the most important thing when you're playing on the road is to make sure everyone's on the same page. If you're just a little bit late anticipating things, then the defense has a significant advantage," Brady said. "It'll be tested this week. This is a great environment, it'll be rocking Sunday night. It'll be a great environment for football. We've played quite a few games there in my career, even though it's a relatively new stadium. It's got great energy and we're going to hopefully try to use that energy for us also, not just for them."
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