Massarotti: With Season In Peril, Brady And Belichick Bailed Out Patriots
BOSTON (CBS) -- The refrain in Foxboro has been the same for going on 10 years now, Patriots fans drawing out the lyrics like some sort of trump card. The coach and the quarterback. The Patriots always had a chance because of the coach and the quarterback. The advantages they possessed were the two most important – the coach and the quarterback – and the Patriots bobos were all too eager to let you know it.
In retrospect, of course, it was all a way to mask what the Patriots did not possess, to conceal the damaging scars beneath the surface, from the flawed defense to the absence of an outside receiver to a range of things alongside and in between.
And so here we are now, approaching the culmination of another year during the marriage of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, and a funny thing has happened on the way back to the AFC Championship Game: the Patriots won on Saturday almost exclusively because of the coach and the quarterback. New England trailed by scores of 14-0 and 28-14 before Belichick went mad scientist (four offensive linemen and a double pass) and Brady became the American Sniper – he was 29-of-38 (76.3 percent) for 290 yards and a 112.8 rating out of the shotgun – upending the Baltimore Ravens in what was, instantaneously, a game for the ages.
OK, you win.
Thank goodness for the coach and the quarterback.
"That's what you play for. You play to win your division, you play to be in the postseason and then you play to be in the AFC Championship Game and see what happens after that," Belichick told reporters on Saturday night. "That's what it's all about. That's what you work all year for, is to get to this point. Thankfully we'll be playing next week. We've had Tom through all those that I've been here. Again, it's great to have him and his ability and his poise and presence as our quarterback, and obviously he's done a tremendous job today and through all those years."
You want to puff out your chests, Patriots fans? Do it now, this week, before the Indianapolis Colts come to Foxboro for the ninth AFC Championship Game of the B&B era. Should the Patriots win, their next game might very well be against the defending champion Seattle Seahawks, an opponent that should inspire no chest-thumping as the Patriots return to the graveyard in Glendale, Arizona, where their 2007 run at immortality was planted like a tomato plant pole.
The Patriots could win that game, to be sure, but they are likely to be underdogs, however slight, against a fierce Seattle team saturated with both talent and hostility.
Still, for now, take a good look around the league and appreciate what you have. Roughly 48 hours after the Pats defeated the Ravens, Broncos head coach John Fox was out in Denver and quarterback Peyton Manning looked fit for an assisted living facility. If Manning decides to return next season, he will be playing for his fifth head coach. Meanwhile, Brady still has played for only one, Belichick, who has treated most every other player and position on the Patriots roster like fuses in a fuse box.
When one goes bad, you simply pop it out and put another one in, whether the slot is assigned to Law or Vinatieri or Seymour or, of course, Mankins.
"No quarterback I'd rather have than Tom Brady," Belichick said yet again on Saturday night, a line he has delivered so many times that it could serve as his epitaph.
The irony, of course, is that Belichick began this season taking the first steps to replace Brady, too, selecting quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo in the second round of the NFL draft, the earliest Belichick ever has chosen a quarterback in football's annual flesh fair. By early October, respected NFL voices like Chris Mortensen were hearing whispers that "tension" existed between Brady and his coach and that Garoppolo could replace Brady "sooner than later." Brady has since restructured his contract a second time for the benefit of the organization, which cannot help but make one wonder whether he is feeling pressure in the proverbial pocket.
And yet, when the two faced a potentially cataclysmic end to their season on Saturday, Brady and Belichick needed one another perhaps more than they ever have.
After New England went three-and-out to start the second half and fell behind by a 28-14 score with roughly 25 minutes left, Belichick started messing with his line formations and Brady went into the shotgun. There wasn't even the pretense of a running game. From that point forward, Brady completed 17-of-23 passes (73.9 percent) for 161 yards, two touchdowns and a 121.8 rating, numbers that balloon to 18-of-24 (a tidy 75 percent) for 212 yards, three touchdowns and a 141.0 rating when adding in the 51-yard strike thrown by Julian Edelman, a pass on which hockey fans undoubtedly give Brady a secondary assist.
If you help me, I'll help you.
Over the last 10 years, as the Patriots have repeatedly fallen just short of truly historical achievement, their flaws always have been just fatal enough. They could have used Deion Branch in 2006, Vinatieri in 2007, Seymour in 2009. Maybe they could have used Mankins – even still – this year. The untold story during that time was that too much had been placed on the shoulders of the coach and the quarterback, something even Belichick seemed to admit this season when he overhauled a secondary that has been at the core of the Patriots' problems in recent years.
On Saturday, for much of the affair with Ravens, the secondary failed the Patriots.
But standing behind, as if well rested and waiting for that time when they would be needed again, were the inimitable coach of the Patriots and no quarterback he'd rather have.
Tony Massarotti co-hosts the Felger and Massarotti Show on 98.5 The Sports Hub weekdays from 2-6 p.m. Follow him on Twitter @TonyMassarotti. You can read more from Tony by clicking here.
