Mini Jerk Reactions to Week 9: Tom Brady vs. the Saints

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Holy smokes. I can't imagine anyone seeing this coming. A 31-0 halftime deficit. 38-0 with less than 4:00 to play. Tom Brady's third lowest career passer rating. He's closing in on 300 starts and had only thrown 3+ picks and 0 touchdowns twice before (in 2003 and 2006). He'd gone 145 games without a 3 INT day, the longest streak ever among players who actually throw passes for a living. Just 11% efficiency on 3rd downs. An almost Bledsonian pocket awareness, holding the ball too long and backing into pass rushers. Four shots from the 1-yard line - FOUR - and not being able to get across the goal line. 

Meanwhile Drew Brees was having one of those games of his where he's as unstoppable as Phillip Rivers' mighty sperms. Hitting targets at will, going 26 for 32. Converting 3rd & longs (64% overall). 4 TDs and ) INTs. If it weren't for a fumble at Tampa's 2 by Jared Cook and Brees letting Versatility Jesus Taysom Hill take the wheel, he might have had one of those games like he had against New England where he had a perfect passer rating and it's been argued was the statistically best game (371 yards, 5 TDs on only 23 attempts) of all time. 

Plus you had talent at the skill positions across the board for both teams. A great running game for the Saints going against the best run defense in the league. This should've been a wild one. In short, we were all expecting we'd be counting the ballots on this one for days, like Pennsylvania. Instead, it was over before the polls closed, like D.C.

And it's the damnedest thing to try to make sense of. Brady has Nick Furied together an Avengers of preposterously talented superhumans. Name one roster you've ever seen that can roll out physically gifted meta-athletes that can match Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, Antonio Brown, Scotty Miller, Leonard Fournette, Rob Gronkowski and the other eight or so receivers and tight ends that always seem to dress every week for Tampa. You'd think you could put Tim Tebow or a plastic quarterback from an electric football set or three raccoons standing on each other's shoulders under a trench coat and they could coax that lineup to 24 points on a bad day. For Brady to fail so utterly with that group is beyond the limits of human understanding. 

And yet it was weirdly fascinating to watch, no matter what your emotional state when it comes to dealing with Tompa Brady. To witness that level of complete failure that was so unlikely as to be impossible, well it should just speak to you on an intellectual level. I read a thing awhile back about script writing, from someone who reads script submissions for a living. And it said that the first page should serve one purpose: To make the reader want to see what you've got on Page 2. And that second one should make them want to go to the third, and so on. And if this game was a screenplay, the first set of downs would've been "Archaeologist in a hat walks through a spooky jungle followed by his guides following an old map until they find an eerie cave." I was in. Page after page.

A 3 & out in which Malcolm Jenkins had Gronk in blanket coverage on 3rd down. The next 3 & out where Brady badly missed Godwin up the sideline and then settled for a dump off on 3rd & 14 that had no chance. Yet another 3 & out where he targeted Brown and Jenkins broke it up, then threw a 3rd & 8 off Gronk's hip. Still another where Tampa switched to the No Huddle, to No Avail. With all his reads going high to low and facing pressure on almost every snap, that set of downs ended on a deep throwaway. Four possessions, 12 plays, no 1st downs, four punts. With that quarterback and that lineup. At home, no less. I wouldn't have thought it possible if I'd gotten black out drunk and just read about it this morning. 

As far as Brady's interceptions, they came in three distinct flavors, like a Neapolitan ice cream. The first was of your classic "Big defensive end times his leap" variety, with the added bonus of seeing Marcus Davenport tipping it to Cameron Jordan who lobbed it up for David Onyemata. That's Maverick to Goose to Jester who spiked it for the point, sweaty high fives and shirtless chest bumps all around.

By his second though, it was as if he'd abandoned all hope.

And I'd point out that Jenkins should've slapped the ball to the ground for the turnover on downs back to the original LOS, but I won't. Defensive backs have been doing that since they were invented. You can't ask them to unlearn millions of years of instinctual behavior. 

His third pick - and I can't believe I'm saying this because I didn't think my fingers were capable of stringing these letters together - was not Antonio Brown's fault. Not to these vision-corrected eyes, anyway. I mean, yes, Brown broke off his route. But if that's a read (and I assume it was) you absolutely stop underneath this kind of deep shell.

I'm trying to avoid comparing Brady's new team to the situation on his old team. But I can't help but point out that if this had happened on the Patriots, the No. 1 trend on Twitter would've been "Jarrett Stidham."

Maybe the most telling part of how things have changed over the course of the season is that Gronk is drawing DPI calls that were impossible during his peak years. That one he drew in the end zone to set up the four failed attempts from the 1 was beyond our wildest dreams in say, 2017. Week after week we saw DBs crawling on him like fire ants while he was leading the league in OPIs every time he won a handfight. Gronk has had some decent games of late. But last night he had one catch on six targets for two yards, plus that aforementioned drop and another on 3rd & goal from a 3-TE set. But drawing ticky tack defensive penalties now might be the biggest indication the league no longer fears him. 

So I'll be damned if I know how this all happened. How in the course of two weeks Brady went from 33 for 45, 369, 4 and 0 in Las Vegas to one of the worst games of his life. Maybe it's just one of those games. Maybe the Saints have him and his offense figured out. Maybe Max Kellerman can finally declare victory on his four year claim of a imminent bummery. Maybe that old MAGA hat that once sat in his locker finally lost its power. But if I'm being honest, I'm hoping it's all Antonio Brown's fault. 

One thing we do know for certain though. After this postgame bro-fest, we can declare for sure it's personal between Brady and Nick Foles. 

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