Mini Jerk Reactions to Week 12: Tom Brady vs. the Chiefs
If you'd checked in with me at about 6 p.m. or so tonight, I'd have told you that this would be the easiest writing assignment since I made the time consuming and masochistic decision to recap all of 2020 Tom Brady's games. Around the time the Buccaneers were being booed off the field after going four possessions with one 1st down and four punts by the few people on Earth lucky enough to be able to attend NFL games and root for a deity who's taken human form to show us the perfect way to throw footballs. If that dynamic had held, this post would've been kept to "Brady struggles continue and the Buccaneers are total underachievers." But by the end of the night, it ended up being way more complicated than that.
Without a doubt, the story of this game is that the Bucs were utterly helpless against Kansas City. When their defense was doing the football equivalent of a villager baring her jugular to the handsome vampire and allowing him to sink his fangs in. The 1st quarter had Tyreek Hill on a pace for 812 receiving yards. By the end of the 2nd, Patrick Mahomes was halfway to 712 passing yards.
But Brady hung in there. And while he didn't pull off the almost 28-3ish comeback, he fought through the struggles, outscored Andy Reid's offense 17-7 in the 2nd half and made a game of it. In the end, he made too many mistakes - with a lot of help from the team he's captaining - and lost a game they didn't deserve to win. But I'm completely at a loss when it comes to dedicing whether it's his fault or not.
The smart move for me is to defer to Tony Romo's analysis that Bruce Arians' offense is predicated on ignoring the pre-snap indicators and basing your reads entirely on what happens as the play develops. I'm an educated man, but I'm afraid I can't speak intelligently about the travel habits of William Santiago or the Buccaneers' scheme. What I will say is that to my LensCrafted eyes, Brady is making a lot of mistakes he hasn't been making in the past. He's already up to 11 interceptions, which is the most he's had since 2011. And if he keeps up the pace he's on, he'll finish with 17. His previous career high is 14.
And the trend is not good.
And while CBS posted this graphic about quarterbacks in their first season under Bruce Arians:
- Andrew Luck: 18 interceptions (career-high)
- Carson Palmer: 22 interceptions (career-high)
- Jameis Winston: 30 interceptions (career-high)
… they ignored the fact 2007 Ben Roethlisberger had as many INTs in his first year with Arians through 15 games as Brady has through 12.
Nor does blaming Arians explain how bad this throw was or Brady giving Scotty Miller the full body "I'm so disgusted you didn't fight through the coverage and get this ball" look.
Or this terrible decision to avoid a sack by firing the ball off a defensive end's helmet for another pick.
The broad strokes my untrained eye see is that when Brady is running plays that are familiar to him: Gronk iso'd against a linebacker running a seam route, his best wideouts running off coverage outside the numbers and coming back on the ball, identifying mismatches and letting the men he trusts win them:
Then he's still a Top 10 if not a Top 5 quarterback in this league. But when he's forced to conform to Byron Leftwich's game plan that doesn't let the GOAT do GOAT things, then it's a dysfunctional mess and he's walking off the field, ripping off his chinstrap in frustration. And maybe, deep, deep down in his soul, asking himself how he can put up 24 points with the best assemblage of receiving talent in the league when his old team can score 20 and a win with a bunch of nobodies and a quarterback who threw for 80 yards.
But that's a question for the morning. I promised myself this would be brief and I want to keep that promise because I super care about me. Especially on a weekend when the Patriots won a game they shouldn't have and Tampa lost one they could've had.
In the meantime, I can't wait for Arians to be an absolute pud about this.