Brady as Good as Belichick Would Allow

Game XXXVI, the most dramatic of the recent Super Bowls, climaxed so spectacularly the other day that it rates one more look if only to comment on what I think of as two major misperceptions:

First, this wasn’t a team victory, even though the New England Patriots have been calling it that since they beat the St. Louis Rams on the game’s last play, 20-17. It was a Tom Brady victory.

Second, it wasn’t as brilliantly coached by New England as many people thought. A four-week streak of good luck has made Bill Belichick the champion of the NFL although, loath to pass, he mismanaged each of the Patriots’ three postseason games, the Super Bowl among them.

The winning quarterback, Brady, provided the only surprise of XXXVI. Few realized he was that good. Judging between him and backup passer Drew Bledsoe, New England’s coach Belichick knew enough to play Brady, but he didn’t know enough to use him--until he had to.

The story of the game is that Brady only burst into the public’s consciousness as a great passer in the last 90 seconds of the last quarter, when he threw five perfect passes to position the Patriots for their last-second field goal.

If the football public had known that Belichick was concealing that kind of quarterback, the Patriots would not have been 14-point underdogs.

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90 Seconds

New England’s coaches made an unpardonable mistake when they waited until the last 90 seconds to tell Brady to open up with consecutive passes. What if they hadn’t had 90 seconds? What if only 80 seconds remained when the Rams scored the tying touchdown? That could easily have happened, and that, surely, would have led to overtime--and what then?

Well, the way both teams played the fourth quarter, the Rams were clearly seizing control. The Patriot defense, so marvelously prepared, so perfectly designed by Belichick, and so dominating for three quarters, had been running so hard, so often, and so fast that it was running out of gas. The Rams’ long, three-play, tying touchdown drive was one of the simplest and swiftest of the season.

In overtime, had the Patriots won the toss, they would only have had one chance: Belichick, to win, needed to throw as aggressively then as he’d had to throw in the last 90 seconds. The odds would have been against that. Those who’ve watched Belichick for the last 27 years doubt that any passer of his would ever get the green light in overtime. The Belichick way is to play defense and play for the breaks--even with a tiring team. The Ram way under Coach Mike Martz is to go for it.

And because it’s more exhausting to play defense than offense--as, once again, the fourth quarter proved last Sunday--it would have been a tough overtime for the Patriots. They won because they lucked into a window of 90 seconds at the end--instead of less than 90 or more. With less, they can’t win in regulation. With more, they don’t pass, so they don’t win.

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Brady’s Show

The Tom Brady show was the most surprising in the 36 years of the Super Bowl.

Sure, he’d gone into the opening kickoff as the leader of a team on an eight-game winning streak. Sure, he had successfully rallied the Patriots earlier this season. Sure, it was understood that even as a second-year pro, Brady is a cool, competent passer. Every opponent was aware of the truth that, even with a bad ankle, he’s better than Bledsoe. But few reasoned he’s that much better.

In fact, if Brady were remembered at all during the week before the game, he was probably thought of as the guy who threw all those passes in that Foxboro snowstorm last month. And that achievement could have been an aberration. For only on selected occasions this season has his coach, Belichick, used him as a passer. In the Super Bowl, the New England coach was taking an unnecessary risk when he tried to beat the Rams with his defensive team and with running back Antowain Smith instead of with Brady’s remarkable passing game. For, in the first three quarters, an all-out Brady assault--mounted with receivers as gifted as Troy Brown and David Patten and combined with the early-game performance of Belichick’s beautifully coached defensive team--would have left no doubts. Had Belichick played earlier the way he played the last 90 seconds, it’s no contest.

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17-17 Standoff

The winning passer is, almost certainly, as good as he looked. Those weren’t wild, fluky passes that Brady was throwing in the last 90 seconds. Every one of the five was well calculated, well aimed and well thrown by a quarterback playing with the poise of a 10-year veteran and with undoubted talent. His size--at 6 feet 2, Brady has built himself into a rugged 220-pounder--is ideal for a quarterback. His throwing motion is ideal. His reading skills seemed ideal for one so young, 24, and inexperienced. And the results were demonstrably ideal--for the Patriots, plainly, and for Belichick personally.

The Ram offense is also as good as it looked in the fourth quarter, when, after New England had given Ram quarterback Kurt Warner a hard time for 45 minutes, he took his team on the game’s best two touchdown drives--in the familiar Mike Martz way--to make it a 17-17 standoff. The collective wisdom of his critics is that the Patriots beat Warner up. But these folks came to that conclusion only because midnight in New Orleans was closing in and they had to talk about something, so they talked about what they’d seen for three quarters. The real Kurt Warner was only on view in the fourth quarter--along with the real Tom Brady. The whole game was played in the fourth quarter.

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Long Lucky Streak

Super Bowl XXXVI was an unforeseen extension of Belichick’s good fortune and the Belichick way. His lucky streak began in January with the playoff games that identified him as a superb defensive coach (no surprise there) but as an inadequate head coach. The landmark playoff-month events:

* Round 1: The Belichick hot streak actually began with the collapse of the Oakland Raiders, who lost their last three regular-season games to fall from 10-3 to 10-6. That put the Raiders out of the reckoning for the home-field advantage in their second-round game against New England, although they did eliminate the New York Jets on wild card weekend

* Round 2: The Patriots just did win at home, outlasting Oakland in overtime, 16-13, even though Brady fumbled the game away in the snowstorm--or so he said afterward. The referee said otherwise after checking instant replay. He ruled the fumble an incomplete pass (which, according to the NFL book, it was) and gave the ball back to New England.

Even luckier for Belichick, the Raiders, a passing team, unaccountably quit passing--on their key plays--after opening a 7-0 halftime lead with a touchdown pass. And thereafter, they were clearly playing to protect a lead that grew to 13-3 entering the fourth quarter. Now, Belichick had no choice. He had to let Brady throw. And, completing 18 of his last 19 passes, Brady pulled it out.

* Round 3: Seemingly unimpressed with Brady’s work in the Foxboro snowstorm, Belichick put him on hold again, for the most part, a week later in Pittsburgh, where the Patriots prevailed again, 24-17, winning this time on fortunate kicking plays--two of them for two of their three touchdowns.

The first was in reality a two-kick sequence that began with a 64-yard Pittsburgh punt to the New England 24. A penalty against the Steelers forced them to punt again. And this time they blooped it only to the New England 45, where a Patriot All-Pro, Troy Brown, caught it and raced to a touchdown.

Next, the Patriots blocked a Steeler field goal attempt and, in a seldom-seen NFL play, raced that one back for a 60-yard touchdown.

* Round 4: The week before Brady saved him in the Super Bowl, 20-17, Belichick identified himself in New Orleans as a head coach who has no conception of the real strength of his team.

In interviews, Belichick told everyone who would listen that he would have to find a way to score Super Bowl points without his offense.

The correct rejoinder to that is: What makes you think so?

The quality of the New England offensive group begins with four of the NFL’s finest--wide receivers Brown and Patten, running back Smith, and a quarterback, Brady, who has proved his excellence every time he has been asked to. The Belichick problem is not that he lacks an offense, it’s that he doesn’t use it. A great defensive coach, he doesn’t understand offense, and, so, he doesn’t involve Brady often enough. Heading into last Sunday’s game, one principal question confronted the contestants: Would the Rams win in a rout or by a small score?

The rout disappeared in the first half, but a bare Ram win was still there with 1:30 to play--when Brady made that disappear, too.

Overlooked from coast to coast is the truth that in the fourth quarter, against the exhausted Patriot defense, the Ram offense finally played like the Ram offense.

Should Belichick be honored as the mastermind who won the game? Hardly. It was predictable that the Patriots would tire and that the Rams would rally.

Should Brady be the MVP? Yes. His rally was as unpredictable, as surprising, as shocking to Belichick (apparently) as it was wonderful.