The greatest quarterback in the history of the game lay crumpled on the turf, helpless to do anything but watch. The Super Bowl was slipping away. He’d shuffled his feet and tried to dive, but, at 39, it was no use. Robert Alford sprinted in the opposite direction with only open field and end zone in front of him. It wasn’t even halftime, but the Falcons had taken a 21-point lead which, in that moment, felt like 121.
Tom Brady peered up from the turf, looking every bit his age. For an instant, before the greatest quarterback in NFL history led the greatest comeback the league has known, the four-time Super Bowl winner with the superfood diet and the supermodel wife seemed mortal. Like the scrawny, sixth-round pick out of Michigan, with the gawky 40-yard dash and the chip on his shoulder.
All half, he’d been battered and bruised by Atlanta’s fearsome four-man rush. His rhythm was off. It was the same blueprint the Giants had drawn up in their two Super Bowl wins over the Patriots. The Falcons, who hit him play after play after play, were executing it to perfection.
“That was exactly the way we didn’t plan it,” Brady would say from the podium later, drenched with sweat and confetti. And indeed, it was hard to imagine a worse way to start his attempt at a record fifth Super Bowl. With 8:31 left in the third quarter, it was 28-3. A mountain to climb. All across America, eyes wandered from TV screens. President Trump, a friend of Brady’s, left his own Super Bowl party. Even Chris Long, the former Rams defensive end and current Patriot, admitted he had doubts.
And who could blame them? The Patriots’ win probability stood at a two-tenths of a percent. No team had ever come back from more than a 10-point deficit in the Super Bowl. No one, not even in the most optimistic corners of New England, could know what was to come. Watching it with your own eyes, it was hard to process what was happening. No one had seen anything like it.
The greatest. It’s the only way to explain what transpired. Greatest comeback. Greatest Super Bowl. Greatest quarterback. Greatest player. There is no counterargument at this point. There have been more perfect performances, more precise passing, more picturesque plays down the field, but over the Patriots’ final five drives, as they fired back from 25 down, as they forced the first overtime game in Super Bowl history, there was none greater than Brady. He completed 43 passes and threw for 466 yards, both Super Bowl records. He was chosen Super Bowl MVP a fourth time, another record. He led a 91-yard drive in the final four minutes of regulation, converted the 2-point conversion, then marched down the field in overtime and completed five straight passes to get the Patriots to the 1. One play later, the victory was complete.
Brady didn’t do it alone. In each of his other four Super Bowl victories, he needed big plays from unlikely sources – Malcolm Butler, Rodney Harrison, Deion Branch – and this year was no exception. There was James White’s three touchdowns and Dont’a Hightower’s strip sack and a circus catch from Julian Edelman that probably couldn’t be replicated if you tried it 1,000 more times.
The best comeback in history also would not be possible without one of its worst collapses. As much as we’ll remember Brady’s amazing fourth quarter, the Falcons’ painful, second-half implosion will go down in Super Bowl history.
But this was about Brady, at the conclusion of one of his most difficult seasons, at the peak of an all-time career. Four months ago, he was suspended for a quarter of the season, due to the fallout from Deflategate. The league dragged him through the mud. His integrity was questioned. On Sunday, after a shortened campaign that nearly won him MVP anyway, he shook hands earnestly with Roger Goodell at the end of a journey many characterized as his revenge tour. The Patriots owner, Robert Kraft, declared it the sweetest championship of all, not so subtly pointing to “a lot that transpired over the last two years,” but Brady would refuse to take the bait. He flash a half-hearted smile at Goodell, and that was it.
It was a different Brady than before, but also the same as ever. You might still find him disingenuous or smug, or perhaps his tacit political endorsement rubs you the wrong way. But with the Super Bowl on the line, there is no else you would rather have with the ball in his hands. He has won five Super Bowls in seven tries, and the two losses came by a combined seven points. In every trip, Brady has put the Patriots in a position to win.
This year,was his piece de resistance. Doubt could’ve set in early, down 25, but it didn’t. Instead, Brady ground the Falcons down until their speed and athleticism meant nothing. He wore out the front four by converting third downs and extending drives. The Falcons ran just 27 plays in the second half, while the Patriots ran 52, and with each drive, Brady willed the Patriots offense forward. In the fourth quarter and overtime, without even a semblance of a run game behind him, he completed 21 of 34 passes for 234 yards,
Brady was already the greatest of all time before this game, and even as he struggled mightily throughout the first half and part of the third quarter, that never ceased being true. There are numbers, of course, that might suggest otherwise. Some people will tell you that Brady wouldn’t be the same without the greatest coach in NFL history on his sideline.
But that argument is now moot. The numbers are unequivocal. Brady is the first to win five Super Bowls, and that mark will almost certainly never be matched. All around the postgame locker room, as the football world struggled to catch its breath, Brady’s teammates threw out superlatives to anyone who would listen. “The greatest,” they all called him.
It had never felt so right.
Contact the writer: rkartje@scng.com
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