“There is something else here. It is a small thing, but maybe a big thing. We have No. 12 on our team and he is very good – Chris Godwin. What are you thinking about?”
“Oh, he’s a great player,” replied Brady. “I’m not going to get his number. Do you know what number I’m thinking of? I’m thinking of getting number 7, maybe?”
Why number seven, Licht asked. “To go after the seventh Super Bowl.”
Brady was 12, but a seventh Super Bowl is now a reality after a fairytale play-off running on the road through the NFC that ended, for the first time, with a home game and a home win in the biggest game of American football.
The 43-year-old was in his best fantastic and impeccable form, taking whatever the Kansas City Chiefs defense threw at him on his way, finding old New England Patriots teammate Rob Gronkowski for two goals on his way to a victory by 31-9 and a seventh Vince Lombardi trophy, two more than any other player in the history of the sport.
A clash between two of the best attacks in football started in an inauspicious way, with three punts, while the two stars struggled to calm down. Patrick Mahomes was the first to find his rhythm by putting KC on the table with three before Brady, a veteran of 10 Super Bowls, finally scored one of the few slices in history that he hadn’t gotten in this biggest of the stages before.
In his nine previous visits to the top of the mountain, Brady had never made a touchdown pass in the first quarter. That finally changed here, when he found Gronkowski in the easiest passes to the left to take the lead, a 13th post-season connection between the two. Yes, another record.
It didn’t take long before it was 14. After the Chiefs went rigid on the fourth drop on the yard line, a first stop in the entire season, Brady was soon back in the scoring range, although this time he should be thanking Kansas City.
Three expensive penalties, including a defensive wait call to overturn Tyrann Mathieu’s third-down interception, extended an attempt that ended with another dart for Gronkowski at the end of the final zone. Two scores, two peaks.
Another Harrison Butker field goal narrowed the gap before a little more Brady magic on the eve of the break.
A Brady bomb in Scotty Miller just before the break killed the Green Bay Packers fifteen days ago in the NFC championship game. This time it was Antonio Brown, knocking Mathieu off the scrimmage line, to grab a third touchdown for the opening period with just six seconds left on the clock.
Having been double-digit in all three KC postseason games a year ago, another big deficit probably would not have scared Mahomes as he worried about it during the break. But any thought of more heroism in the comeback was put firmly on the ice right after the break.
Another of Tampa’s new additions this season, Leonard Fournette, crowned his own big night with Ali Marpet jumping for a 27-yard walk in the final zone. The running back was cut by Jacksonville before the season, but like so many others under Brady’s wings this year has been reborn.
To place this victory entirely on Brady’s shoulders would be to underestimate the excellent performance of Tampa’s defense.
Never before have Chiefs failed to score a touchdown on their first seven possessions from a game with Mahomes in the center. The Bucs took this, and under Todd Bowles’ expert guidance, launched a shutout with the secondary cover playing sticky to keep Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill largely in check and the top seven – led by the relentless Shaq Barrett – harassing and harassing Mahomes within an inch of your life from the start.
He tried in vain to rally, as any champion of his caliber would, but after two failed conversions from fourth down, his race and that of his team were fought, a first double-digit loss in his professional career absorbed in the biggest game of all. There would be no defense of the title, just another layer of the greatest legacy of all time.