The Guardian
Tom Brady and Drew Brees fought for time on Sunday. Guess who won?
Two future Hall of Fame quarterbacks clashed in the Superdome this weekend. One of them, as always, simply refused to bed Drew Brees and Tom Brady faced off for what must be the last time on Sunday. Photo: Butch Dill / AP The first time Tom Brady and Drews Brees met on a football field was on October 2, 1999. TLC’s unpretty was monopolizing first place on the Billboard 100. Y2K was hot in the mind. It was fitting, then, that the first and probably only playoff game between the two, now at a combined age of 85, was the most traditional duel of the weekend. The game was announced as Tom Brady v Drew Brees, two future quarterbacks from the hall of fame at the end of their respective races. Instead, we were treated to a classic January football game, all with games, defense and turns. It is the final factor of that list that really matters. It is always a matter of turnover. Sunday night count: Saints 4-0 Bucs. Final score: Tampa 30-20 New Orleans. 21 of the Bucs’ points came from these sales. Was that the final game for Brees? It certainly is what it looks like at the time of writing, Sunday night. During Fox Sports’ pre-game show, Jay Glazer reported that: “Tonight will be the last game he will play in the Superdome. … Drew Brees will be ready. That’s it. “It doesn’t seem right that Brees would come out that way. Three choices in a home playoff game, less than 150 yards in passing, with a negligible percentage of completion and an inability to drive the ball out of numbers. Age finally stole from Brees the necessary skills that helped make it a beacon of efficiency and allowed the saints’ offense to endure with skill, malice and intellect for more than a decade. You need some level of arm strength to maintain a manual diversified and prevent the defense from obstructing the midfield. The only time the Saints caught any kind of spark was when Jameis Winston was summoned to the game for an illicit move. This left Sean Payton in a funky situation: Brees on the bench at that could be your final game and ride the Winston roller coaster, or fall off swinging with the guy who helped take the franchise out of Katrina’s horrors and turn it from a football mat into a serial contender? a would have been the smart move, but Payton decided to roll with his heart. That’s how defenders get old. It is always ugly. They sniff pitches on the field, they miss the rotating linebacker, pitches that used to pass through the gaps in the secondary start to hover. The decline is rarely as smooth as, well, Brady’s. The end is thunderous and definitive; defenders are great and so are bad. Brady struck a well-organized compromise. He is no longer the player who was at the height of his powers. But he remains the same old Brady who accumulated titles during his last half decade in New England, with only slight indications of erosion: still capable of greatness, subject to some errors, full of confidence in his arm that he no longer deserves, and able to resolve any defensive look if he sees it often enough. Brady was far from perfect on Sunday night, but there was at least one winning formula for the Bucs, which they will take to snowy Lambeau Field next week. Run the ball first, play a perfect save and bet on Brady to deliver the third down, which was Bruce Arians’ master plan, taken directly from the playoff manual of the early 2000s. It worked – up to a point. The Bucs won the victory thanks to an aggressive defensive display, but Brady left plenty of opportunities on the pitch. Still: there were still those flashes of the old mystique, of the same competitive homicidal psyche. Even after all this time, after all the success, after sunbathing in the Florida sun, Brady won’t budge. Because at this point, Brady’s career is more than sports success. It is more than a legacy. It is more than passing yards or touchdowns. It is more existential. This is a man – as reckless as he is – in a battle against time. And he believes – really believes – that he will win. On Sunday, time decided that football was finally over for Brees. Not for Tom. For now, Tom continues to win. MVP of the week Aaron Rodgers and Matt LaFleur developed a formidable relationship. Photo: Stacy Revere / Getty Images Aaron Rodgers, QB, Green Bay Packers. Artists don’t like to agree with conventions – and make no mistake, Rodgers is an artist. But tell him: he was willing to swallow his ego when Matt LaFleur came in the door as the team’s head coach before last season; he was willing to evaluate himself; he was willing to adjust. And in doing so, he took his team to consecutive NFC championships. Only this time it feels real. Rodgers was in top form on Saturday, launching for 296 yards and two touchdowns against the league’s fiercest defense, with an accelerated touchdown for good measure. But this was not a vintage Rodgers exhibition. It was the new, improved rhythm-based Rodgers, offering exactly the kind of team-based performance that Packers needed. It is difficult to exaggerate how sterile things were at the end of the Rodgers-Mike McCarthy era. Rodgers would run out of the watch for the play (a favorite pastime of his) and then tap dance in his pocket – sometimes for the better, but in the end it was often for the worse. Matt LaFleur brought more urgency to the Rodgers game. There are the same old staples approved by Rodgers, but they are delivered with new looks. However, although it is LaFleur’s overall design, Rodgers is still in charge of the show: he is modulating the pace of the attack – sometimes fast, sometimes slow – in order to keep the defense off balance and give himself a favorable appearance. . It’s been that way all season – that’s why Rodgers is likely to come out with the MVP award. But it was fair to wonder if he would return to the old way against a defense of the caliber of the championship in the playoffs. He did in bursts last season. He didn’t do this year. If Rodgers maintains that level – and why shouldn’t he? – Packers will play for everything in February. Chad Henne’s stat: 6/8, 68 yards, zero touchdowns, one interception. Only Andy Reid would have enough faith in his system to continue his overly aggressive style with his starting quarterback eliminated from the game. And not just any defender, but a single defender in life like Patrick Mahomes. And only Reid would have enough faith in Chad Henne, a career reserve, to call up a pitch, pass the game on his own side of the field in quarters and inches with the game at stake: GAME! Https: https: // t.co/F3ZHh8BQRq pic.twitter.com/9oJ5AyXemg— Kansas City Chiefs (@Chiefs) January 17, 2021 The Chiefs lost Mahomes early in the second half due to a concussion. Reid did not blink. It was the Browns who adapted, changing their defensive scheme and betting that Henne would not be able to squeeze pitches through tight windows in the same way that Mahomes would. Henne delivered. He was not perfect. But he was good enough, making plays in and out of Reid’s carefully crafted structure and guiding the Chiefs to an AFC title game after a stroke of luck – Mahomes hitting his head on the grass – almost took a control win from cruise . And now, for a week of talk about concussion. The league needs its most telegenic and friendly star on the biggest stage. Will Mahomes be ready for the title game? Can the Chiefs win with Henne? Video of the week BILLS PICK-SIX ON LAMAR 😱 (via @NFL) pic.twitter.com/TcOSmHzg21— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) January 17, 2021 Lamar Jackson’s pick-six in the red zone will haunt the Ravens during the entire off-season. It was an extraordinary move by Taron Johnson, the defensive back of the Bills, and a sloppy reading by Jackson, which effectively ended the Ravens’ season. Down the field to tie the game, Jackson’s interception became a 10-3, with the Ravens in the touchdown interval and the game going into the fourth period, in a 17-3 deficit from which the Ravens were unable to recover. Quote of the week “Go win it all” – John Harbaugh for Sean McDermott after Bills defeated Ravens 17-3. Accounts certainly have the right formula. Sean McDermott built his group on the same image as the Panthers team that he helped guide to the Super Bowl 50: a big-armed, high-variation athletic quarterback paired with a swift, swarming defense that generates a ton of negative moves. McDermott was the defensive coordinator at that time. Now, as head coach, he will seek to take his team a step further. Elsewhere in the league – Urban Meyer is back. Only this time, he became a professional. Less than two years after another round of “I’ll never train again” talks and a second health-induced retirement, Meyer decided to leave college football for the NFL, taking over as coach in Jacksonville. Meyer is a college football legend, although he has a sheet of scandals that would make even Donald Trump blush. He was one of the pioneers of the spread-options style that helped transform the sport since the beginning of the decade. If nothing else, your first attempt at the NFL will be fascinating to watch. Meanwhile, things have somehow gone from bad to worse for Texans. After a week of leaks, Deshaun Watson put his name for discontent in Houston. “I was in a 2, so I took it to 10,” Watson tweeted on Friday, almost identical to an ESPN report from last weekend that said Watson’s anger level was a “2” when the team replaced DeAndre Hopkins last year. “There is a growing feeling in people within and around the Texans organization that Deshaun Watson played his last chance for the team,” reported ESPN’s Adam Schefter on Sunday.