Brady, McDaniels Talk Super Bowl XLIX-Winning Drives With Peter King
Tom Brady cemented his legacy as one of the all-time greats when he won his fourth Super Bowl ring earlier this month. But had it not been for his performance in probably the most important fourth quarter in his career, he’d be sitting at .500 in the big game.
In a column published Monday on Sports Illustrated’s MMQB.SI.com, Peter King tells the story of the Patriots two fourth-quarter touchdown drives through two of the men who made them happen: Josh McDaniels and Tom Brady.
Here are a few of the choicest excerpts.
McDaniels, on preparing to face the league’s best defense:
“I didn’t get to see tape on Seattle until about 4 in the afternoon the day after our championship game. The way we do it is, we take care of all our Super Bowl logistical work first, so we can concentrate on game preparation after that without a lot of distractions. I watched a lot of them, obviously. And when you saw people have success against them, you saw teams stringing eight or 10 normal successful football plays together. Not explosive plays. But the word that kept coming to my mind, and I must have said it to our offensive players 25 times in two weeks of prep, was ‘patience.’ I told them, ‘Maybe we can come out of the game with one or two big plays. Maybe. But just trust the process. Be patient.’’’
Brady, on how to attack – and not to attack – the Seahawks:
“They’d allowed the fewest big plays of any team all season, and you saw pretty early why you don’t want to go into the Super Bowl throwing up a bunch of posts, a bunch of ‘nine’ routes. [‘Go’ routes.] Richard Sherman picks off the go route every time you throw it. The plan was to exploit other parts of the field—but short parts of the field. Michael Bennett rushes from everywhere. Cliff Avril kills people. They believe in what they do. We countered that by saying, ‘Okay, here’s what we’re pretty good at: Space the field, find the soft spots, be satisfied with the four-yard gain, be happy with the four-yard gain. We were gonna be happy with a two-yard gain.’’
Brady and King, on Edelman’s third-and-14 conversion:
Brady: “Would this have been a four-down situation here? I don’t know. The way it worked, Sherman had Gronkowski. Danny had a deeper incut. He was the go-to guy, but they squeezed him on defense, so I couldn’t go there. Now LaFell … He had a deep comeback. When you wait for a guy—what does he run the 40 in, and what can he run 25 yards in? Maybe 2.8 seconds, three seconds? You have to wait for him. So their rush sort of ran past me, and I moved up in the pocket. As a quarterback, you start to feel the rhythm of the pass-rush as the game goes on; your body develops a cadence. You feel what they’re doing. Russell Wilson, he doesn’t care—he can outrun them. I can’t. So I have to make the calculated decision. I had the ball quite a while there.
King: “Well, 3.48 seconds, to be exact.’’
Brady: “Probably the longest time I had all game. Julian was the last option I had on the play, and there he was, in the middle.’’
Brady, on his two interceptions:
“On my two interceptions in the game, the first one I should have called time because I just didn’t like what I saw, and then it was too late when I made the throw. Dumb throw. The second one, Bobby Wagner made a phenomenal play. He read my eyes. He got me. If I ever play those guys again, I will not lead Bobby Wagner anywhere with my eyes.’’
Brady, on Edelman’s go-ahead touchdown – a mirror-image of a failed play from the previous drive:
“After the last drive, I went to the sidelines and told Josh, ‘Josh, come back to that call. Please come back to that call.’ I knew even before the call came in what it was going to be. I knew how it was going to play out. Earl in same place. Simon in same spot. Only this time, they ended up blitzing, really a max blitz, creating one-on-one with Jules. He ran a great route. It’s a tough route to cover. The cornerback has no help. Looks like a slant. How do you not respect the coverage on the slant?’’
Edelman pushed off Simon, mildly, on the slant, then pirouetted again, just like last time. Only this time the throw wasn’t 115 miles an hour, and it wasn’t high. It was thrown medium speed, and right to Edelman.
Brady and King, on the days after the win:
Brady: “I had a nice moment with my wife Tuesday morning. Monday was taken up with getting home, and I finally had a chance to sleep Monday night … We woke up Tuesday, and, now, she’s woken up twice next to me after Super Bowl losses, and [for those] I was like, ‘The game’s today, right? What I just had was a nightmare, right? That didn’t really happen, right?’ And this time, I just looked at her and it was, it was …’’
Pause. Three, four seconds.
Me: “What happened? What’d you say?’’
Brady: “It was just special. Just pretty special.’’
It’s one of the more interesting pieces to come out of the Patriots’ win. Check out the full column here.
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