Tom Brady, Tyrod Taylor, and a reminder of how good Patriots fans have it
COMMENTARY
It might not be the chief reason for tuning in to watch the second stop of the Tom Brady How Do You Like These Footballs? Vengeance Tour 2015, but it might have been the most satisfying.
How fun was it to witness in real time the simultaneous silencing of Bills coach Rex Ryan, an entertaining blowhard, and 70,000 considerably less entertaining attending blowhards who actually paid for the privilege of watching the Patriots destroy Buffalo’s daydreams yet again?
Yes, I’d say it was another fine and fulfilling Sunday afternoon spent creating a divot on the couch, wouldn’t you?
The margin of the Patriots’ 40-32 victory did not do justice to their evisceration of Ryan’s talented and comically undisciplined defense.
The eight-point differential suggests the game was close. It was not. It was only close enough to encourage more false hope in Buffalo before the next time they meet, and even then it may be difficult for Ryan, who has won one of his last nine matchups with Bill Belichick, to muster his usual bluster.
He knows better than anyone that Belichick, Tom Brady, and this well-crafted, merit-based roster are nothing if they are not professional demoralizers. I suspect he knows Dion Lewis’s name now, you know?
It is Brady who makes it all work, of course, and while the reminders are a recurring joy, they are not necessary. Operating behind an offensive line starting two rookies against the Bills’ aggressive, talented defense, which had tormented league-approved golden boy Andrew Luck just a week earlier, Brady threw for 466 yards – the second-most of his beyond-illustrious career – and three touchdowns. And yet you know that during his mental rewind of the game that he will lament leaving some points on the field, including on a couple of deep routes to Julian Edelman.
Brady’s relentless, obsessive quest for perfection, even now, 16 seasons into his career, is why he comes as close to achieving perfection as any quarterback ever has.
It was an exceptional performance even by his standards, not to mention a reminder – hopefully a wholly unnecessary one after an offseason spent facing the absurd prospect that he’d miss a quarter of this season – that every chance we get to watch him play is a fan’s blessing never to be taken for granted. Sure, I’m curious how Jimmy Garoppolo will fare as an NFL starter. I’m OK with waiting to find out until sometime around the autumn of 2021. Maybe ’22.
This notion might cause NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to curl up in the fetal position beneath his precious shield, but in a sense the happenings in his entire league right now are a tribute to Brady’s enduring greatness. We saw what the Bills did to Luck, the quarterback of a foolishly trendy Super Bowl pick. Peyton Manning is 39 and throws more changeups away than Tom Glavine in his prime; the suggestion that he has two years left may be generous. Drew Brees is 36 and just got outplayed by Jameis Winston. Eli Manning has swallowed his tongue two weeks in a row, Russell Wilson has lost his last three starts, Tony Romo is injured again, and Joe Flacco most certainly is not elite. Only Aaron Rodgers, bless him, is in Brady’s league, and he’s been to just one Super Bowl, five years ago now.
Brady stands alone among his peers, and arguably above the entire roster of his football forefathers. I don’t believe the vast majority of Patriots fans take him for granted, let alone are spoiled by a decade-and-half of dedication and dominance, though the nitwits who suggested he was done after last season’s Week 4 debacle in Kansas City might want to stay off the jump to conclusions mat for a while.
I do, however, believe that watching Brady perform at football altitudes so few have been able to reach has affected our ability – or at least my rudimentary ability – to properly assess other quarterbacks. One of the secondary reasons Sunday’s game was intriguing was the opportunity to get a look at Bills quarterback Tyrod Taylor, who was making his second career start, his first coming in the Week 1 win over the Colts. A barely considered backup for four seasons in Baltimore, he seized the Bills’ starting job in camp and promptly dazzled in the opening-game upset, completing 14 of 19 passes for 195 yards and a score while also running for 41 yards.
Was he capable of an encore against the Patriots? Is he legit? Do the Bills, with their recent quarterback history of lost causes and Losman, finally have a capable starter?
I think so. But I don’t know. How’s that for a conclusive answer?
Taylor completed 23 of 30 passes for 242 yards and three touchdowns. But he also threw a hat trick of picks, and he was sacked eight times. There was good, bad and ugly, the standard Sunday for an inexperienced quarterback facing a Belichick scheme. He actually reminded me of what a faction of late ’90s Patriots fans hoped Michael Bishop might become.
It never happened for Bishop, of course, but that doesn’t mean the daydream that an exceptional quarterback might emerge from the end of the draft and the bottom of the depth chart should always be ignored. That is, after all, part of the origin of the Tom Brady story – one that must feel never-ending to the rest of the NFL right now. Patriots fans aren’t about sympathize with other franchises’ desperation to discover an outstanding quarterback in an unexpected way. But we sure can understand their envy.
9 times Tom Brady has silenced Rex Ryan
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