Tom Brady is the comeback king in the playoffs.
From his past two Super Bowl wins to the AFC championship game rally against Jacksonville that got the Patriots to the NFL's biggest stage for the third in four seasons, no quarterback has engineered more late-game playoff comebacks than Brady.
But he is not alone. Whether it was Marcus Mariota and the Tennessee Titans in the wild-card round against Kansas City earlier this postseason, or Russell Wilson against Green Bay in (2015) or Andrew Luck against the Chiefs the previous year, there have been as many playoff comebacks from at least 10 points down in the fourth quarter the past five seasons as there were the previous 26 seasons.
"What happens is instead of playing the team, they start playing the clock. Sometimes you win and sometimes you go against a bad boy like Tom Brady and you get burned," former Colts receiver and current NFL Network analyst Reggie Wayne said. "A lot of that falls onto the coaches. The players are going to run what the coaches call."
Whether it's Atlanta failing to run the ball enough late in last year's Super Bowl that helped the Patriots rally from 28-3 down to win in overtime or Seattle's decision to pass at the goal line instead of hand it to Marshawn Lynch back in 2015, questionable coaching decisions have contributed to some of those comebacks.
But nobody is better at exploiting those mistakes than Brady and the Patriots. He has four playoff wins in games he trailed by at least 10 points in the fourth quarter, including the "Tuck Rule" game against Oakland in 2002. No other quarterback has led more than one such comeback in playoff history.
"There's a great belief no matter what the circumstances, that we have enough to overcome it," Brady said. "I don't think we want to try to overcome that again this year. That was pretty tough to do. Hopefully we can get a lead, play from ahead, play on our terms."
The Patriots are comfortable when that happens. They are 6-6 in the playoffs when trailing after three quarters under Brady and coach Bill Belichick, while the rest of the NFL has a 27-140 record in that span with only Russell Wilson and Eli Manning having more than two fourth-quarter comebacks with four each.
Not that it is by design.
"That whole comeback thing is overrated," said NFL Network analyst Willie McGinest, who won three Super Bowl titles as Brady's teammate in New England. "Players can't go in and say, 'Hey, we want to win this game in dramatic fashion, be down 11 with eight minutes to go and come back and have the crowd go crazy.' You want to be in control, play a certain way and be in front. Because that changes how you play the game."
The biggest deficit overcome to win a Super Bowl before last season was just 10 points and the Patriots were the first team to overcome a deficit that big in the second half when they did it against the Seahawks three years ago.
The only other teams to come back from 10 points down to win a Super Bowl faced those deficits early in the second quarter with New Orleans rallying against Indianapolis in 2010 and Washington against Denver in 1988.
Brady's postseason passer rating when trailing in fourth quarter the past four years is a staggering 121.2, compared to 75.6 for the rest of the NFL.
In last year's Super Bowl comeback, the Falcons appeared to tire and struggled to generate pressure, sending more than four pass rushers on just two of 24 pass plays in the fourth quarter.
The Jaguars also only brought more than four rushers on two of 15 fourth-quarter pass plays in the AFC title game when New England came back from 20-10 down to win 24-20.
"What teams do wrong is they go zone," Wayne said. "He's going to pick zone apart all day, every day. He's going to spread you out and they're the best at creating mismatches."
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