Tom Brady was as explosive as ever against the Eagles, but his teammates on defense didn’t give him much help, or a 6th Super Bowl
MINNEAPOLIS — If only Tom Brady’s defense showed up for Super Bowl LII.
The New England Patriots legendary quarterback was as sharp, as explosive, as clutch as he’s ever been in his Hall of Fame post-season career on this Super Sunday but that wasn’t enough this time around.
Brady’s teammates on defense, the ones coached by Hall of Fame-bound Bill Belichick and Detroit Lions-bound Matt Patricia, were awful. The result was a disheartening, disappointing 41-33 shootout loss to the Philadelphia Eagles.
Brady broke his own Super Bowl record by throwing for 505 yards but the Patriots never found any answers for Nick Foles and the Eagles. The crushing score, the one that gave the Eagles their very first Super Bowl, trumped a classic Brady comeback that had given the Pats their first lead of the game, 33-32.
Foles answered with the calm, coolness of a champion. He hit Zach Ertz on a cut across the middle for an 11-yard scoring pass that sent the City of Brotherly Love into party mode.
A minute later, the party got kicked up a few notches.
Brady and the Patriots took over with one timeout and 2:21 left on the clock. This looked like another Brady moment, the kind that has made him the greatest quarterback of his generation.
Not this time. On the second play, Brady dropped back to pass and the supposed vaunted Eagle pass rush finally made a play. Brandon Graham pushed for an overpowering inside move and batted the ball from Brady’s hand. Rookie Derek Barnett pounced on the loose ball and the Eagle fans at U.S. Bank Stadium exploded. It would be the Eagles’ only sack of the day.
“He’s the best of all time,” said Philadelphia’s Chris Long, who won a ring last season with New England. “We kept at it and needed to make a play. We hammered him on the last drive.”
The Eagles 41 points were the most allowed by Belichick’s defenses in any of the first seven Super Bowls he’s coached with the Patriots. This time around the front seven couldn’t touch Foles and the defensive backs couldn’t shadow the Eagles cast of fleet receivers.
Throughout the game, fans and media alike could only wonder why former Super Bowl hero Malcolm Butler never lined up at his normal starting cornerback position. Butler was reportedly sick last weekend and didn’t travel with the Pats to Minneapolis, but as the week of practice progressed Butler’s name never popped up on the injury list.
Butler did appear on a handful of special teams plays but while he stood on the sidelines, replacements like Johnson Bademosi and Jordan Richards were burned by Foles.
There will be a lot of wasted noise about how The Backup trumped The Legend in this game. That’s not exactly true.
Give Foles a ton of credit. The backup quarterback flashed tons of poise under pressure and shredded the Patriots virtually all night. He avoided the New England rush, found six different receivers and remained cool under pressure on one big third down play after another.
Now he’ll drink for free the rest of his life in Philadelphia. Foles wrote the final chapter in a truly remarkable football story. He came on in relief of potential MVP Carson Wentz in Week 13 and now walks into history. He’s the third QB and the first since the Giants' Jeff Hostetler in 1990 to make three or fewer starts but still throw his team to a Super Bowl championship (Washington's Doug Williams is the other).
The loss is a painful one for the Patriots. It denies Brady a sixth Super Bowl title, an achievement that would’ve tied him with the man many consider the greatest team sport athlete of all time, Michael Jordan, in championships won.
It also lowers the Patriots’ Super Bowl record in this Brady/Belichick Era to 5-3. The players, coaches, and their fans will add this game to the ones they lost in dramatic fashion to the New York Giants as ones that got away.
In the end, it became clear that Brady couldn’t push this group of Patriots across the finish line by himself. He needed some help, a little help, from a defense that never showed up.