With Sunday night's game-winning drive in overtime in Kansas City, Tom Brady further added to his lengthy resume.
FOXBORO – David Andrews feels as though he is front and center in a show he grew up watching as a kid in Johns Creek, Georgia.
“I feel like I’ve been seeing this since I was 8 years old,” the Patriots’ center said. “I just get to be a part of it (now).”
So when special teams captain Matthew Slater called heads and won the coin toss heading into overtime of last Sunday night’s AFC Championship game with the Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium, Andrews wasn’t the least bit surprised by what transpired.
He’d seen it all before.
Less than five minutes later, Tom Brady had marched the Patriots 75 yards in 13 plays and the game – and the Chiefs’ season – were over.
The Patriots were on to Super Bowl LIII.
Sure, he’d thrown a jaw-dropping interception in the second quarter with the Pats perched on the Kansas City 1, but once again, when it mattered most, Brady was at his best.
“(Football’s) the greatest team game on Earth,” said Andrews, who is in his fourth season in New England, “but when you’ve got a guy like that, I’m not surprised.”
Then again, who was?
Certainly not safety Devin McCourty, a teammate of Brady’s since 2010 when Andrews was still pulling on a helmet and shoulder pads for the Wolves of Wesleyan (Georgia) High School.
He, too, had seen it all before, most notably in the Patriots’ 34-28 overtime victory over the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl LI.
“You saw me. I ran off,” McCourty told reporters in Kansas City following Sunday night’s game. “As soon as I saw it was heads, I saw this before. I know what happens at the end of this one.”
Wide receiver Julian Edelman, who came aboard in 2009, when the quarterback was already heading into his 10th season in the league, says there’s something in those Brady genes.
“I think it’s just his fight, his competition, his prep. It’s in his DNA,” Edelman answered when asked following the 37-31 overtime win in KC what gave his batterymate the ability and composure to continually respond under pressure. “There’s a clutch gene. He’s got it.”
A teammate of Brady’s since 2008, Slater seconds the motion.
“You always have a lot of confidence when No. 12 is on your team. You always have a chance to win any game, no matter what the situation is,” said Slater. “We felt good about giving our offense the ball and they certainly did the job once they got it.”
Before the Patriots could win in overtime, though, they first had to get there, which wasn’t a given when running back Damien Williams went 2 yards up the middle for a touchdown that gave the Chiefs their second lead of the fourth quarter, 28-24, with 2:03 to play.
Brady’s answer to that was a six-play, 65-yard drive that began with 20- and 11-yard completions to Edelman and fellow wide receiver Chris Hogan. Given a second chance on a third-and-10 – Charvarius Ward’s interception of a pass that glanced off Rob Gronkowski’s hands was negated by an offside call against edge rusher Dee Ford – Brady found the tight end matched up one-on-one with Chiefs safety Eric Berry deep down the left sideline for 25 yards, spotting the ball for running back Rex Burkhead to score off left tackle from the 4 with 39 seconds to go.
With the Patriots' defense unable to make that 31-28 lead stand up – Patrick Mahomes, the Chiefs’ 23-year-old phenom, quickly drove his team 48 yards for a 39-yard field goal by Harrison Butker with eight seconds remaining in the fourth quarter – more work was needed in overtime.
What unfolded after that was merely the latest addition to Brady’s Hall of Fame legacy, a drive that saw the 41-year-old convert not one, not two, but three third-and-10 situations with completions of 20 and 15 yards to Edelman, then another 15-yarder to Gronkowski before three straight runs by Burkhead covered the last 15 for the win.
It was old hat for the old-timer, the 19-year veteran engineering the 57th game-winning performance of his career to lead his team back from a fourth-quarter deficit or tie.
“We’re always comfortable when we know we have to drive down the field,” said Gronkowski. “Yes, we never won every game when it came down to those situations, but you’re always comfortable with Tom going down on the drives. He’s always prepared, he’s always ready for these moments, and that’s why he’s the greatest quarterback just hands down.”
Now, his ninth appearance on football’s biggest stage and another young gun – 24-year-old Jared Goff – await, a Feb. 3 date with the Los Angeles Rams in Atlanta that will mark the biggest age difference (17 years) in starting quarterbacks in Super Bowl history.
The Patriots will gladly hang their hopes on their QB, an old hand with five rings.
“He knows how to find the open guys no matter who it is – running back, receiver, tight end, fullback – he always knows who to go to, who’s going to be open and he does a great job,” said Gronkowski. “(There’s) always (a) full level of confidence with him at quarterback.”