Tom Brady Watched Game Film All Last Night
WEEI – There’s no doubt Tom Brady is ready for the playoffs to begin.
After earning a first-round bye, the Patriots now know they will take on the Chargers next Sunday afternoon at Gillette Stadium in the AFC divisional round and Brady did not waste any time getting to work Sunday night.
“There’s an intense pressure,” Brady said on Mut & Callahan Monday morning. “I already felt it last night after that game ended. I was up watching film all night. That is the way it is. … I was [up] pretty late last night. I had a lot of film to watch. I was up pretty late.”
Brady also noted this is the biggest week of the year for him.
Imagine if you will, you’re a member of the San Diego Los Angeles Chargers. You’re coming off an emotionally and physically exhausting playoff road win where you held a modern NFL team to like -20 yards passing for 50 minutes and then still almost blew it in the end. But you pulled it out. After flying across the country, you fly back all night to get rested up, get your circadian rhythm back on track and start preparing for a team you haven’t beaten since Matt Cassel was the quarterback. And by the time you get out of bed, this is what you’re waking up to.
Tom Brady is already hours-deep into his film work on you. That while a lesser quarterback would’ve watched the Philly-Chicago game, put his kids to bed and then gotten a little mommy-daddy time with his smokebomb wife, he got down to work, identifying disguised coverages and Joey Bosa/Branden Mebane 3rd down combo rush packages looking to identify tendencies. That 7-defensive back look might have worked wonders in Baltimore since Lamar Jackson had never seen it before and the Ravens coaches had no adjustments for it. But how’s it going to work against a guy who not only faced every scheme ever devised, he’d watched every play of yesterday’s game twice before the Chargers touched ground at LAX? A guy who’s been breaking down defenses since he was a freshman at Michigan, which happens to be the same year Derwin James was born. Good luck with that.
But as a Patriots loyalist, there is absolutely nothing I wanted to hear today more than this. After all the talk this year about Brady’s attitude, his work ethic, people questioning his body language for sitting by himself on the bench or for not screaming “Let’s fucking GO!” on camera like he’s done in the past. While the Boston talk shows spent the weekend pissing their pants about him not having a contract extension (he’s signed through 2019), he’s already nose deep in his laptop X-ing & O-ing for Sunday. Three days before practices begin. Facing a franchise he’s got a career 15 TDs, 5 INTs and a 97.3 passer rating against. And whose numbers against Gus Bradley defenses (4 games, 7 TDs, 2 INTs, 330 yards per game) are even better. He’s going all in with maximum effort. He’s Clubber Lang, doing pullups on a leaky water pipe while death-staring at a picture of Balboa. Total Eye of the Tiger. And I couldn’t be happier.
There’ll be plenty of time to look ahead to this one, and I won’t miss the opportunity to do just that even if it would cure Erectile Dysfunction. But for now, let’s all just be grateful we’ve got a franchise player still as obsessed with success as he ever was. #StillHere