Morton Muffley
Footballguy
Everyone likes to focus on the genius coaching moves (6 DBs, 4LBs, 1DL) of Belichick and Brady's ability to spread the ball around to any number of WRs (i.e his favorite target is the open receiver), but what often gets overlooked are the little plays that the great players/teams make. I'm not trying to single out the Pats as I think they get enough press already and certainly think that there are other players/coaches who also display similar football smarts (Manning, Shanahan, Fisher, etc.) ...but since I just watched the NE/Dallas game yesterday, I thought I'd comment on what I thought was a great, underappreciated play by Brady.
Situation:
NE 38 Dallas 27
4 minutes remaining
Pats have 3rd and goal at the Dallas 4
Obviously, a TD would be great, but New England MUST come away with a FG...so what happens, Brady drops back, quickly scans the endzone, sees that no one is OBVIOUSLY open, and launches a pass into the seats. Brady held the ball for maybe 2 seconds (I'm probably being generous here) and faced no sig pressure...so why is this a great play? Because he didn't risk the gimme field goal by trying to hold the ball another 2-3 seconds looking for a man to come free. It's this kind of risk/reward tradeoff that makes Brady and the Pats so good. He knew that the FG would likely ice the game and that while a TD would definitely ice it, he wasn't willing to risk a sack/fumble or pressure/int in order to get a chance at the TD. He knew that a negative play there would give Dallas the life they needed and could turn the game and he wasn't going to risk it. To me, that's heads-up football.
Anyone else have any other examples from this year (NE or other)?
Situation:
NE 38 Dallas 27
4 minutes remaining
Pats have 3rd and goal at the Dallas 4
Obviously, a TD would be great, but New England MUST come away with a FG...so what happens, Brady drops back, quickly scans the endzone, sees that no one is OBVIOUSLY open, and launches a pass into the seats. Brady held the ball for maybe 2 seconds (I'm probably being generous here) and faced no sig pressure...so why is this a great play? Because he didn't risk the gimme field goal by trying to hold the ball another 2-3 seconds looking for a man to come free. It's this kind of risk/reward tradeoff that makes Brady and the Pats so good. He knew that the FG would likely ice the game and that while a TD would definitely ice it, he wasn't willing to risk a sack/fumble or pressure/int in order to get a chance at the TD. He knew that a negative play there would give Dallas the life they needed and could turn the game and he wasn't going to risk it. To me, that's heads-up football.
Anyone else have any other examples from this year (NE or other)?
