In the NFL’s biggest game, with the crowd roaring, the old master failed at the one play he needed to make while the underdog executed his to perfectionOne man is perhaps the greatest quarterback in NFL history. The other is a career fill-in – the player teams turn to when they need to play someone while they search for a better replacement.Nick Foles was supposed to be the worst quarterback Tom Brady had ever faced in the Super Bowl. The 29-year-old, only starting Super Bowl LII because of a season-ending injury to Philadelphia’s star quarterback Carson Wentz, was considered a minor impediment on Brady’s way to his sixth NFL championship. Related: Super Bowl: Philadelphia Eagles stun New England Patriots in...
A hand injury was supposed to hamper the New England quarterback but – as ever – he took apart the opposition when it mattered“We’re not talking about open-heart surgery,” New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick said Sunday evening. Belichick was talking about Tom Brady’s throwing hand, injured in practice last week. But Brady was pretty surgical as he carved apart the Jacksonville Jaguars on the way to his eighth Super Bowl. In a fourth quarter the Jaguars will never forget, he took away their heart and then he pulled the Super Bowl dream to which they so precariously clung those final few minutes, until it was gone for good. @EAGLES FLEA FLICKER TD ALERT! #MINvsPHI #NFLPlayoffs pic.twitter.com/KOsyOgmqROBill Belichick treated that...
The Patriots quarterback’s new book makes some dubious claims about how he has maintained his fitness into his 40s. What do the experts make of it all?Tom Brady may well be the greatest NFL player of all time. He already possesses or shares a host of quarterback records – career wins, Super Bowl wins, career playoff touchdowns – and if he continues to play as long as he has hinted, he may finish his career owning them all. But while Brady has it all, his attempt to pass on his performance secrets in his book, The TB12 Method: How to Achieve a Lifetime of Sustained Peak Performance, falls flat and contains all sorts of dubious claims. The overall message of...
Tom Brady is as brilliant as ever at 40. But the Patriots are one bad tackle away from mounting a Super Bowl challenge without a reliable quarterbackWe should know better than to question Bill Belichick’s football genius. It’s almost exactly one year since the New England Patriots head coach traded linebacker Jamie Collins to the Cleveland Browns in exchange for a third-round draft pick. It’s a move that still defies conventional thought 12 months on. Collins appeared at the Pro Bowl months earlier after recording five forced fumbles, five sacks and 51 solo tackles in the 2015 regular season. “The best defensive player we’ve got, the most athletic guy on the team,” is how former Patriots team-mate Dont’a Hightower described...
New offensive weapons mean the Super Bowl champions are as close as the NFL gets to a super team. Pats haters may be in for a tough few monthsThere’s a good chance we have already witnessed the low point of the 2017 Patriots season. Last week the team lost its preseason opener to the Jacksonville Jaguars, 31-24, while playing without stars Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski. It was a pointless game, as most every exhibition games is. But since winning the Super Bowl in February in an historic comeback, the champions have loaded up for the games that matter and are heavy favorites to win it all again. Las Vegas sports books have them at 5-2. But there are two...