Brady drilled Welker with a 25-yard strike on the first play of the second half from the Patriots 20-yard line. What appeared to be a surefire 80-yard touchdown catch and run, ended up being nothing more than a 73-yard reception, as Jets cornerback Darrelle Revis caught up to and hauled down the speedy Welker.
“Hell, yeah, he’ll take heat for getting caught. Are you kidding me? That should have been an 80-yard touchdown,” Brady said during his weekly spot on WEEI’s The Dennis and Callahan Morning Show on Monday morning. “Believe me, that will motivate Wes. He’ll be out there doing a lot of sprint work, making sure he doesn’t get run down again.”
Maybe Welker was just a little tired on that play, as Brady admits the game sure took a lot out of him.
“There’s a lot that goes into every week,” he explained. “There’s a lot of intensity that we bring to practice, to the games. And sometimes you’re just tired. Sometimes you don’t have the energy to put on a happy face every day. It’s an important week. We were getting to work. There’s a lot of pressure form the time the Oakland game ended. It’s a six-hour flight home. You get to bed at 4 or 5 in the morning, 6 in the morning, like we did. And then it’s a dead sprint until the next game.
“Sometimes you’re a little out of gas and you’ve got to conserve your energy,” he added. “At the end of yesterday’s game, I was tired. I was tired. Look, it’s a big opponent. We put a lot into it. There’s a lot of emotional energy that’s expended. I’m glad we won. I’m glad the week’s over. And now we can move on to another opponent that creates and gives us a lot of different challenges also.”
Despite the win, TB12 knows this team can play better.
“I thought we were capable of playing better than we did yesterday. Even though we won — yeah, I feel great about that,” he said. “Believe me, I know how tough it is to win and how much it sucks to lose. And we played a good team yesterday that has been a tough opponent for us and is a tough opponent every single time we play them. But I thought we made it a little tougher than it needed to be.”
Following are more highlights from the interview.
