FOXBORO, Mass. — In case you haven’t heard, Tom Brady is 41 years old. But he’s certainly not playing like it.
Fresh off an MVP season at age 40, the New England Patriots quarterback hasn’t slid an inch in 2018. Through eight games, Brady has thrown for 2,200 yards, 16 touchdowns and seven interceptions while completing 67.5 percent of his passes. At this point a season ago, Brady had accumulated 2,541 yards, 16 touchdowns and two picks with a completion percentage of 66.6.
Brady continues to stave off Father Time each week, and his consistently high level of play at age 41 has impressed head coach Mike McCarthy, whose Green Bay Packers face Brady and the Patriots on Sunday night at Gillette Stadium.
“Well, you just see the consistency,” McCarthy told reporters on a conference call Wednesday. “I mean he’s had total command of the offense for forever, seems like 20 years, but just their ability to get in and out of personnel groups, just the awareness of everything going on around him, he’s competitive, so competitive. He just keeps rolling so we’ve been very impressed with the tape.”
The story for Sunday night’s showdown naturally will be the matchup of two future Hall of Fame quarterbacks — Brady and Aaron Rodgers — but the Packers star isn’t paying attention to that.
“It’s never been (an individual matchup), you know,” Rodgers said Wednesday. “Obviously, I’m leading my offense, he’s leading his offense, but my focus in my film is on their defense and thinking about how their coaching staff is going to try and take away what we do best like they always do. So that’s kind of where the focus is, you know the me and Tom stuff is for media fodder and to get people to tune in, but it’s ‘Sunday Night Football’ and we know there’s going to be a ton of people watching and a tough place to play up there.
“Obviously, they are rolling and we’re trying to get things going here.”
Brady and the Patriots have won five games in a row since starting the season 1-2 with embarrassing losses to the Jacksonville Jaguars and Detroit Lions. Rodgers and the Packers, on the other hand, have struggled with consistency so far, amassing a 3-3-1 record while failing to win a game away from Lambeau Field.
They’ll have another opportunity to get off the schneid Sunday night, but it won’t be a walk in the park with how locked in Brady has been over the past five weeks.
