Tom Brady was brilliant in the second half Sunday as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers overcame a 17-0 deficit to defeat the Atlanta Falcons 31-27.
As you could imagine, the quarterback’s performance drew nearly universal praise, although Nick Wright couldn’t help but strike a sarcastic tone in giving credit where it’s due.
“If Tom Brady’s team wins, he gets all of the credit,” Wright said on Monday’s episode of “First Things First” on FOX Sports 1. “And when they lose, it is quite literally everyone else’s fault in the organization but his. So let me check: Bucs won, Brady credit. That’s how it goes.”
Brady’s supposed immunity to blame falls under the three NFL “rules” that Wright believes were reinforced in Week 15. The other two: The New York Jets will invent new, creative ways to rip their fans’ hearts out, and the Kansas City Chiefs are locks to win whenever opponents give the ball back to Patrick Mahomes needing a defensive stop.
Wright, a noted Chiefs fan, has been low on Brady the past few seasons, so this evaluation shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, especially when other analysts fawn over the 43-year-old QB.
“Listen, folks, we know these rules,” Wright said. “(The Bucs) are now 9-5. Nine times this year, Tom Brady has won them games. Five times this year, the other 52 players and Bruce Arians have lost them games. So, Brady’s really 9-0, with just five times the other people screwed it up for him.
“These are the rules of television commentary, of in-game announcing and, I assume, team building. So yeah, of course, the zero points they scored in the first half? The game plan sucked. The 31 in the second half? Tom Brady made it happen. That’s the rules, and so yeah, he gets all of the credit. One hundred percent of it, clearly.”
Brady completed 31 of 45 passes Sunday for a season-high 390 yards with two touchdowns.
Sure, there’s a decent chunk of excuse making, justified or not, when Brady and the Bucs struggle, but Sunday really was a vintage effort from the greatest quarterback in NFL history.
