Tom Brady will start his 42nd career playoff game Saturday night at FedEx Field.
His opponent will be starting his first.
With Alex Smith officially ruled out with a calf injury, Taylor Heinicke will start for the Washington Football Team against Brady’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the wild-card round of the 2020 NFL playoffs.
The 27-year-old Heinicke has started just one game since entering the league in 2015, but his name might ring a bell for diehard New England Patriots fans.
Heinicke’s winding NFL journey included a brief stint on the Patriots’ practice squad in 2017, where he served as New England’s third quarterback behind Brady and Jimmy Garoppolo. The Old Dominion product lasted just over two weeks in Foxboro. He signed Sept. 23 and was released Oct. 9.
(The Patriots made a much more consequential QB transaction less than a month later, trading Garoppolo to the San Francisco 49ers on Halloween.)
Heinicke also spent time with the Minnesota Vikings, Houston Texans, Carolina Panthers and XFL’s St. Louis BattleHawks before joining Washington’s practice squad last month. He’s WFT head coach Ron Rivera’s fourth choice at quarterback, following Dwayne Haskins (released), Kyle Allen (injured reserve) and Smith (injured).
Heinicke, who’d been out of the league since 2018, made his Washington debut in Week 16, completing 12 of 19 passes for 137 yards and one touchdown in relief of Haskins.
The inexperienced QB will face a monumental challenge Saturday night against a Buccaneers defense that ranked in the top 10 in points allowed, yards allowed, sacks and takeaways during the regular season. Tampa Bay’s Brady-led offense ranked third in the NFL in scoring, topping 35 points six times.
Washington won the woebegone NFC East at 7-9 this season, granting Rivera’s squad a home playoff game. The Bucs finished 11-5 to secure the NFC’s top wild-card spot.
