![]() ![]() ![]() Before it even started, their cornerbacks coach, Kevin Ross, wrote on a board all the quarterbacks they would be facing - Matt Ryan, Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers and Mahomes, who torched them in Week 12 for 462 yards and three touchdowns. The Buccaneers loaded up on playmaking receivers, linebackers who excelled in coverage and aggressive defensive backs who matured as the season progressed. ![]() “They were an organization ready to win,” Gronkowski said of the Buccaneers. Their quest was nicknamed Operation Shoeless Joe Jackson, a wink to the prophesy from the movie “Field of Dreams”: “If you build it, he will come.” Brady valued how General Manager Jason Licht had assembled a team that solved problems around him instead of asking him to solve them himself. When asked recently about pursuing Brady during the off-season, Arians responded with a rhetorical question: “Do you sit and live in a closet trying to be safe, or are you going to have some fun?” He added, “I think I’d have been smoking something illegal to really imagine this.”īrady’s arrival in Tampa reflected a certain harmonic convergence, a confluence of foresight, audacity and serendipity largely alien to the Buccaneers, who hadn’t won a playoff game since steamrollering the Raiders for their only title after the 2002 season. What Belichick must have been wondering Sunday night as New England wept, watching Brady throw each touchdown to a former Patriots teammate - two to Rob Gronkowski, who came out of retirement for the chance to play again with his old pal, and one, just before halftime, to Antonio Brown.īrady’s time in New England will forever be a part of him, but now he wears a skull and crossbones on his helmet, can dress in shorts to practice in the winter and reports to a 68-year-old coach, Bruce Arians, who, coming out of retirement to coach the Buccaneers, represents the stylistic antithesis of Belichick. “I think we knew this was going to happen now, didn’t we?” “We came together at the right time,” Brady, who went 21 of 29 for 201 passing yards and was selected as the Super Bowl’s most valuable player for the fifth time, said on the field afterward. Brady joined Peyton Manning as the only starting quarterbacks to win Super Bowls with multiple franchises. franchise, more than John Elway and his boyhood idol, Joe Montana, combined, more than Michael Jordan in the N.B.A. In delivering Tampa Bay’s second to win his seventh - more than any N.F.L. The last two Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks had never faced each other, and in some circles the game had been distilled in rather crude, and imprecise, terms as a referendum on each of their legacies - as if Brady’s would be tarnished with a defeat, or if, four seasons into a glorious career, Mahomes’s was somehow linked to the outcome. ![]() struck a cosmic bargain: In exchange for plowing through a full 256-game slate without creating a closed environment in which to play, it would be granted the most tantalizing quarterback matchup in the Super Bowl era, Brady versus Patrick Mahomes, the best of all time against the best of this time. Capitol, Patriots Coach Bill Belichick declined to accept a Presidential Medal of Freedom from him, citing his conversations with the team “about social justice, equality and human rights.”įor this untidy heap of a season even to reach Sunday’s capstone, it was as if the N.F.L. Trump became “ uncomfortable.” As Trump’s term came to a close, with some of his supporters leading an armed attack on the U.S. Looking Ahead: With the 2022 season in the books, here are the topics that will be the talk of the N.F.L. even before the next season starts.Ĭivil unrest over racial injustice roiled the country, emboldening players, coaches and owners to protest systemic inequality, with some players gathering to challenge the commissioner, Roger Goodell, to proclaim that Black Lives Matter.īrady left New England behind and did not comment this season on the red Make America Great Again hat seen in his locker there in 2015, but he did say his relationship with President Donald J.A Crucial Penalty : Did a referee’s call in the final moments of the game unfairly cost the Eagles a Super Bowl win? The answer depends largely on what colors you wear.Eagles Come Close: Philadelphia quarterback Jalen Hurts scored four touchdowns in a performance with only one blemish, but it was a big one.season plagued by shocking injuries and turnover among football’s most recognizable names. Patrick Mahomes’s Moment: The Kansas City quarterback dazzled in his team’s comeback win, capping an N.F.L.What to Know About Super Bowl LVII Kansas City’s down-to-the-wire victory over Philadelphia gave the team its second title in four seasons. ![]()
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