Monday, February 2, 2015

9:37 AM

By Unknown

In: , , ,

No comments

Tale of Comebacks Is Tom Brady's to Tell - New York Times




Tom Brady, the Patriots’ quarterback, after his fourth Super Bowl victory. Doug Mills/The New York Times


Sports of The Times


By






GLENDALE, Ariz. — That was merely insane.


This was a Super Bowl in which narrative lines kept colliding with one another. Each team kept coming back at the other, daring pass following crazed pinball runs following savage tackle.


In the end, it was New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady who claimed the role of that most ambulatory and successful of river boat gamblers, tossing one brilliant pass after another.


At times in the second half on Sunday night, the Patriots appeared a team spent. The Patriots’ aging quarterback — Brady is 37, which is to describe someone who is sprightly in almost any line of work save the savage sport of football — looked stripped of tricks.


He had been knocked about all night long, and intercepted twice. Michael Bennett, a whirling wild man of a defensive lineman for Seattle, had gone horizontal airborne and put his pads into Brady in a crunching collision of sinew and bone.



Then Brady summoned a final push and his team followed him. With the Patriots down by 3 points in the fourth quarter, he tossed high, arcing Cool Hand Luke passes and others that would qualify as major league baseball-quality fastballs. His march ended with a dart of a throw to Julian Edelman, who had bobbed and weaved all night and sustained a head hammer of a hit, for a touchdown.




Play Video|0:29

Tom Brady on His Legacy



Tom Brady on His Legacy



The Patriots quarterback was asked about his place in history after winning another Super Bowl.


Video by Justin Sablich on February 2, 2015. Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images.

So there’s the useful reminder: It’s a foolish man who tries to sound Taps for Brady before the game’s final seconds tick out. Brady could have been excused for asking to encase his right arm in ice at games end. He had thrown 50 passes and connected on 37 of them.


For his troubles, he was voted the Super Bowl’s most valuable player for a third time.


“We made the plays when we needed to,” Brady said in what counts as an exercise in extreme understatement.


This Super Bowl felt at times like a Seattle home game, so many were the Seahawks fans and blue-green jerseys in the audience.


Minutes before the game started, the video screen flashed the face of Seahawks defensive back Richard Sherman. The joint erupted. Then the screen flashed the frowning (of course) face of Patriots Coach Bill Belichick; it was like an image beamed down from Death Star. The place echoed with boos.


Who is rooting for the Patriots in here? I asked.


A colleague obliged by pointing out the lone Patriots fan. (Note to the literal minded: There’s a slight exaggeration to be divined here).




Slide Show|24 Photos

Patriots Make a Stand



Patriots Make a Stand


Chang W. Lee/The New York Times


Although NBC and the N.F.L. did their best to conceal the game in an endless thicket of commercials, it often felt like a grand heavyweight bout, the ebb and flow of energy and story lines changing round by round. And until a final, inexplicable play call at the goal line with seconds left, the Seahawks had played a brilliant, gutsy game.


Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson, as he is wont to do, waited nearly 20 minutes before completing a pass. He spent much of the first half running this way and that, ducking under Patriots linebackers and linemen, unable to find an open man.


The Patriots’ secondary was like a Venus fly trap, trapping each receiver in its sticky embrace.


And yet, with his team trailing by 7 points and the first half less than a minute from expiring, Wilson pulled a Wilson, which is to say he marched his team 80 yard downfield in five plays. With Seattle just yards from the end zone, the entire stadium readied for the field goal unit to trot on to the field.


Instead, the Seahawks and its coach, Pete Carroll, tossed down and went for a touchdown. Even as my fellow writers mouthed the words “what a terrible decision” — O.K., I cop a plea; I was one of them — the Seahawks’ dice tumbled across the board. And Wilson threw a arching pass for a touchdown.


Then there was Marshawn Lynch, the pile-driving running back. Notorious in the week leading up to the game for his Greta Garbo “I want to be alone” act, he showed why his teammates give him the big love.


He smashed into the line, as often as not giving the impression that he had not even really begun to run until the first tackler got his arms around him. Then he’d deke and spin and often carry 300-pound Patriots linemen on his back for another bloody 3 yards.




Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett hit Patriots quarterback Tom Brady during the second half. Brady was sacked only once, though. Doug Mills/The New York Times

Trying to tackle him looked to be a serious drag.


Midway through the third quarter, it was the Patriots that seemed spent, and the Seahawks swelled with energy. But Brady kept throwing. With the clock ticking down toward four minutes in the fourth quarter, the Patriots got within sniffing distance of the goal line, and somehow you knew how this would end.


With a Brady strike of a toss.


Game over? Please. Now it was the turn of Team Hair on Fire — that would be the Seahawks.


Wilson and his crew marched raggedly down the field. Receivers stumbled and Wilson missed a few. Then he tossed a long, arcing Hail Mary of a pass toward the right corner. The Patriots’ defender was right there, he touched the ball, along with receiver Jermaine Kearse. The ball bounced up in the air, off Kearse’s legs, and hands. And just as Kearse landed on his backside, the ball plunked into his lap.


O.K., I knew how this narrative ends. The Seahawks were about to snatch another bone of a win from the jaws of a salivating dog. And then, just like that, within feet of the end zone, the Seahawks and Carroll, the gambler coach, did another of their Las Vegas toss-downs.


They inexplicably turned away from Lynch. (The Seahawks’ offensive coordinator said he and Carroll feared if they ran the ball, the clock might run out on the Seahawks before the team finished its allotted plays). Instead, Russell stepped back quickly, whipped around and tried to punch through a touchdown pass.


Interception.


“There’s really no one to blame but me,” Carroll said.


True that. Although perhaps simpler to say there was no one better to credit than old man Brady. He was M.V.P. again, and he could claim fewer wilder paths to his crown.


Correction: February 2, 2015

An earlier version of this article misstated the given name of a Seahawks defensive back. He is Richard Sherman, not Russell. It also misstated the surname of a Seahawks wide receiver. He is Jermaine Kearse, not Kease.





Email: powellm@nytimes.com



A version of this article appears in print on February 2, 2015, on page D1 of the New York edition with the headline: Tale of Comebacks Is Brady’s to Tell.










Source: Top Stories - Google News - http://ift.tt/1zv8ksX

0 comments:

Post a Comment