Will Super Bowl Performance Be the New Norm for Tom Brady?

Three hundred and twenty-eight yards. Four touchdowns. Seventy-four percent completion rate on a whopping 50 pass attempts. A fourth Super Bowl win in six appearances, a third Super Bowl MVP award and a never-before-accomplished ring 10 years after his last one.

New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, with a white-hot fourth-quarter comeback win, cemented his place as the greatest of all time, according to Bleacher Report national NFL lead writer Mike Freeman and much of the football-watching universe.

Thanks to a head-scratching play call by his opponent, and an incredible individual effort by an unheralded member of the Patriots back seven, that is the big takeaway from Super Bowl XLIX.

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But what if Pete Carroll lets Marshawn Lynch finish that final Seahawks drive? What if Malcolm Butler—whom, per WEEI, Brady may give the free truck that comes with the MVP award—doesn't make a physics-defying break on the ball? What if Brady stands on the sidelines and watches as his defense allows a third straight miraculous game-winning Super Bowl drive?

The narrative might be just a little bit different.

The narrative might focus on the two interceptions Brady threw in the first 37 minutes, turning what could have been a three- or four-touchdown Pats lead into a tight game. The narrative might be chewing over how limited Brady's arm has become. The narrative might be chewing on whether Brady is good enough to beat the best teams in the NFL without a lot of help from his supporting cast and defense.

In a postseason dominated by talk of Peyton Manning's diminished physical ability—and now, this Super Bowl win giving Brady the edge over Manning once and for all—it's startling that Brady has been given a pass.

Here's Brady's Super Bowl passing chart, per Pro-Football-Reference:

Deep L: 0/3, 0 yards	Deep Mid: 1/1, 21 yards	Deep R: 1/2, 22 yards, TD
Short L: 17/22, 126, 2 TD	Short Mid: 6/10, 83 yards, TD	Short R: 12/12, 76 yards

Yup. Just six of 50 pass attempts went downfield, and he completed just two. One was the 21-yard completion to Julian Edelman on which he took his fateful hit, and the other a gorgeous 22-yard sideline touch pass to Rob Gronkowski for a touchdown.

Of the three Patriots Super Bowls for which Pro-Football-Reference has directional passing data, in XLIX Brady took the fewest downfield shots:

	2014	2011	2007
Deep Attempt Rate	12.0	17.1	18.8

One downfield pass was broken up by Seahawks cornerback Tharold Simon. Another was a down-the-seam floater Gronkowski couldn't come back to. The other two were bad misses down the left sideline. Only the pass to Edelman had any real zip, and Brady took two hitch-steps into it (to go 20 yards in the air).

Brady went 35-of-44 on the remaining short passes for 285 yards. That's an average of 6.48 yards per attempt and 8.14 yards per completion. In English: That's ankle-biting.

There's some merit in taking what a defense like the Seahawks gives. It's just good football to pick on a backup pressed into duty, like Simon. Per Pro Football Focus (subscription required), Brady targeted Simon on 10 of his 50 attempts and completed six. Those six completions accounted for 84 of his 328 yards and two of his four touchdowns.

Had starting slot corner Jeremy Lane—who picked off Brady in the first quarter—stayed in, it's fair to wonder if Brady would have been anywhere near as effective. 

Brady's lack of downfield passing isn't just about one game, though: This is an ongoing problem.

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Pro Football Focus charts passes over 20 yards and the percentage of "accurate" throws. Brady's 33.3 percent deep-ball accuracy rate in 2014 put him in a four-way tie for 17th with Kyle Orton, Andy Dalton and Colin Kaepernick. That's hardly MVP-caliber company.

What's that you say? Brady has never exactly been long off the tee? In 2007, Brady finished No. 1 in PFF's deep passing accuracy. He led the NFL in yards, touchdowns and average yards per attempt (and nearly every other category). This season, Brady finished 10th in yards, fifth in touchdowns and tied for 18th in average yards per attempt.

Brady did have Randy Moss to throw to in 2007—but even if an in-his-prime Moss stepped out of a wormhole and into the Patriots training camp this summer, it's hard to picture the Brady we saw in Super Bowl XLIX getting him the ball.

Unless Brady has one of those secret injuries that seem to be all the rage these days, this is what he is.

For the Patriots, that means this is what they are: little-to-no deep passing, a wildly hit-or-miss running game (21 carries for just 57 yards in the Super Bowl) and Brady spreading the field and working the margins—with little margin for error.

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Second-round rookie Jimmy Garoppolo is waiting in the wings and has looked fantastic every time he's played. The Belichick-era Patriots have never hesitated to ditch popular, still-effective veterans if a better option is around: See what they did to Wes Welker, Randy Moss, Richard Seymour and, yes, Drew Bledsoe.

Pointing all this out might foul the rightly triumphant mood. But as Brady's father told Mark Leibovich of The New York Times, "It will end badly" between Brady and the Patriots. Brady won't ever hang 'em up, and the Patriots won't risk losing games for sentimental reasons.

As long as Brady can read the field and make decisions as fast as anybody in the business, and as long as he can still accurately zip six-yard passes, the Patriots will win games. But will they maintain their stranglehold on the AFC East? Will they keep winning Super Bowls? Can they consistently be this one-dimensional and still be the best team in football?

For a hint, keep a close eye this spring on what the Patriots do with personnel.

Do they keep veterans like Shane Vereen around? He showed he can be a boon to Brady, but there are reasons why he's never held on to a primary role in New England. If the Patriots let superstar cornerback Darrelle Revis walk, it'll be a clear sign the youth movement is underway. If the Patriots make a big move for a young speedster on the outside, it could be Brady's last chance to prove he can still get vertical—or a clue they're preparing for the next iteration.