NFL1000: Is This the Scariest Tom Brady Yet?

Tom Brady is back, America. And he’s pissed off. He’s got that look in his eye again. And that’s very, very bad news for the rest of the NFL.

Remember 2007, the year of Spygate, when the Patriots were slammed down by the NFL, and Brady responded with a vengeance? He had two new targets in Randy Moss and Wes Welker, and he used that offense to set all kinds of scoring and yardage marks? New England’s loss to the Giants in Super Bowl XLII obviously diminished Brady’s overall accomplishments, but a decade later, at age 39, Brady looks to have the talent, and the targets around him, to be just as terrifying as he’s ever been.

Reprising the two-tight end offense led by Aaron Hernandez and Rob Gronkowski from 2010 through 2012, Bill Belichick finally replaced Hernandez and gave Gronk a perfect foil in Martellus Bennett, the former Cowboys and Bears tight end who was acquired in March from Chicago for a fourth-round pick. The Patriots also got a sixth-round pick in return, and right now, that deal looks like one of the bigger heists in recent league annals. Armed with his new best buddy and fresh off his four-game DeflateGate suspension, Brady completed 28 of 40 passes for 406 yards and three touchdowns – all to Bennett. New England beat the Browns 33-13, carving them up as if they were the… well, as if they were the Browns.

Accuracy	Arm	Pressure	Decision	Positional Value	Overall
22/25	19/25	16/20	13/20	10/10	80/100

But let’s set the weak opponent narrative aside for a moment. Yes, the Pats found help from some head-scratching decisions made by Cleveland’s defense, but this Brady-Bennett combo is the real story, along with Brady’s triumphant return to what he does best. And let’s start there. Brady said after the fact that he was still blowing off some rust (and it showed a few times), but he made a couple of tight-window throws that very few NFL quarterbacks could complete with consistency.

Brady's Accuracy

Brady has developed scary-good accuracy throughout his career, and has been able to maintain it through different offensive lines and targets, because he’s so mechanically sound. He knows how to use his lower body to create velocity, he understands how to rock from his back foot to his front foot in the timing of the throw, and because his mechanics are repeatable, he doesn’t have to adjust in his head for this or that situation. It’s one of the things that separates him from the Jay Cutlers and Joe Flacccos of the world – Brady has married his arm talent to a comprehensive understanding of mechanical proficiency.

The first example from the Browns game comes with 13:11 left in the first quarter. It’s Brady’s second throw of his season, and he hits Gronk on a perfect throw  over the middle. Brady turns to run play-action, turns around to find Gronk accelerating from the closely-covering linebacker, Chris Kirksey. Gronk does a great job of establishing position to the middle of the field as he runs, giving Brady a clear concept of where he needs to place the ball. Brady lets timing and rhythm do the rest. It's a quick-snap throw Brady must complete before he's taken down.

Kirksey is a good all-around linebacker, but he’s been a liability in coverage this season – coming into this game, per Pro Football Focus, he’d allowed 15 catches in 21 targets for 144 yards, a touchdown, and a 106.1 quarterback rating. Brady wasn’t done with him yet – on this day, Kirksey was responsible for six receptions on his six targets for 85 yards, a touchdown, and a perfect 158.3 quarterback rating.

The second pass we’ll show that demonstrates Brady’s outstanding combination of timing, accuracy and velocity is Bennett’s second touchdown, with 12:15 left in the first half. Bennett runs a short crossing route from the left side, and Kirksey actually does a good job of coverage here – he converges to Bennett’s space as you’d want a linebacker to do. It’s just that Brady was a lot better at placing the ball than Kirksey could be at preventing the play.

That’s two good coverages, failed. Welcome to Planet Brady, Mr. Kirksey.

Play Design

Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels may have put himself in place to be an NFL head coach again with his work over Brady’s four-game absence. He developed a bootleg-friendly game play for backup Jimmy Garoppolo in New England’s first two wins, adapted to a read-option structure for rookie third-stringer Jacoby Brissett against the Texans in Week 3 when Garoppolo was hurt, and the fact that the Bills caught up to it in Week 4 really isn’t that much of an indictment. Brissett was running a simplistic-by-design system, and it was only a matter of time before it was solved. With Brady back, McDaniels could unleash all of his creativity in the passing game, and he threw some tremendous looks out there that really confused Cleveland’s defense.

My favorite play design in this game was Bennett’s third touchdown, which came with 12:28 left in the third quarter. The Patriots have first-and-10 at Cleveland’s 37-yard line, and everything about this play screams run. Gronk and Bennett are aligned in the formation to the right side, just outside right tackle Cameron Fleming, and Brady sells play-action hard to running back James White. Moreover, New England’s offensive line blocks in run-action; i.e., selling run-blocking on a pass play. The line runs a slide protection to the right with Gronk and Bennett still in-line, so you can understand why everyone on Cleveland’s defense reacts accordingly.

Oops. Turns out, Bennett does release from the formation quickly to run his sideline route, and Gronk releases with him to run the seam. And because cornerback Joe Haden (23) bit so hard on the run, the only Browns defender in Bennett’s or Gronk’s relative vicinity is safety Ibraheim Campbell (24), who gives it a noble shot to recover to the ball, but it’s simply too late. It was the design of the play that created two open tight ends – Brady actually had his choice between them, and the time to decide.

One reason the Patriots will be able to sell the run aspect of this formation and concept is that in Gronk and Bennett, they have two of the best pure blocking tight ends in the NFL. Gronk has been stellar at it for years, and blocking was Bennett’s best attribute early in his career as he was developing as a pass-catcher. Thus, New England’s embarrassment of riches continues.

The Matchup Nightmares

Getting down the base of it, we can already see what the addition of Bennett does to enemy defenses – as Hernandez did for a while before his murder arrest and conviction, Bennett presents a series of unsolvable problems. Now, you can’t double-cover both Gronk and Bennett, though each player is good enough to merit it, because that leaves easy openings for Julian Edelman and Chris Hogan and Brady’s other targets. And if you flat-out blow a coverage, or implement the wrong defensive concept, you’re sunk. The Browns found this out on Bennett’s first touchdown, with 2:12 left in the first quarter. It’s a goal-line defense with linebacker Joe Schobert (53) and safety Derrick Kindred (30) blitzing to Brady’s front side, and Haden and safety Jordan Poyer (33) following Hogan to the end zone from the right slot. You can see Haden signaling to Poyer, and perhaps Haden was supposed to be covering Bennett.

The result, however, is that nobody covers Bennett.

And when you have to cover Gronk and Bennett to the same side? Bring extra guys and eat your Wheaties that morning, because it’s not going to be fun at all. The Browns discovered this with 11:20 left in the game. Bennett goes in motion from left to right, and Cleveland’s reaction tells Brady that he’s going to see man coverage. He’s going to have Kirksey on Gronk up the seam, and Poyer on Bennett outside to the boundary. Neither of those options work for the Browns, but the Kirksey-Gronk matchup is the one Brady exploits for a 37-yard gain.

Perhaps the most impressive part of Bennett’s day was that he did nearly everything he did after suffering an ankle injury with 10:49 left in the first quarter. When asked after the game how he was able to overcome the pain, Bennett responded with a typically unique answer.

“They asked me if I needed a cart, and I’m like, “S**t, I’m going to look so weak,” Bennett said, via Jeff Howe of the Boston Herald. “I’ve been watching Luke Cage. He’s the bulletproof brother from Marvel [Comics], and I’m like, ‘What would Luke Cage do right now? He’d get up and keep bouncing around, so I was like, ‘I’ve got to get up and show them, get a moment, just run off the field and let them know I’m coming back in the game.”

Bennett has enjoyed heroic moments throughout his NFL career, and in the Patriots’ current offense, he’s got the potential for a lot more. And Tom Brady, the man up top, has the scariest group of teammates he’s had since the halycon days of Moss and Welker.

Worse yet for New England’s opponents? Brady is right – he was shaking off the rust, he was working to get on the same page with his receivers, and you could see it at times, especially in the second half, when miscommunications kept the Pats from putting even more of a beatdown on the Browns.

“Some of the identification, some of the things that I was seeing to help the offensive line out, to help us and our receivers kind of get on the same page with certain routes that I wish I could have got to,” Brady said Monday morning on WEEI. “It was just taking me a little bit longer to kind of see some of those things. Normally I would be very sharp. Sometimes I was kind of trying to diagnose the front and the coverage. I think those things will hopefully will get a little better next week.”

Be afraid, NFL. Tom Brady’s back, he’s pissed off, and he’s bringing all his Super Friends with him.