Alan Truex: Tom Brady has enough left to win a sixth Super Bowl
This coming Super Bowl reeks of foregone conclusion. The LA Rams are considered illegitimate, advancing to the pro football final because of the most flagrant and most discussed officiating error ever.
Their quarterback, Jared Goff, gets little love, dismissed as a robot who follows the directions spoken into his earpiece by his head coach, Sean McVay.
By contrast, the New England Patriots’ quarterback, Tom Brady, is described by the most revered of four-letter words, GOAT. And their head coach, Bill Belichick, is twice as old as McVay and has won five more world championships. Been to eight more Super Bowls.
Never mind that the Rams have more individual star power, starting with the most athletic and dominant defensive force in the sport, Aaron Donald, with Ndamukong Suh, Todd Gurley, Aqib Talib also being among the National Football League’s most acclaimed and most compensated players.
In fact, the Vegas bookmakers were so enamored of Hollywood talent that they initially installed the Rams as favorites. But within a matter of hours the public was backing the Patriots in such overwhelming mass that the line flipped.
Since early last week it’s generally been Patriots -2.5.
The Patriots’ best-known stars – Brady and Rob Gronkowski – have lost some of their luster to encroaching time.
Point duly noted by Nickell Robey-Coleman, the Ram cornerback who craves attention, whether it’s positive or negative. He shocked the football universe by critiquing the 41-year-old Brady to Bleacher Report: “Age has definitely taken a toll. He’s not the same quarterback he was. Movement, speed, velocity, arm strength, whatever he was doing, because of his age he’s not doing as much of it.”
But no matter how much R-C or anybody else talks, it’s difficult for the betting public to support the Rams over a team that looks at the Super Bowl as routine. As ex-NFL quarterback Steve Beuerlein said on NFL Monday QB, “You have to give the Patriots the advantage on this: Which team can keep it business as usual? That’s the challenge for the Rams, I think.”
The Patriots in their overtime victory in the AFC title game used discipline, intelligence and experience to overcome the superior athleticism of the Kansas City Chiefs. Basically, the same dynamic is expected when SBLIII commences in Atlanta on Sunday at 5:40 Central time.
In USA Today’s polling of its NFL analysts, six of seven picked the Pats. The lone dissenter, Lorenzo Reyes, wrote his ticket for Los Angeles “because I should stick with my preseason Super Bowl squad.”
This is the sort of perverse loyalty that’s frequently heard from football prognosticators. If you thought a team was better in August than it turned out to be, you’re not going to change your mind in January.
That said, Reyes does make a valid point: “Defensive coordinator Wade Phillips, who has had his share of successes against New England, will have a better game plan against Brady, Julian Edelman and Gronkowski than the Chiefs did.”
I find myself tugged by the flow of the Supermajority. The machinelike Patriots are meticulously assembled, endlessly updated by Belichick. His team never has a weakness for long.
Much has been written about the Patriot defense being weak against the run. Overlooked is how Belichick rebuilt his run defense after Pittsburgh Steelers rookie Jaylen Samuels gouged it for 142 yards on Dec. 16. In the four games since then, the Patriot defense has yielded an average of 59 rushing yards –- 3.7 per carry.
It wasn’t a drastic change in personnel, but familiar players stepping up to a new plateau with some tweaking of assignments. In these four games, Trey Flowers has 3 sacks, 4 tackles for loss, 6 QB hits. Linebacker Kyle Van Noy has 20 tackles, 2 sacks, 2 ½ tackles for loss. Nose tackle Lawrence Guy has dismantled opposing centers, hitting their quarterback three times in those four games.
The Rams will balance run and pass, and Todd Gurley, the slumping All-Pro running back, is a lock to be more productive than he was in the NFC Championship, when he touched the ball five times.
Jason LaCanfora of CBS reports that the Rams have promised a heavy workload for a well-rested Gurley: “I expect him to get as many touches in the first quarter as he got in the entire championship game.”
If Gurley can be assertive, the Rams will employ a play-action pass game that’s the most effective in the NFL. Goff averaged 10.1 yards with it this season.
But even allowing that Goff is underrated – McVay pointing out that the 24-year-old quarterback calls some of his own audibles at the scrimmage line – I can’t help thinking Brady has the upper hand.
In the bye week before their postseason opener against the LA Chargers, Brady booked a training session with arms expert Tom House. He wanted a mechanical tuneup. But Nickell Robey-Coleman sees more decay in Brady than others see. Beuerlein insists: “He’s played his best football at the end of the season. It’s just Tom Brady.”
Belichick will find matchups to exploit. Sony Michel will run behind monstrous linemen against an undersized Ram front. Gronkowski in what might be his final game will summon whatever he has left. Perhaps Belichick will find a way to match him up against Robey-Coleman.
