Believe it or not ESPN is not blowing smoke out their asses, Brady had a good game. Now if we are talking on Brady grading levels, then no, his game was bad. He had a good/great game based on average QB grading against a top defense. Still don't feel like it was a good game on his part? Let's measure the game by successful drives. Now first let me clear up what we mean by a successful drive.
My definition of a successful drive is a little altered for the occasion of this weeks playoff teams. These were all good defenses the teams were playing with high stakes, meaning not a lot of points are going to be scored. Therefore I say a successful drive is one where you drive the ball down field and successfully put points on the board (either a TD or FG). Now there are 3 occasions where I make exceptions to this:
1. Punting the ball and getting a turnover to resume the drive splits that drive into 2 separate drives, not one whole drive. Since the offense leaves the field, and special teams comes out, I say that is considered a failed drive if you are punting the ball, another drive is started when the offense comes back onto the field.
2. If the offense starts with the ball within the opponents 30 yard line and fails to score a TD, I consider that a failure. If you get a FG in that situation it means you didn't suck enough to get knocked out of range, but the defense won the battle considering the hand they were given.
3. Kneeling the ball to end the game/half does not count as a drive.
With that said let's see the number of successful drives to drives each QB had on Sunday.
Alex Smith: 3/14
Eli Manning: 3/16
Joe Flacco: 3/11
Tom Brady: 5/9
Out of all the QB's who played yesterday, Brady did the most out of what he was given. When over half your drives are getting you points, I would say that's successful quarterback play. People will point and say he didn't throw a TD, but that was Brady playing the defense. That defense was perfectly setup to limit the throw, but was poorly setup to stop the run. BJGE gashed them the way everyone thought Rice would gash our defense. A good QB reads the defense and establishes the weakness of that formation, then puts the best play in to beat that formation. Brady did exactly that by allowing his team to run the ball as many times as they did (31 runs to 36 throws), which was the most balanced I think I've ever seen our offense attack this season.
And if it's not the TD's, it's the picks people point to. Those 2 picks were bad, but those defenders made plays on that ball that not many people make. If you look at the Giants game, Manning threw 2 balls that were soo bad that 2 defenders could have picked it off, and instead they crash into each other failing to catch it. Sometimes people make the plays, and sometimes you get lucky and they don't.
Brady passed in my eye test yesterday, in terms of QB play. He may have not been Brady, but he was still damn better than the other QB's who played yesterday.
