New England Patriots News 2-4, AFC East Notes
(PHOTO: Charles LeClaire - USA TODAY Sports) 🕑 Read Time: 6 minutes
Posted Under: Super Bowl LII
(PHOTO: Charles LeClaire - USA TODAY Sports) 🕑 Read Time: 6 minutes
New England Patriots > Patriots Blog
(PHOTO: Charles LeClaire - USA TODAY Sports) Good morning, here are your Sunday’s Patriots news 2-4, & AFC East Notes.
***Update**** Tom Brady was announced as the MVP of the NFL, the third time that Brady has won the award. Julian Edelman accepted the award for Brady as he was busy preparing for Super Bowl LII.
Patriot great Ty Law came up short in his bid to be named to the NFL’s Hall of Fame and once again Bill Belichick gets zero consideration for the NFL’s Coach of the Year
Happy Super Bowl Sunday, the Patriots are back for the third time in four years and with a win, they’d cap a double dynasty, the three wins in four years during the 2001-04 seasons and the run now. With the eighth appearance in the Brady, Belichick era in the Super Bowl it is amazing the extended run of success that they’ve had and worked hard to achieve. For those of us who grew up in the not-so-great years, it never gets old nor taken for granted.
With the bye week of the Super Bowl filled up with the hype and over-the-top “reporting” from some crazy folks given media credentials from the league, thankfully that is done and we can focus on seeing the actual football game tonight. But there were some good highlights this week. Among them and not in any particular order are:
Edelman Has a Love/Hate Relationship W/BB But Ultimately…it is About Respect:
Julian Edelman did a pretty revealing interview this week at the Super Bowl, despite missing the entire season, he’s in Minneapolis with the team.
We’ve got to see a lot of Edelman this week, on the Tom vs Time documentary with Brady, we saw the back and forth jawing the two and Danny Amendola share with one another but the incredibly hard work that goes into their workouts to build their chemistry and timing. But in regards to the Two Bills special, Edelman pulled no punches on his relationship and respect he has for Belichick.
“I love Coach Belichick, he gave me my opportunity. He believed in me, and a lot of people didn’t. He’s an a’hole and I hate him a lot of the times, but I still love that man to death.”
“I know that the day my production goes down or I’m not playing well he’s going to get rid of me. Doesn’t mean I don’t love him for what he has given me right now in my life.”
“When other coaches tell you to do something, you’re kind of like, all right, …, but if Bill ever says anything, my shoulders are back, my head is tilted straight. I’m still terrified of him.”
“I’m getting to witness greatness just being around him, I feel like I’m a part of it.” Indeed he is…a very big part of it.
Brady’s Excellence at its Zenith in the 4th Quarter of Big Games:
We’ve been hearing about the Eagles’ defense for two weeks, and they’re very good. They can rush the passer with four and not have to blitz but do so effectively when they send six or more as we’ve seen in some game tape. But if this game is close in the 4th quarter, and we believe it will be, don’t bet against Tom Brady and the Patriots pulling off some more fourth-quarter magic when the chips are on the line. And he’s done it against some very good defenses as well.
In the 2014 playoff game and Super Bowl versus the Baltimore Ravens and Seattle Seahawks, Brady was a 17-18 with 3 TDs in the fourth quarter and leading the Patriots to come-from-behind victories. In the Super Bowl last season, Brady was a very impressive 21-27 for 246 yards in the fourth quarter and overtime sessions.
In this season’s AFC Championship Game, Brady led two late fourth-quarter touchdown drives after being down 10 points. He tossed two touchdown passes to Danny Amendola. These are the kind of games where he steps up big at crunch time.
Patriots By the Numbers:
Here are some interesting tidbits in terms of numbers for today’s Super Bowl.
4 – Number of points Stephen Gostkowski needs to score to move into a second-place tie all-time (175 David Akers) of points scored in postseason history. (Adam Vinatieri #1 with 234)
5 – Number of receptions TE Rob Gronkowski needs to become the #1 receiving TE in NFL postseason history. Currently, he’s fifth (Dallas Clark 64, Jay Novacek 62, Shannon Sharpe 62, Brent Jones 60)
5 – Brady is the only QB with five Super Bowl wins. He joined Hall of Fame DL Charles
Haley (5) as the only other NFL player with five Super Bowl wins.
8 – Number of Conference Championships by Bill Belichick, the most in the Super Bowl era. Second place belongs to Don Shula with six.
8 – Number of completions Tom Brady will need tonight to reach 900 career postseason completions.
11 – The Patriots scored in the final minute of the first half in 11 of 16 games in
2017.
11 – Super Bowl appearances by Belichick, eight as a head coach and three others as an assistant with the Giants
41 – Wins (regular and postseason) by three points or fewer, since 2001. The Patriots 41-17 .702 win percentage record in close games is the best in the NFL. Indianapolis is second with a 42-23 .646 win percentage.
51 – The number of Interconference wins by the Patriots since realignment in 2002. The Patriots 51-13 .797 is the best in the NFL. (#2 is Pittsburgh 43-20-1 .680
The “Two Bills”? A Fantastic Story: The ESPN 30 For 30 Series produced a classic and aired this week concerning the partnership and interaction of Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick.
The lead-in for the show contrasts the bombastic “wanting to buy the groceries” Parcells with the dour, quiet Belichick. The Giants players called Belichick “Doom” because of his harping on the minutiae of mistakes he’d pick out from a game film. Belichick’s arrival in Minneapolis fed into that perfectly on Monday. Wearing a black fedora, “Doom” Belichick was like one of the capos in the Godfather. “Leave the gun, take the cannoli.” Of course, the truth is always somewhat different, sometimes vastly so.
Belichick wasn’t embracing the bad guy role this week, we learned. The hat belonged to his father. And his embracing of the past and its history is what, in essence, this story was all about. We see the older clip of Belichick, growing teary-eyed, his voice cracking as he looks inside the Giants old coaching offices, talking about the hours he spent inside there, “trying to establish my coaching career.”
Parcells, looking a bit aged now at 75, his voice getting a bit raspy is a much more mellow and at peace with himself man now, than he was a few years ago. Although the two men have long since made their peace with one another, they were still both a bit guarded, but when they cut back and forth between the two men when airing fantastic interview clips with former coaches and players that played for the two, and even Patriots owner Robert Kraft, they’d share glances and smile genuinely.
The two men have won seven Super Bowls between them and will be forever linked. They were the perfect combination. Belichick was the detail guy, he’d leave nothing to chance. Parcells was the master manipulator. As Lawrence Taylor said, “he always knew the exact buttons to push.” Together, they were a tremendous team and the coaching staff that Parcells built around those teams with Belichick, Romeo Crennel, Charlie Weis, Al Groh et al were fantastic.
While the “Two Bills” didn’t really break a ton of new ground, it was a fascinating, well-done look at two very complicated, vastly different personalities that at the heart, shared a very common trait. The burning desire to be the best at their chosen profession. And when they worked together, they were a truly dynamic duo… led by Darth Vader (teaser alert). If you haven’t seen it yet, put it on the must-see list. The ending is an absolute classic.
Brady’s “Tom vs Time” is a Peek Inside A Closed World:
In the fascinating, docu-series that Tom Brady is airing, it gives an inside look at his life both inside and outside football that few people have ever been allowed to see before. The series has another segment which will air today before the Super Bowl and another segment which will air at a time TBD after the big game.
Filmmaker Gotham Chopra was granted some pretty incredible access and Brady wanted to show certain sides of him that we’re never allowed to see, namely his family and despite uber-ridiculous cheap shots taken at him and his children by some twisted people, it has been a fascinating watch for not only die-hard Patriots fans but anyone who is looking for an inside look at the life of the very rich and famous.
Chopra is an admitted die-hard Patriots fan who is excited (and rightfully so) about getting the chance of a lifetime. He spoke recently about wanting to show the different sides of Brady and not just football.
“There’s an emotional component,” Chopra said. “How do you manage all the stuff that’s going on with your family in your private, personal life with your desire to stay on top?”
As for Brady, he’s trying to show that he’s balancing the many facets of his life while letting people know what drives him. “I’m trying to find a deeper purpose,” Brady said.
“To live it through sports in a very authentic way makes so much sense to me. Having these dreams or goals or aspirations and waking up and putting in the work and miracles happening and all this magic that sports create, I’m in the middle of it. I get to live that through sports.”
I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for Sunday’s episode.
No AFC East Notes this week during the Super Bowl…
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