The win over the Cowboys must have energized Patriots [ ] quarterback [ ], because he woke up extra early today to do his regularly scheduled interview with WEEI Radio s Dennis & Callahan Show. Brady was in the 6:15 a.m. slot, gushing pretty proudly about what it took to yank out a win in the final seconds.
It was that last 80-yard drive in the final two minutes that grabbed his attention, of course. The one he finished up by hitting tight end Aaron Hernandez for an 8-yard score that gave the Pats a 20-16 win at Gillette Stadium.
At that point you ve got a pretty good feel for what you re doing, Brady said. You ve got a pretty good feel for your matchups, the coverages you re seeing. Obviously, it wasn t our best offensive performance yesterday. But if the score is 44-41, you ve still got to go down and score points. I think the situation was we had two minutes there and we had a chance to win the game. All of our offensive guys, as I said after the game, we work on that every week. Every single week we have two-minute drives in practice, against the defense, against our scout team. And we re expected to go out there and execute.
If there s one thing we know, it s the players have just a little bit of confidence in their quarterback.
I don t think there was a guy on that offense that didn t think we could go down and score points, Brady said. Ultimately, once we got into position, we were going for the win. Every single guy on our offense really executed at a high level. That s really what it took. Because we didn t really execute at a high level all day. And that s why I think we came out of the game with not scoring as many points as we would have hoped.
Want more highlights from Brady?
On playing complimentary football:Coach (Bill) Belichick has really been stressing that, that when the offense turns it over, not to allow points. And when the defense gets a turnover, for us to get the ball in the end zone. That is complementary football, and that s a team really working together, understanding the situation, and then going out there and capitalizing. Offensively, I don t think we necessarily did that this past game. We ve got plenty of things we ve got to work on. But to turn it over four times and still win, that hardly ever happens. I think we re pretty fortunate there.
On heading into the bye week before the Steelers game:The bye week always comes at a good time, no matter what part of the season, Brady said. All the guys need it to kind of get those little bumps and bruises healed up and be ready for the long push when we start against Pittsburgh in a few weeks. We re always trying to improve things. I don t think we come out of a game thinking we ve got everything figured out. Especially a game like yesterday where we re all pretty proud of the way we pulled it out. It was a great team win. The defense really stepped it up when we needed them to, and I think offensively we did some things when we needed to as well.
On how the Cowboys went three-and-out before giving the ball back one more time:We practice that situation as well. We call it our four-minute offense, when you re ahead and you ve got to try to run the clock out. I think the first down was a run, and then they got a penalty at one point, right? That always hurts you. Then on the third-and-long, the chances of picking up a third-and-long are probably 15-20 percent anyway. They re banking on the fact that we can t go down and score if they kick it to us. They made it tough on us. They made it tough on us all day. There weren t a lot of easy throws out there yesterday. They really made us earn it. And that s really the hallmark of that team, especially a Rob Ryan-coached team, who s a damn good coach, damn good coordinator. He was here and helped us win some Super Bowls, so we know how he has those guys playing, and they played a great game on defense.
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