They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks, and that's certainly true in regards to 67-year-old Patriots coach Bill Belichick playing 42-year-old quarterback Tom Brady late in blowout victories that have long been decided.
It was the case more than a decade ago during New England's 2007 blowout-filled 16-0 regular season and it was the case once again Sunday afternoon in Miami when Brady was on the Hard Rock Stadium turf slinging the football down the field already up 37-0 with less than five minutes to play.
Brady was asked Monday morning in his weekly appearance on The Greg Hill Show on WEEI whether he ever thinks about sitting out some plays late in lopsided games. In this most recent situation clearly his final snaps were about a team mentality toward finishing the job in Miami, something the squad couldn't do in the Miami Miracle loss late last season.
"No," Brady said. "We talked about 60 minutes of football because the history down there and last year, like we said, it took all 60 minutes and we didn't close it out. I think we talked all week about it being a 60-minute game. So, that was just a good way to finish. We scored on offense, got an interception on defense. And all this, early in the year, we're trying to improve. We're trying to, I wouldn't say we're in midseason form. We still have a lot of work to improve so the more reps we get, the better it is for all us. We have a lot of football to go. So, this is the early stages of the season. We're out there to play football. That's what my job is and I'm going to go out there and try to do it."
As Brady alluded to, while he was playing late in the win he was able to drive his offense to a touchdown on a screen pass to James White with just more than two minutes to play. Again, bringing up a similar storyline from 2007, the late score against former Patriots assistant Brian Flores' Dolphins team brings up questions about New England running up the score on opponents.
Brady, like Belichick, doesn't seem to think his team is running up the score or doing anything other than their job.
"No, not at all," Brady said. "We're trying to improve and I wouldn't say everything was perfect yesterday. We could be certainly a lot better in a lot of areas on offense. Our defense, again, is playing great. They are giving us a lot of opportunity. I mean they had four interceptions yesterday. That's incredible. We got great field position. We still have some more opportunity in the red area we didn't take advantage of. Like I said, our job is to go out there and play football and score points. It's not to do anything less than move the ball down the field. They don't put us out there to run three plays and punt. We're supposed to go down there and make things happen.
"Again, it feels good to finish the game the way we did just because you want to see how you are at the end. There are going to be plenty of critical times at the end of these games coming up where we are going to need to be at our best at the end. That's just good conditioning and good training for us. That's what our job is."
