Tom Brady: 'Don't compare us to '07 just yet' (even if we totally can)
The Patriots are 3-0, the Patriots are steamrolling the opposition, and the Patriots are the unquestioned best team in the NFL through the first month of football.
Tom Brady and Co. dismantled a hopeless Jacksonville Jaguars squad yesterday at Gillette Stadium, beating them by a final score of 51-17 and showing that Florida's other team doesn't belong in the same league as the boys from Foxborough. The offense scored points on every drive in which they took the field, with the only exception being the kneel-downs backup Jimmy Garoppolo took to end the contest.
Brady went 33-for-42 for 358 yards, two touchdowns and a 118.1 QB rating. He eclipsed the 400-touchdown mark for his career, but because these are the Patriots and he's Tom Brady, the importance of that achievement is a secondary concern to the win, which was his 163rd in the league.
Through three games, TB12 has completed 72.2% of his passes, thrown for 1,112 yards, nine touchdowns and zero picks. With the team averaging 39.7 points per game (second only to Arizona's 42 pts/g), a league-best 444.6 total yards/game, and with the team playing with a Metallica-inspired 'Kill 'Em All' mentality following eight months of Deflategate nonsense, the 2015 Patriots are drawing comparisons to the (nearly)immortal 2007 team that rampaged through the league following Spygate and finished the regular season undefeated at 16-0.
But just don't ask Brady what he thinks of it all.
Speaking to Dennis & Callahan on WEEI this morning, Brady said he "can't understand that one quite yet" when asked if he'd compare this year's squad to 2007.
"It's like three games into the year. There's so much football left. And there's so many different things can happen." Brady said, "[We're] not even a quarter of the way through the season. It's too early to think about anything."
You can certainly make the case that the 2015 offense is more adaptable, tougher and more versatile than the 2007 offense. Instead of going deep to Randy Moss and underneath to Wes Welker, Rob Gronkowski AKA The Mountain AKA The Most Unstoppable Force In Football can run every route asked of him to all parts of the field. Same goes for Julian Edelman - a slot-receiver that can be sent to exploit the holes in the defense to the right, middle and left of the field.
Tom Brady is possessed, Gronkowski is the best tight end in football, Edelman is the best possession receiver in the game, and there's playmaking depth at every skill position. An offensive line made up of three rookies and two veteran tackles playing through a rotation has kept Brady upright through three games, and this is all without mentioning a defense that's young, athletic and developing into a unit that makes plays when they need to.
Brady is right about one thing in that it's much too early to seriously consider this team running the regular season table. The Pats are making their opponents look like third-world teams, but undefeated come January is light years away from 3-0 today.
We'll keep 16-0 in the peripheral for now, as it's On To the Bye Week before it's On To Dallas in Jerryworld in Week 5. Yet, w
And yet again, the Patriots will engulf the nation as the collective masses following America's most popular sport will be raging against it's best team.
We can't wait.
Photo Credit: The Sun Chronicle
