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From the start of the week to the end of Sunday’s game, Bill Belichick and Tom Brady were going to keep the return of the prodigal son pretty unemotional, as The MMQB’s Tim Rohan learned Sunday. “We have two players back from suspension this week,” Belichick told his team in the Week-5-opening meeting last Monday. “Tom Brady and Rob Ninkovich.” Nods in the room, and a few smiles. Otherwise, crickets. The same as every week, when Belichick would announce the transactions he felt his players needed to know.
All week in practice, it was all football. No vengeance. Same thing Sunday on the field in Cleveland. Brady pumped his fist and seemed to scream when he ran on the field to cheers (amazingly for a road game, there were no audible boos when he came out on the field), and he dramatically — for him — signaled a first down after a scramble during the 33-13 win.
For all the talk about how volcanic Brady would be Sunday, he wasn’t. For all the stick-it-to-Goodell expectations in New England, he didn’t. Brady will never get back these four games that he missed, and he’ll certainly never be right with the commissioner of football. But Brady is a classic control-what-you-can-control guy, and his surgical performance, the ridiculously efficient eighth career 400-yard passing game in his first football game in nine months, wasn’t much of a surprise to anyone he lockers with. All week, Brady seemed determined to show this week wasn’t about him, and his manner during the blowout of the Browns confirmed that. Mostly, he was almost calm. Businesslike and calm.
“To me,” said injured Cleveland quarterback Josh McCown, who watched from the opposite sideline, “he didn’t look much different today than he looked 10 years ago. He’s 39. I can tell you, as a 37-year-old guy, it was pretty encouraging to watch how good he was. You wonder, How long can he be this good? You see no sign of any decline.”
Brady’s decision-making, particularly, was very good. On his first of three touchdown passes to Martellus Bennett, he bounced on his back foot a couple of times, waiting for wideout Chris Hogan to clear in the back of the end zone. Hogan didn’t, and Brady quickly lofted one to his next option, Bennett, who leaked out to the right for a seven-yard TD. On the second TD, from the Browns’ five, Brady quickly focused on Rob Gronkowski, but two safeties bracketed him in the end zone. Bennett, running a draft route over the middle with a linebacker trailing, was next, and Brady threw him a strike. The third TD, from 37 yards, was easy. Bennett ran away from coverage down the right flank and Brady just laid in an easy spiral. But on the first two, the decision-making was fast and smart.
One down for Brady, 11 to go. And in Brady’s absence, the Patriots learned a few things about themselves. One: Jimmy Garoppolo’s ready to play, and play at a high level, in the New England offense. He might be a top-15 quarterback right now. If I’m the Patriots, I’m trying to figure a way to keep Garoppolo so he can be the quarterback of the future. And I’m trying to do it next off-season, instead of waiting till his contract expires after the 2017 season; by then he’ll have too much of a market. Who knows how long Brady lasts — it could be three years or five, no one knows — but if the Patriots feel Garoppolo is the quarterback of the future, and how can they not, they’d be silly to take a 2017 first-round pick for him. Two: Jacoby Brissett is not ready to play. No harm there. He’s still a baby in the New England system. Three: Belichick always tell his players to “do your job” and the system will work, regardless who’s out on the field. Going 3-1 without Brady makes that feel more real.
Finally, the schedule won’t help the Patriots this year, and winning home-field in the AFC is going to be exceedingly hard. The best teams in the conference, in some order, are New England, Pittsburgh and Denver. The Patriots play the other two on the road down the stretch, as well as suddenly good Buffalo on the road and the Seahawks and Bengals at home.
Maybe one day, in a book or a gauzy TV interview, we’ll hear some frank talk about his first in-season vacation since he started playing football as a kid in California. But not now, not on Belichick’s watch.
“I’m just trying to move on,” Brady said. He’s off to a good start.
TV or not TV: That is the question
| Year Before Election Year |
Rating | Election Year |
Rating | Change |
| 1995 | 11.5 | 1996 | 10.8 | -6.1% |
| 1999 | 10.6 | 2000 | 9.6 | -9.4% |
| 2003 | 9.5 | 2004 | 9.3 | -2.1% |
| 2007 | 9.4 | 2008 | 9.2 | -2.1% |
| 2011 | 10.6 | 2012 | 10.2 | -3.8% |
| 2015 | 11.2 | 2016 | *9.7 | -13.4% |
* Through four weeks.
That, of course, doesn’t explain the size of the drop this season. Could it be attributable to the gargantuan ratings in prime-time news shows that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are getting — and surely got last night for the second presidential debate?
So, theoretically, once the election is over, the ratings should logically recover … correct? The seven weeks of the regular season and the playoffs should see some correction — presumably the way previous election years have corrected after the mania of the election, particularly on the prime-time games.
“I would be silly to make a prediction,” NFL executive vice president for media Brian Rolapp said Friday. “A lot of this is a confluence of events. But the election obviously is significant. We saw the election growth starting in the summer, then in the preseason. I always try to look at things in historical context.”
The 2000 election would seem to be a good comparison year. That was the razor-thin Bush-Gore race with intense interest up to election day and even after, because the courts had to play a role in the weeks following the race to determine who won. “I think it was soon after 2000 that we went on another growth spurt,” said Rolapp.
I asked Rolapp if it's possible the NFL has simply reached the end of growth, period. Is there a chance there's just a minimal additional audience out there to grow the game? “I guess there is a ceiling out there, somewhere,” he said. “When you are this big, it's hard to grow significantly year to year. I suppose there is a ceiling, but we try to push it.”
Maybe the confluence of events — the loss of some stars, the record-breaking ratings for news networks in prime time this fall, the Anthem protests, the hugeness of the game, people getting pangs of conscience for watching a violent game — is contributing. But just my opinion: History says the audience comes back. Maybe not this year, but soon. Let’s see if the ratings continue to fall this significantly after Thanksgiving. If so, then the league has something big to worry about.
• Question or comment? Email us at talkback@themmqb.com.
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