Week 4 was the backdrop of the Brady Bowl, a homecoming for the winningest quarterback in NFL history against the rom-com backdrop of a rainy Foxborough evening. New England fans cheered for their former hero until they didn’t, lauding his warmup before turning against Brady’s Buccaneers once kickoff stood on the horizon.
The veteran stared down Mac Jones, then dared him to play the same role Brady had occupied for two decades; late-game savior. A Tampa Bay field goal gave Jones the ball trailing 19-17 with 1:57 to play as the wind whipped up. A scoring drive would drive Jones’ hype to near unsustainable levels. Anything else would be … well, fine; Jones had played perfectly reasonable football just to keep his Patriots in the game late against the reigning Super Bowl champions.
Jones pushed New England into deep field goal range, but Bill Belichick opted to kick a 56-yard field goal instead of face 4th-and-3 at the Tampa 37. It was, whether the kick was successful or not, a white flag for the Pats.
Best case scenario, Belichick was setting Brady up with 50 seconds and two time outs to lead the same comeback drive he’d led seemingly hundreds of times as a Patriot. In the end, it didn’t come to that; Folk’s kick clanged off the upright and Brady’s final series was a procession of kneeldowns to give him wins over all 32 NFL franchises.
It was a frustrating end to an overwrought game that simultaneously did and did not live up to the hype. But that’s burying the lede.
We are not here to mourn the Patriots. We have come to celebrate the city of New York, which saw both its football teams win on the same day for the first time since 2019. Both the Jets and Giants broke losing streaks with overtime wins, providing brief sparks in a fandom lined by darkness and, ultimately, giving us all reason to never have confidence in the Titans or Saints again.
Let’s talk about what else we learned Sunday.