Tom Brady says he’s not over Super Bowl LII: ‘A lot of mental scar tissue’

“That was a tough game.” -Tom Brady

New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is hung up on the one he didn’t win. Yes, Brady has won three Super Bowls in the last four years. He also won Super Bowl LIII after losing Super Bowl LII. But that didn’t seem to soften the blow of the loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in Minnesota.

“You assume I’m over it? Come on now,” Brady said on WEEI’s “Greg Hill Show” on Monday. “That’s a lot of mental scar tissue from that year. That was a tough game.”

The game essentially ended when Brady fumbled on a sack in the fourth quarter. New England had the opportunity for a fourth-quarter comeback drive after trading touchdowns with the explosive Eagles offense for most of the game. But Brandon Graham forced a fumble, which allowed Philly to put their lead out of reach.

“In a lot of ways we learned from that year and we came back stronger the next year,” Brady said. “We won the Super Bowl in ’18. I think everything is a matter of perspective, and when you play in that game and you play great teams, you’re not going to win them all. This is not the Harlem Globetrotters versus the Washington Generals. This is all about tough competition against the best teams. They deserved it that year, and now a couple years later we get a chance to play the organization again. We’ve had a lot changes, they’ve had a lot of changes. It’s totally different circumstances. Huge game for us. Big game for them. The better team is going to win.”

Brady and the Patriots are coming off a bye in Week 10. They had a long weekend off and will resume work on Monday in preparation for the Eagles in Week 11. There might be an extra level of focus after New England lost 37-20 in Week 9 against the Ravens in Baltimore.

“Hopefully everyone got a chance to decompress a little bit mentally, physically, and now we’ve got to get ready for a great week of preparation and then get ready to go in the there and play our best game of the season on the road, in a really tough environment,” Brady said. “It should be a great Sunday afternoon for football.”

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Even in defeat, Dak Prescott proved he is an elite NFL quarterback

He’s not the best QB in the league, but no players gives you more options.

Cowboys fans did not wake up Monday morning feeling very good about their football team after a frustrating 28-24 loss to the Vikings on Sunday night. But the knowledge that they have one of the very best quarterbacks in the NFL should help soothe that pain.

Even with Cowboys coaches doing everything in their power to blow the game, Dak Prescott was the story of the night. At least he should be. His numbers weren’t overly impressive: He completed 28-of-46 passes (60.9%) for 347 yards, three touchdowns and one pick. On a day where Lamar Jackson put up a perfect passer rating and took a Bengals player’s soul right on the field in a blowout win, what Prescott did might go under-appreciated by the media. That should not be the case. For me, it was the night Dak established himself as one of the NFL’s elite quarterbacks.

It was as complete a performance as I’ve seen from a quarterback since … well, maybe ever. There were highlight-reel throws downfield, shrewd pre-snap checks and protection changes, plays that required Prescott to exhaust his progressions while avoiding hits in the pocket and plenty examples of his ability to create outside of structure when a play breaks down. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say there are only two or three quarterbacks in the league capable of putting together such a comprehensive display of quarterbacking. It was an elite performance, which should not come as a shock since Prescott has been playing at an elite level all season — and for the majority of his short career.

That may sound reactionary, but Prescott has now played about three-and-a-half seasons in the NFL. He was an MVP candidate after an amazing rookie campaign. Things didn’t change over the first half of his sophomore season until his supporting cast was hit hard by injuries and a suspension to Ezekiel Elliott. Prescott was still playing well but his production had fallen off and that continued on into the 2018 season until the Amari Cooper trade reinvigorated the Cowboys offense. Since that move, Dallas has gotten MVP-level production from its quarterback.

So were talking about a 40-game sample size of Dak playing like an elite quarterback, including this entire season where he’s led the Cowboys to the league’s best offense, per Football Outsiders DVOA. He’s also leading the league in Ben Baldwin’s DAKOTA metric, which combines Expected Points Added and Completion Percentage over Expectation into one composite stat. He trails Russell Wilson in ESPN’s QBR by 0.1 points — and there’s a decent chance he ends the week on top with the Seahawks taking on one the league’s best pass defenses, the 49ers, on Monday night.

Prescott’s name is being left out of the MVP discussion because we’re still fixated on QB WINZ in 2019 and the Cowboys are sitting at 5-4 after the loss to Minnesota. It doesn’t help that there are still people out there who believe Ezekiel Elliott is the most important player on the offense and that the offensive line is still the dominant unit we last saw in 2016.

Last night’s performance should have convinced most people that none of those factors can reasonably be used to argue that Dak isn’t worthy of consideration for the MVP award. Let’s address them one-by-one…

  1. Prescott’s QBR for the night was 85.0. ESPN’s stat is designed to give you a rough estimate of how often you can expect a team to win based on the quarterback’s performance. So Prescott’s performance was good enough to win 85% of games. The loss — like most of Dallas’ losses this season — was not on him.
  2. This may have been Elliott’s worst game of the season. On 20 plays, Elliott produced an average EPA of -0.36. That means the Cowboys lost about 7.2 points on his touches alone. In a game decided by four points, that was the difference. Meanwhile, Prescott’s 48 plays added 27.36 points on Sunday night. The Cowboys scored 24 points.
  3. Prescott finished the night with the highest average time to throw of Week 10, per Next Gen Stats. The offensive line did its part, sure, but the quarterback did a lot of the work. Prescott was tinkering with the protections all night and navigated the pocket to avoid pressure. He bought himself all that time and capitalized on it when it was available. That’s a big accomplishment against a Mike Zimmer-coached defense.

Prescott was brilliant all night but two throws stood out to me above the rest. Both were gorgeous dimes that would have dropped jaws on their own, but it was the process leading up to the throws that were most impressive. The first was Dak’s fadeaway touchdown pass to Randall Cobb on a free play.

The throw is fit into the tightest of windows. That’s not an exaggeration. It was literally the tightest window we’ve seen on a touchdown pass all season.

But that play doesn’t happen if Prescott doesn’t call an audible before the ball is snapped. The Vikings are sending a six-man pressure, and Dak checks into the perfect play to beat it. I mean, this play has all of the characteristics of the ones we typically see from Canton-bound quarterbacks. You have the Manning-style change at the line of scrimmage. The Rodgers-esque awareness after the Vikings player jumps offsides. And then Brees-level precision on the throw. That is elite quarterback play.

That wasn’t even my favorite Dak play of the night. That distinction goes to this impossible throw to Cooper on third-and-12.

The Cowboys line holds up against the Vikings rush but, like Tom Brady, Prescott has to climb the pocket while looking for an open receiver. Cooper, who is tightly guarded, will have to do and Prescott lofts a perfectly-placed pass to his receiver for a first down. I still can’t believe he made that throw.

Prescott has been putting this high-level play on film all season and, yet, he still isn’t getting enough credit for developing into a complete quarterback. He’s not the best quarterback in the league, but I don’t know if there’s another one who opens up a playbook quite like he does. Prescott is accurate, poised in the pocket and comfortable outside of it, he’s got a strong arm that allows him to make any throw and he has total command of the Cowboys offense — before and after the snap. The Cowboys have never fully committed to it, but Prescott is also a factor in the run game when used on option plays.

There’s nothing you CAN’T do with Prescott behind center.

For whatever reason, the Cowboys have let him get to this deep into the final year of his rookie contract. That’s looking like a bigger and more costly mistake by the week. Many people — including myself — scoffed at Prescott’s reported contract demands of around $30 million a season. Now he’s the one doing the scoffing because that price just keeps going up, and Cowboys fans should be happy when Jerry Jones finally decides to pay it. There’s no such thing as overpaying for an elite quarterback.

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Greece coach Rick Pitino says he is …

Greece coach Rick Pitino says he is planning on trying to qualify for the 2020 Olympics without Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo. Pitino officially took over as coach of the Greek national basketball team on Monday. He said he would leave a roster place open for Antetokounmpo in qualifying games but is not sure if he will be able to rely on his best player.

It was Auerbach who nixed Parker and …

It was Auerbach who nixed Parker and insisted that North Carolina shooting guard Joe Forte be the team’s pick at No. 21, a fact confirmed in recent days by several league executives familiar with the Celtics decision on what would become a fateful night for the Spurs. Auerbach, one executive said, remained skeptical of European point guards. Plus, he had seen many of Forte’s games when Forte was a star for DeMatha Catholic High School, the famed hoops program in Hyattsville, Md., run by Auerbach’s friend, legendary prep coach Morgan Wootten.

The 19-year-old Frenchman was on his …

The 19-year-old Frenchman was on his way to starting for 16 seasons. “During training camp, and then the first couple of games, I was really tough on him, gave him a lot of things to think about, a lot of things to do,” Popovich said “(I) put him on the best players on the other team whenever I could. And he showed that he had the fortitude and the courage to do this and the challenge of taking over a team that’s supposed to be successful wasn’t going to matter to him. He was just going to play. “I just gave him the ball and said, “This is yours. Figure it out, and I am going to love you and dump on you, both at the same time.’

Tipoff Classic to feature first shot clock in Georgia HS hoops history

Georgia will be implementing the first shot clock in the state’s history at the Hawks-Naismith Tipoff Classic.

Come Friday the 12 Georgia-based high school basketball teams competing in the Hawks-Naismith Tipoff Classic will have to be intentional on offense because for the first time in the state’s history, the Georgia High School Association has approved the experimental use of a 30-second shot clock.

The Tipoff Classic, which runs from Nov. 15-16 at Pace Academy (Atlanta), is the first of six events that will implement the shot clock this season.

Currently just eight states – New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Washington, California, Maryland, North Dakota and South Dakota – use shot clocks in high school games.

ESPN National Recruiting Director for Basketball Paul Biancardi has long been outspoken about implementing a shot block in high school basketball and said he was “thrilled” to see another state experiment with it.

“I am excited beyond belief about the progressive and collaborative efforts from both the Atlanta Hawks and The Atlanta Tipoff Club to implement a shot clock during the Hawks-Naismith Tipoff Classic,” said ESPN National Recruiting Director for Basketball Paul Biancardi. “After coaching college basketball for more than 20 years, I am thrilled to see this premier event make this change on behalf of the players, coaches and fans. The high school game is moving towards a national shot clock. In the meantime, I believe that the rest of the country will model this concept.”

Pace Academy coach Sharman White, whose team will host and participate in the event, said he doesn’t anticipate the shot clock being a major adjustment for his team since they regularly implement it in practice to create the uptempo style they like to play.

“I’m confident that our guys will be ready because they’re used to it,” said White, a former ALL-USA Coach of the Year who has won seven state titles. “I love it. I think it’s a move in the right direction for Georgia and even the country.”

Follow Jason Jordan on Twitter: @JayJayUSATODAY

Bellator 233’s Kyle Crutchmer happy to be compared to teammates Cormier, Khabib – if he has bank account to match

“If my bank account says what ‘D.C.’ and Khabib’s say, you can compare me to whoever you want to compare me to.”

THACKERVILLE, Okla. – With his strong wrestling background, [autotag]Kyle Crutchmer[/autotag] is happy to draw comparisons to his teammates – but not necessarily to their fighting styles.

Crutchmer (5-0 MMA, 1-0 BMMA), who was a two-time NCAA All-American wrestler at Oklahoma State University, has a strong grappling background like former two-division UFC champion [autotag]Daniel Cormier[/autotag] and UFC lightweight champ [autotag]Khabib Nurmagomedov[/autotag], his teammates at American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose, Calif.

Crutchmer improved to 5-0 Friday at Bellator 233 in his promotional debut with a unanimous decision win over Robert Gidron. He used his superior wrestling to control the fight and showed off some of his striking, too.

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But with inevitable comparisons to his accomplished wrestling teammates at AKA, Crutchmer is more concerned with making similar paydays down the line.

“I don’t know how many people knock dudes down with spinning back fists, but I threw that (expletive) today – it landed, it knocked him down, so I’ve got a little bit different style from (them),” Crutchmer told MMA Junkie. “But listen, man, at the end of the day, if my bank account says what ‘D.C.’ and Khabib’s say – man, you can compare me to whoever you want to compare me to.”

His opponent, Gidron, stepped in on short notice for the fight. But the natural middleweight missed weight for the 170-pound bout by nearly five pounds. While Crutchmer is accustomed to being the smaller opponent, he says Gidron had an apparent size difference, a challenge he was able to overcome.

“My wrestling kind of speaks for itself,” Crutchmer said. “I think I would be dumb to not at least attempt it in the first, to see how hard or how easy it would be. Man, that guy was big. People don’t realize – he missed weight by five pounds. He’s never fought at (1)70, I don’t think, so he had some height on me, too. So some of those things, I was trying to get to. It took a lot more than people could see.”

And there was no doubt in his mind that he was going to accept the fight regardless, as he looks to begin his ascent in the Bellator 170-pound rankings.

“I’m in this to prove I’m the baddest mother(expletive) in the world, and if I’m turning down fights or I’m saying no to somebody, then why am I doing this?” Crutchmer said. “I knew it was going to be hard. You could see it, how big he was, and that does play a factor in fights. I had no hesitation. I told our coaches, ‘I’ll get paid a little bit more and we’ll roll with it.'”

Giants out of NFC East race where leaders are 5-4

The New York Giants have been out of divisional contention for a month, and that speaks volumes since the leaders are a measly 5-4.

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The New York Giants dropped the 2-8 on the season following a 34-27 loss to the New York Jets at MetLife Stadium on Sunday afternoon, moving them that much closer not just to the basement of the NFC East, but to the basement of the NFL.

Think about it… The co-leaders of the division — Dallas and Philadelphia — are each 5-4, just a measly game over .500, but the Giants are so bad that they’ve effectively been out of contention for a month.

That speaks volumes about just how bad these Giants are and it’s a tough pill to swallow.

Dallas Cowboys (5-4)

The Cowboys believed the black cat at MetLife Stadium provided them some luck moving forward, but that backfired in spectacular fashion on Sunday night as they were downed by the Minnesota Vikings, 28-24. Three of Dallas’ four losses have come against teams above .500, while they have just one win over a team with a winning record (Eagles).

Philadelphia Eagles (5-4)

The Eagles pulled into a two-way tie atop the NFC East while enjoying their bye on Sunday, but that shouldn’t excite them too much as they were unable to keep up with the Cowboys previously. They return in Week 11 against the New England Patriots and then have a date with the Seattle Seahawks the following week. Good luck, Philly.

New York Giants (2-8)

What is even left to say about these Giants? Their Sunday loss to Gang Green isn’t just a low point of the season, but a low point for this team since the 1970s. John Mara stormed out of the stadium completely steamed and is likely talking himself down from firing every single person inside the organization. Should he, though? We’ve reached a rock and a hard place scenario and something has to break.

Washington Redskins (1-8)

Like the Eagles, the Redskins enjoined a bye week in which they didn’t fall further behind. In fact, they inched closer to the Giants for third place in the division and with a game remaining, actually control their own destiny (in terms of avoiding a last-place finish).

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