New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady had accuracy issues on Sunday against the Miami Dolphins in Week 17. It was a strange sight — his reputation has long been that he’s the NFL’s most accurate quarterback.
There was no single problem. He was overthrowing receivers that had gotten open, and he wasn’t seeing open receivers by sticking too long upon his first option. And his receivers were probably struggling to dial in the timing on their routes, with Mohamed Sanu (trade) and N’Keal Harry (IR) joining the team at midseason.
There seemed to be some mechanical issues in Brady’s throwing motion. His throws didn’t look right.
“I wish they were perfect every week, and I do think some things — sometimes you get a little off and you’ve got to just go back to the fundamentals and study some mechanics and stuff like that,” Brady said Thursday. “I try to focus on that every week, some weeks a little more than others. It’s a game of skill, it’s a game of technique. …
“There are some days where you feel like, man, everywhere you’re aiming it’s just going and then sometimes the timing is a little bit off, decisiveness is a little bit off. It could be mental, it could be physical, but all those things play a factor, and you just try to get back to the spot where you really feel like you’re most confident.”
In the documentary series, “Tom vs Time,” Brady provided some insight into the care he takes with his throwing mechanics. He spends hours of his offseason working on the most minute details in his motion.
“When Tom Brady showed up, he was already one of the best in the history of the game. So he comes in and he’s looking for a 1 percent gain, or just to hang on to what he’s already got,” throwing mechanics coach Tom House said on Sirius XM NFL Radio’s “End Zone” in June 2014. House echoed the same sentiment on “Tom vs. Time” in 2018.
Perhaps the physical problems extend beyond mechanics. Brady was listed on the injury report with an elbow issue, but has been cleared. Brady has repeatedly said he’s not hindered by the issue, but reporters spot him shaking out his elbow almost every day during warmups. If there’s a physical or mechanical issue, Bill Belichick and Brady, surely, have discussed it at length. Belichick said he meets weekly with his quarterbacks to cover topics like mechanics breakdowns.
“I meet with the quarterbacks every week and we talk about a variety of things, that being one of them, and other things,” Belichick said during a press conference on Thursday.
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