Rising to the Moment

Some of us seem genetically predisposed to rise to the occasion. The rest of us must’ve missed that particular nucleotide. Tom Brady must’ve been James Bond in another lifetime. He certainly played this past Sunday like he had a license to kill.

 

Wow. Just. Wow. The Patriots looked pretty good today. Playing at home, sure, but playing a desperate Chicago Bears team that had shown better on the road than at home in 2014. I expected more of a fight from the Bears, really. Then again, that game was never in doubt after the Patriots closed out the first half with an incredible sequence, scoring 3 touchdowns in 0:57 of game time, culminating with Rob Ninkovich’s fumble recovery and return for a touchdown. The Patriots were aided in part by Bears HC Marc Trestman’s overly optimistic use of his timeouts. Hoping to save time for Jay Cutler and his offense, he merely gave the Patriots two additional opportunities before the half which they cashed for touchdowns.

With Brady playing out of his mind it probably didn’t matter what Trestman did with his timeouts or anything else, for that matter. Tom Terrific threw down a 30/35/354/5/0 slash line. Looks like he ain’t dead yet.

Yeah, yeah. The Bears defense isn’t very good but those numbers would’ve been good in a non-contact scrimmage. TB12 made some incredible throws in this one, none better than the very first TD completion to Gronkowski as Brady threw a high arcing spiral that dropped into Gronk’s hands in the back left corner of the end zone. So sweet. It’s obvious that Gronk is back. 9 catches on 9 targets, 146 yards, 3 TD with a long of 46. And at least one very nice block on a Jonas Gray run.

But really, the heroes in this game are almost too many to name. Gray gave the Patriots a ground game and with that effective play action, Brandon LaFell had a career day with 11 catches, 124 yards and 1 TD, Darrelle Revis and Brandon Browner were everything we hoped they would be, Jamie Collins and Donta Hightower stepped up, Ninkovich came up with the defensive score, new guy Akeem Ayers contributed as did rookies Dominique Easley and Zach Moore and on a day when he wasn’t catching passes Julian Edelman had a 43-yard punt return.

Games like this one deserve to be savored.

So, we’re on to Denver, right?