Those who remain remember the rain.
How it fell differently that night, sparing Tom Brady late in the fourth quarter yet drenching the Patriots.
A gift from the football gods, some cracked. Meant to be, others believe.
Only seven Patriots players today were present for Brady’s final game in Foxboro, their last battle with the Buccaneers before this Sunday. That was four years ago.
Since then, the Patriots front office has parted with every player left over from the Brady era. The locker-room memories of playing with Brady have washed out, replaced by those he gave them that night when they were lucky enough to stand across from the greatest of all time.
This is how today’s Patriots know him.
“I think about (that game) every day,” said Patriots defensive tackle Christian Barmore. “All the time.”
Whispers of Brady’s epic return recently reached his true successor, Drake Maye, who watched it live as a freshman at North Carolina in 2021. As Maye turned his sights to the Bucs this week, team trainers shared their memories of the last meeting. Memories not of Bill Belichick’s master plan, nor Mac Jones tying one of Brady’s franchise records or even the Patriots holding two fourth-quarter leads.
Only Brady driving, as he had so many times before, to set up a go-ahead field goal with less than two minutes left. And how a relentless rain suddenly broke for him, then immediately returned as if trying to drown the Patriots’ last possession.
Six plays later, the Pats stalled at Tampa Bay’s 37-yard line. A kicker, Nick Folk, trotted out to decide the fates of Brady and Belichick, just as Adam Vinatieri and Stephen Gostkowski did before him.
Folk watched the snap, took three steps, swung his right leg and connected. The ball flew, splitting droplets with every end-over-end rotation as it soared toward the uprights. Toward history.
“It’s a game,” Patriots linebacker Anfernee Jennings said, “I don’t think I’ll ever forget.”
The best laid plans
Days before Brady returned to New England, the Patriots went hunting for his secrets.
Longtime captain and safety Devin McCourty pestered offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels with questions as he prepared for one of the toughest tests of his career.
What did Tom talk about in meetings? What doesn’t he like? What can we do?
“Defensively, it was a different week. It was all about (Brady),” McCourty said. “Obviously, there were weapons and different guys you had to talk about, but it was about how we can make him uncomfortable. And it was just like, if anybody could do it, it was us.”
Following Belichick’s lead, McCourty and the Patriots settled on a plan built on two ideas: interior pressure and man-to-man coverage with short zones crowding the middle of the field. The defense would shadow Bucs star receiver Mike Evans with their top corner, J.C. Jackson, Chris Godwin with Jalen Mills and Brady’s most explosive weapon, Antonio Brown, with their fastest defensive back, Jonathan Jones.
Any time the Patriots blitzed, extra rushers would fly up the middle, and defensive linemen would take inside moves when pass-rushing, all in the name of disrupting Brady inside the pocket. The plan became so well-known inside team headquarters that even the Patriots’ offensive linemen knew what McCourty and Co. were up to.
“I don’t remember exactly what Bill was saying during that time, but obviously he made it a big deal,” said starting guard Mike Onwenu. “Like, he’s been with (Brady), he knows his tendencies, knows he’s a great player, and he’s going to get the ball out fast. So (it was about) affecting him and getting him off the spot.”
Zone coverage, they understood, had to be scarce.
“If he sees it, he knows it, and he’ll absolutely destroy us,” McCourty remembered. “So when we did play zone, it was making it look like man; man-match coverage but playing zone. It was chess.”
The sun set at 6:19 that night, an hour after most players pulled into Gillette Stadium. Hunter Henry, who signed in free agency seven months earlier to be the Patriots’ starting tight end, had never seen anything like the scene surrounding him.
“I just remember driving up to the stadium and being like, ‘Wow, this is crazy.’”
With 50 minutes left until kickoff, Brady took the field out of the visitors tunnel.
Fans cheered, an outpouring of longing, grief and gratitude. Brady jogged the length of the field and unleashed his patented fist pump at the end-zone crowd. He turned back, hugged McDaniels and began slinging passes in warmups to loosen his golden arm.
Chants of “Bra-dy! Bra-dy! Bra-dy! echoed across Gillette Stadium.
“We didn’t understand how big it was to the fans,” said ex-Buccaneer and current Patriots corner Carlton Davis, “until we actually got to the stadium.”
Foxboro pulled itself together by kickoff. The next time Brady stepped off the sideline and led an enemy huddle, boos fell harder than the rain.
The Bucs punted on their first series, then kicked one field goal and missed another. The plan was working.
But it wasn’t until their offense persevered that the Patriots found their footing. After two punts and an early Jones interception, Onwenu threatened to set them back again with two holding penalties on their fourth series. But thanks to a couple Tampa flags and Jones initiating a stretch of 19 straight completions, they marched on.
At last, with 8:28 left in the half, Henry caught an 11-yard touchdown pass on a crossing route; still one of his most treasured New England memories to this day.
“It was like, golly, all right. Here we go,” Henry said. “We’re going back and forth here. Like, we’re in this thing. We just got to find a way to scratch it out at the end.”
The Patriots led 7-6 at halftime, following another field goal drive where Brady began defeating their tight man-to-man coverage with pinpoint throws outside. He finished with a single completion between the hashes all night because outside the numbers was where Belichick wanted to steer him all along.
And yet that’s precisely where Brady knocked out his defense in the end.
‘Of course’
The moment that sticks with Barmore after all these years happened late in the third quarter.
Still trailing 7-6 midway, Brady had drifted right out of a broken pocket just outside the red zone on first-and-10. Barmore, then a rookie, gave chase. Brady came within a step of the sideline, pump-faked and pulled the ball back down.
Finally, he uncorked a throwaway as Barmore reared back to shove him to the ground. No sack. Just a regular incompletion.
“I said I’m gonna get him. And he saw me coming and threw it out of bounds. I wanted to get a sack so badly so I could say I sacked Tom Brady,” Barmore said. “Almost there, though.”
Before he returned to his huddle, the 22-year-old couldn’t resist chirping at a legend.
“I was like, ‘Wassup, Brady?!’” Barmore said. “He was like, ‘I see you, rook.’”
The irony of the night struck three plays later, when Tampa Bay scored its only touchdown by taking the ball out of Brady’s hands. Buccaneers running back Ronald Jones rumbled right on an eight-yard touchdown, slipping out of McCourty’s grasp as he crossed the goal line.
Undeterred, the Patriots went no-huddle and Jones peppered the Bucs with seven consecutive short completions. They reclaimed the lead on the seventh pass, a buttery play-action throw Jones feathered to former Pats tight end Jonnu Smith on the opening play of the fourth quarter.
The next series, it was McCourty’s turn to catch an earful from Brady. The Patriots called an all-out blitz during another drive teetering outside the red zone with under 10 minutes remaining. McCourty rushed but never touched the quarterback, who had a few words for him after hitting an 18-yard pass.
“‘You’re gonna blitz-zero me?” Brady asked. “Really, Dev?”
The Bucs settled for a 27-yard field goal, another score the Patriots answered to lead 16-14 with four and a half minutes left. The ball went back to Brady at a time and place fans often dreamed of, but now dreaded.
Under clear skies, Brady lofted a high-arcing pass down the right sideline for running back Leonard Fournette against linebacker Kyle Van Noy, who got flagged for a 31-yard pass interference penalty. Next, Brady hit Mike Evans on a short pass left, then zipped an 11-yard throw right and found Brown for eight more yards outside the left numbers.
Brady took his final shot on an end-zone throw from the Patriots’ 30-yard line; a perfect pass with an imperfect result. The ball dropped right into Brown’s arms, past the outstretched dive of Jonathan Jones, but fell incomplete. The Bucs kicked a field goal and pulled into the lead with 1:57 to go.
“It was cool to just see Tom back in this atmosphere here, and how he was operating,” Henry said. “And you could tell this one was extra special for him.”
Returned from a commercial break, rain showers hit the stadium again in full force.
“It was kind of funny to see, honestly,” Henry said.
After a defensive pass interference call vaulted the Patriots to midfield and Jones found Henry, then Brandon Bolden and fired three straight passes for the reliable Jakobi Meyers that led to fourth-and-3, Belichick called for the field goal unit.
Onwenu, who had been benched on offense for his two holding penalties, returned to try to block Folk’s kick. He heard the snap, Folk strike the ball and …
“It looked like it was going in,” Onwenu recalled in the locker room this week. “It looked like it had enough juice when I picked my head up. But I think the wind …”
Then Onwenu’s voice trailed off, as if the sound of Folk’s kick clanging off the left upright began replaying in his head.
“That’s how the game goes sometimes,” he said.
“Of course Tom got his coming back here,” Henry added.
Brady knelt the clock out under more rain, leaving only one last loose end.
Minutes after the game, Belichick walked straight into the visitors locker room and approached Brady.
“It was the first time I’ve seen another head coach come into the opposing team’s locker room,” Davis remembered. “We obviously understood why, but he was so bold. He just owned the room. He was like, ‘Watch out, I’m coming to talk to Tom. This is my facility. I’m gonna just go talk.’ He owned the building in that moment.”
Brady and Belichick spoke for more than 20 minutes. The full contents of their conversation will remain forever between them, two legends pulled apart, then brought together again for one legendary night that now lives with those they left behind.
Quote of the Week
“I would say that (trades) are like being pregnant. You either are or you aren’t. It’s either a deal or it’s not, so I don’t know how close you can be. I know that everyone worked hard, that we investigated, looked in, made phone calls and what personnel departments do. And in the end, we decided that this was what we were going to do and decided to move forward with our preparation.” — Patriots coach Mike Vrabel explaining the team’s inaction at the trade deadline
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