Tom Brady Myth Debunked

 

A long standing myth about the New England Patriots and Tom Brady was that once you’re behind, there’s no coming back.  In fact, when trailing at halftime, no team had ever come back to defeat the Patriots when Brady was under center.  It was always Brady who led the comebacks.  But Sunday night the Baltimore Ravens proved that it is possible to comeback from a halftime deficit when Brady is on the opposing team.

 

In Brady’s illustrious career with the Patriots, he’s led 26 fourth quarter comebacks and 37 game winning drives.  It’s become a general rule of thumb when facing the Patriots to run the clock a much as possible and never to let Brady have the ball with an opportunity to win the game.  Even more impressive about Brady is that four of those 26 fourth quarter comebacks have occurred in the postseason.

 

While Brady has made a habit of breaking the hearts of his opposition, the opposite has never happened.  Since he became the Patriots starting quarterback in 2001, Brady’s team was 62-0 when leading at halftime going into Sunday night’s contest with the Ravens.  But the Ravens made history in the second half.

 

After a Stephen Gostkowski field goal gave the Patriots a 13-7 lead heading into the break, you would be excused for thinking the game was over.  But led by Joe Flacco the Ravens offense, which gained more yards in the third quarter than they did the first half, scored 21 points while shutting out the Patriots’ vaunted offense.

 

It’s widely believed that anything that can happen will eventually happen but until Sunday night nobody had come back on Brady.  62 times they had tried and 62 times they had failed.  That led to the myth that it was impossible to come from a halftime deficit to beat Brady’s Patriots.  But that myth has now been debunked by Flacco and the Ravens.