Welcome to Patsville - Patriots/Bills - 9/14/09

BRADY IS BACK !!!
- Matt Light

(picture from boston.com)

Or, are you ready for some football !?!?!

I watched last night's Patriots game while posting updates on my Facebook account.... It was a great day for a Pats fan... it was opening day... it was a home game being played in Foxboro... it was a game that saw the Patriots donning the uniforms of days past (uniforms I love with "Pat" on the helmets)... it was a "national" game on ESPN... it was Tom Brady's first comeback contest... it was a divisional match-up with the Bills and the self-proclaimed "REAL #81", Terrel Owens (TO)... it was a fan's dream...

It was the opening game of a new season... a season that brings about the return of Mr. Tom Brady after sitting out the entire 2008 season due to a knee injury in the very first contest... a season marked by comments like "Will Brady ever be the same?"... yet a season also marked by predictions by the "experts" of very possibly ANOTHER Super Bowl trophy..

Lofty predictions indeed... especially when you consider that the Patriots "lost" 4 key members of the defense that helped bring home 3 championships... Rodney Harrison - retired.... Mike Vrable - traded.... Tedi Bruschi - retired.... Richard Seymour - traded... if defense wins championships, this final trade of Seymour just didn't make any sense to me...

So, I watched... reading panic-stricken posts and "attempting" to console Facebook friends, HOPING that the Patriots were reading the soothing words I was posting myself... also hoping that my words would somehow be proven accurate as admittedly I was a bit "nervous" when this dream night started out as a nightmare.

The team, THE ENTIRE PATRIOTS FOOTBALL TEAM got off to a slow start last night - a very slow start indeed. And to a man, the entire Patriots football team will readily admit that. "We were JUST off" said Brady after the game...

Lack of execution was abound as I watched dropped passes, missed assignments and sloppy play in all 3 phases of the game... I watched a "Brady Rule" penalty on Vince Wilfork - a roughing the quarterback rule implemented after Tom Brady's season-ending injury last year - HOW IRONIC !!! ... I even watched Tom Brady pass up a chance to run for a 3-yard TD... and I may have had doubts myself for a nano-second...

The Bills built up a 17-10 halftime lead but I continued to comfort friends with posts like "Belichick is the master of halftime speeches"... Obviously just words while the Bills continued to out-play the Patriots and led 24-13 with less than 6 minutes of play to go...

And then it was showtime !!! It was THEN that "IT" happened.... To anyone that doubted Tom Brady's chances of being the same as he was in 2007 need only to review last night's game - particularly the last 5-1/2 minutes or so. It was then that I watched him commandeer a comeback reminiscent to any of the 28 comebacks I've viewed over the past 12 seasons. It was then that any smidgen of a doubt subsided....

It was at that point that the REAL Patriots football team stepped up... led by the "General" himself. To some effect Randy Moss stated that even down by 11 points Brady remained confident and upbeat... almost knowing that he was about to carry the team to yet another "miraculous" comeback.... a TRUE leader....

And, down by 11 points with less than 6 minutes to play, Tom Brady did just that... he led the team... he led the team down the field picking apart the Bills' secondary... he led the team to not ONE but TWO touchdown passes to Ben Watson (rumored in the pre-season to be on the trading block due to attitude issues, mind you) in the last 2:10 of play... He once again led the Patriots to victory !!!!

So, all is wonderful in Patsville today... Brady IS back !!!... completing 39 of 53 passes for 378 yards (tops in the NFL this weekend) and 2 TDs... Randy Moss and Wes Welker each caught 12 passes... Ben Watson caught 2 TDs... AND the Patriots won a game that the usually staunch and gruff Bill Belichick quipped, "Well... that was an exciting game !!!" .... a game that bred headlines like this from patriots.com:

• BRADY TURNS IN 29th CAREER COMEBACK WIN
• WATSON HAULS IN TWO LATE TOUCHDOWNS IN COMEBACK
• MOSS TIES CAREER HIGH WITH 12 RECEPTIONS
• BRADY TIES SINGLE-GAME CAREER HIGH FOR COMPLETIONS
• MOSS AND WELKER: FIRST TIME IN PATRIOTS HISTORY TWO PLAYERS HAVE 12 CATCHES
• MOSS RECORDS 60th CAREER 100-YARD RECEIVING GAME; MOVES INTO 2nd ALL-TIME
• MOSS MOVES UP ALL-TIME RECEPTIONS LIST
• WELKER TIES SECOND HIGHEST SINGLE-GAME CAREER CATCH TOTAL
• PATRIOTS SET CLUB RECORD FOR CONSECUTIVE WINS AGAINST AN OPPONENT

Incredible stats aside, quite possibly the biggest play of the game came from an unusual source - Patriots KICKER, Stephen Gostowski, recovered a fumbled kick-off with 2 minutes left in the game - giving Brady the opportunity to drive home for the victory !!!

And to TO, it isn't very hard to see who the REAL #81 is today... so, you keep storming out of locker rooms and Randy Moss will keep catching passes from Tom Brady.

-Nuf Ced