Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady couldn’t have chosen a more ironic statement when he talked with ex-New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton before a 17-16 win on Monday, December 5.
“I hope it doesn’t come down to a two-minute drill,” Brady joked with Payton during the “Let’s Go!” podcast on Monday. “Well, maybe I kind of actually hope it does.”
TOM BRADY. RACHAAD WHITE. TIE GAME.
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It did. Brady engineered his 44th career comeback win with the Bucs trailing 16-3 in the final 5:31 of the game to win 17-16. He threw two touchdown passes in a less than a three-minute span to save the Bucs from an otherwise lifeless defeat.
Brady had Payton, now an NFL analyst with FOX, on the weekly podcast as a guest. They competed against each other many times in their NFL careers, and the Saints once participated in joint practices with Brady’s old team, the New England Patriots. They also came from the same hometown of San Mateo, California.
Brady and Payton were tied together this past offseason amid a tampering scandal with the Miami Dolphins where the team tried to lure both to South Beach. Brady dropped a potential hint of trying to team up elsewhere in the future.
For now, Brady looks to get the Bucs rolling after an improbable comeback win — even for his career.
Will the Bucs Hurry up More?
Brady and the offense clicked in hurry-up mode after an abysmal first 55 minutes of offense.
“Yeah, it all starts with the quarterback,” Bucs head coach Todd Bowles said of Brady on Tuesday. “He can dissect things — he’s seen it plenty of times. I guess the urgency clicked even more so in the two-minute [drill] being down that way and guys just locked in. You want to do that the entire game but unfortunately that didn’t happen. We’re just glad we got it in the end.”
Tampa Bay’s second last-minute comeback begged the question if the Bucs could run a hurry-up offense more. Bowles maintained that it can be used but not constantly.
“Well, we’ve implemented it some. We did it against Atlanta. I thought we did it a little bit…It was either Carolina or Pittsburgh, as well. We can implement it more,” Bowles said. “Obviously, we can’t do that the whole game — the defense and special teams would be worn out. But we can try to take advantage of some things that way. Really, it’s a block here and a block there, a play here and a play there for us to continue keeping offensive drives alive.”
Bowles Recognizes the Problem
Slow starts and quick finishes have been commonplace for the Bucs offense all season. That included two losses to the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers where the Bucs scored late but fell short on two-point conversions. Conversely, the Bucs didn’t take advantage of that tendency in a Week 12 loss to the Cleveland Browns with a 17-10 lead in hand.
“It seems like we can only score at the last part of the ballgame,” Bowles told reporters on Monday after the win over the Saints. “We sputtered around a couple quarters.”
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Tom Brady Fittingly Ribs Ex-Saints Coach Sean Payton Before Game