Tom Brady invited Peter King to his secluded Montana getaway to walk moment-by-moment through last week's Super Bowl win. (Was it really only last week? Feels like a month ago.) He also wore a t-shirt with his own face on it. (Photo via the MMQB courtesy of Gisele Bundchen... a sentence you never thought you'd read in 10,000 years of living.)
The entire article is a great blow-by-blow account of what it's like to be in the cockpit with an elite fighter pilot, but I want to point out a specific passage from the interview.
The game is in overtime by now, and the Patriots are at their own 45-yard line. On a 1st-and-10, Brady hits Chris Hogan for an 18-yard connection. But, of course, there's so much more to it than a simple pitch and catch.
“It's such a Peyton Manning-type throw,” Brady said. “I watched him for so many years make those throws. I used to be in amazement. Marvin [Harrison] and Reggie [Wayne], they'd cut their route off, turn around, ball was in the air, in stride, 15-, 18-yard gain. How the heck did they do that? There's so much trust from the quarterback to the receiver. The DB can't get to the ball faster than the receiver can. You got to believe your receiver is going to get to the ball faster than their guy. That's what that play came down to.”
“But,” I said, “if you throw it 25 yards in the air, it could be an interception or incompletion.”
“And that's a lot of throws,” Brady said. “That's a lot of throws. That's 111 practices that we had. That's however many games. Films, meetings. It's got to be like clockwork. You're throwing it to a spot, he's turning, those are the ones the DBs have been covering all year too. It ended up being a really tight play. But it took great execution.”
Watch for yourself here:
This is a concept intrinsic in every coach's mind -- that success is bred by repetition after repetition after repetition. But it may be a good quote to show your players, to drive home the truth that winning plays on game day don't happen on game day, that they take months of work, no matter how many Super Bowl rings you have in your closet.