Tom Brady was pedestrian through most of today’s game against the Dallas Cowboys.
“Most” does not include the last two minutes or so.
Brady led another breathtaking final drive, marching the Patriots 80 yards to paydirt for a 20-16 win at Gillette Stadium.
“Dallas is a good football team,” coach Bill Belichick said. “They’re hard to move the ball against, especially on longer drives. They can rush the passer. They’re playing a lot of five, six, seven defensive backs in there. There were a lot of them. It wasn’t easy today.”
The Pats (5-1) saw their offense stymied for most of the afternoon. But it found its spark when it counted most, as Brady hit Aaron Hernandez for an 8-yard TD with 22 seconds left on the clock.
“It was great protection,” Brady said. “Great catch by Aaron. A lot of guys made big plays on that drive; we really needed it. We really kind of squandered away some opportunities throughout the game but came up big when we needed it. The defense was really incredible today. That’s a good offense with a lot of damn good football players. They really buckled down when they needed to and offensively we put together a drive when we needed to.”
Tony Romo’s Hail Mary heave on the last play of the game fell harmlessly out of bounds.
The Cowboys had taken a 16-13 lead with 5:13 left on a 26-yard field goal by Dan Bailey.
NFL.com has the highlights here.
