In his 23-year career, Tom Brady played under just three head coaches and four offensive coordinators, so keeping the ship steady was never really a problem. And we all know that every season, teams try out new plays, but there are always a few that stick around year after year because of how much success they bring. For Brady’s Patriots, one of those plays became an all-time favorite.
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Brady recently broke down the strategy, showing exactly how it worked and why it was nearly unstoppable. And knowing Brady, it’s the kind of play you’d want in your back pocket every Super Bowl run.
“My favorite play ever, you know what we called it? Jordan,” Brady started, also at the same time, he mimicked a shot by tossing an imaginary basketball toward a hoop.
The play itself goes something like this: Bonzai right, 74 Hoss Z Zuke. It starts with the offense set up to the right side. One receiver or tight end runs a mirrored route to create space and confuse the defenders. Another receiver, the Z, runs a juke route through the middle of the field to get past the linebackers.
Meanwhile, Rob Gronkowski would line up in the seam, and if the defense had a single high safety, Brady would throw it to the seam for a big gain.
“Hoss was a mirrored route, and then Z had a juke route in the inside part of the field, where you score with the linebackers. Gronk would be in the seam, so if it was one high, I would throw it up to the seam,” the former QB explained, adding that it was the same play he used in the 2018 Super Bowl to connect with Gronk.
“It’s a play I hit Gronk to at the end of the ’18 Super Bowl. We threw it like three times on the last drive.”
Additionally, a player from the backfield would go outside as a short threat, allowing Brady to throw a quick hitch route for easy yardage.
“The running you put outside, and if they played like any soft coverage, just throw the hitch up. It was f**king unstoppable,” he added.
There were some additional game-plan concepts too, which Brady and his teammates nicknamed after Muhammad Ali: “And then Ali was, we’re punching the punching bag. So everyone would line up right away, and we’d go really quick.”
Brady loved this play so much that he says, “I had 100,000 yards, I’ll bet you 7,000 yards on this play.”
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Tom Brady was about 11,000 yards shy of 100k career yards, but you get the gist. The Michael Jordan play was effective, and he and the Patriots ran it constantly. It’s funny, though, that he brought up the 2018 Super Bowl as the game where he used it three times, considering it was the one big game his Patriots ended up losing.
That said, you could argue that many other factors contributed to the loss, including Malcolm Butler being controversially benched.
