Tom Brady is incredibly competitive, something that’s been well established by now. With each new story, his legacy only continues to grow.
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Back in 2017, Brady was faced with his toughest task yet. Down 28-3 against the #2 seeded Atlanta Falcons, Brady and the Pats were in a position they had never been in before. Never in a Super Bowl had things gotten so out of hand. Brady was falling on his face trying to save a pick-six, the defense couldn’t get a stop, and Bill Belichick didn’t look like the best coach in the world for once.
Yet, they still won. Nobody believed they could pull it off, except the men in that locker room, and most of all, Tom Brady himself. It went down as the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history, and it probably ranks as the greatest comeback in NFL history when you consider the context of it being in the game’s biggest stage. Brady recently relived the game on his docuseries ‘Man in the Arena.’
Tom Brady admitted that a hit nearly knocked him out of the game
Trailing 21-3 at halftime, there was a lot going through Brady’s mind. The mood was somber in the locker room, and the team was thankful to just have three points up on the board.
“If you look at the first half, it’s not like we weren’t moving the ball. We moved the ball, we just didn’t do anything with it once we got into scoring range,” Brady detailed. “We crossed the 50-yard line and we had no production. I don’t know how many times we crossed the 50-yard line — maybe two, three or four times — with zero points.”
“We finally, right before half, kicked a field goal. But we went into halftime thinking, all the (expletive) we got is still good. You look at that call sheet, this is all still going to work.”
After the half, things didn’t get much better. The Pats punted coming out of the gates, and the Falcons marched right back down the field to score another touchdown. 28-3. The now infamous score hovered like a raincloud over the New England bench.
You’re not thinking about winning the game at that point,” Brady admitted. “You’re thinking about, ‘How do we not embarrass ourselves at this point?’ It’s a different mentality. We’ve got to score, man. We’ve got to be proud of the fight.”
The Pats soon got it going and it was 28-12 when Dont’a Hightower came up with the defensive play of the game, the one the Patriots really needed to complete the comeback.
The Pats scored 5 plays later, and after forcing a Falcons punt, the Pats had 91 yards to go, down 28-20. On this drive, Brady took a shot, and as he recalled it, it nearly knocked him out of the game.
Truly nothing was going to stop Brady that day. Not even a potential concussion or worse. He led the Pats down to tie the game up and take it to overtime where he’d lead New England once more to win the game.
Brady finished the day 43-62 for 466 yards and two touchdowns. That win was Brady’s fifth Super Bowl victory taking him to the top of the quarterback mountain. Since then, he hasn’t looked back.
