Brady’s Final Act With Patriots A Loss to Titans
It’s official.
Tom Brady’s last game as a member of the New England Patriots was against the Tennessee Titans. His last pass ended up in the hands of a Titans player.
Logan Ryan’s interception, which he returned nine yards for a touchdown with nine seconds to play, effectively ended one of the most notable and success eras in NFL history and it clinched for the Titans a 20-13 victory over the Patriots in the wild card round of the 2019 playoffs.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers formally announced Friday that they signed Brady, a six-time Super Bowl winner, three-time league MVP and arguably the most high-profile free agent ever, to a two-year deal that presumably will take him to the end of his career.
Whatever happens from here, though, Brady will be most closely associated with New England, the franchise that selected him in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL Draft and for which he had been the starter since 2001.
And the Titans will be the answer to a trivia question as a team that brought down the curtain on his time with that franchise. Brady started 283 regular season contests (he won 219) and 41 playoffs games (he won 30) but the final image of him in that uniform is one of defeat.
“You want to play against the best, and if you want to be the best you have to beat the best,” guard Rodger Saffold said following that contest. “Right now, those guys are the best – AFC, NFC, it doesn’t matter. This was a great challenge for us and that is a great team.”
It was not exactly a one-sided affair. The Patriots outgained the Titans 307-272 – and a lot of that had to do with Brady. He completed 20 passes (to eight different receivers) for 209 yards, which accounted for 68.1 percent of his team’s total offense. More than half of his completions (11 of them) went for first downs.
Still, it was far from Brady’s best postseason performance. He completed just 54.1 percent of his throws, the seventh lowest success rate among his 41 career playoff starts. It was just the sixth time in those contests he failed to throw a touchdown pass.
And then, of course, there was the interception that sealed the deal.
“We had a lot of belief,” Ryan, who spent his first four seasons with the Patriots, said that night. “… We believed we could win, and I think that showed. … I’ve been on that side, so I know how hard it is to do.”
In 20 seasons with New England, Brady won more games, more playoff games and more Super Bowls (six) than any quarterback in NFL history.
That record includes five regular season wins (in seven tries) and two triumphs in three playoff meetings with Tennessee. The worst loss in franchise history was a 59-0 defeat against Brady and the Patriots in Foxboro, Mass. on Oct. 18, 2009. That day he completed 29 of 34 passes for 380 yards with six touchdowns and no interceptions. It was the third-best single-game completion percentage of his career (85.3), the third-highest passer rating (152.8) and the second – and last time – he threw six touchdown passes in a single contest.
Brady and the Patriots knocked Tennessee out of the playoffs in 2003 and again 2017. Ultimately, though, it was the Titans that sent him packing from New England.
“We didn’t hand them anything,” coach Mike Vrabel said after the victory. “And that’s the one thing – they feast on bad football and we didn’t hand them anything. I don’t think our guys spent too much time staring up at those banners.”
Now, no one will look at Brady in a Patriots uniform again.
