Tom Brady posts another epic performance at expense of Jack Del Rio

By now, I’m not sure if anyone is ever really surprised at the results when Tom Brady faces a Jack Del Rio-led defense.


Including Sunday, the Patriots quarterback is now 9-1 when he faces a team that has Del Rio as either a head coach or defensive coordinator. In that stretch of games that dates back to 2003, Brady averages 26-for-36 (72 percent) for 271 yards, with 2.5 touchdowns and less than one pick per contest. (In 10 games against Del Rio, he’s thrown only one interception.)

On Sunday, Brady was 30-for-37 for 339 yards with three touchdowns, no picks and a passer rating of 131., and became the only player in NFL history to record 300-yard passing game in three different countries (U.S., United Kingdom and Mexico). He hit Danny Amendola, Brandin Cooks and Dion Lewis on touchdown passes, with the most impressive scoring strike coming on a 64-yard pass play to Cooks at the start of the second half. The longest pass play of the year to date for the Patriots, it was part of a sequence that turned a relatively close game into a blowout and ultimately helped lift Brady and New England to a 33-8 win over the Raiders.



“Tom's a great player,” Del Rio said after the game. “He's played great for a long time in this league, and we just couldn't do enough to slow him down (Sunday).”

“(Cooks) got by them a few times deep,” Brady said of the speedy receiver, who finished with six catches for a team-high 149 yards and a touchdown.

“Anytime you can skip 10 plays and hit one big one, that’s really important,” Brady added. “He’s done a great job of doing that all year. I thought he had a great day for us.”

But perhaps no sequence on Sunday did a better job illustrating the hold Brady has on Del Rio than the quarterback handled things before firing a second-quarter touchdown to Amendola. On a third-and-goal play from the Oakland 5-yard, he orchestrated the New England offense masterfully pre-snap, and when he didn’t get the look he wanted at first, he called a quick timeout. After the timeout, he returned to the field, got something he liked and zipped a 5-yard scoring strike to Amendola.

“This team does quite a few things with their front and their coverages,” Brady said of the Raiders. “We talked all week about just being prepared for how they were going to play the game. The tempo helped us out early — it settled some things in. We got down the field and scored on that first drive which was good.

“But they played hard. They got a good rush. I thought we found some spots in the zones.”

Making it all the more impressive? Brady was able to post those sorts of numbers without two-fifths of his starting offensive line: center David Andrews was replaced by Teddy Karras, while right tackle Marcus Cannon was spelled by La Adrian Waddle.

“It was a great team win. Great (job) by the offensive line,” said Brady, who was sacked just once and hit four times. “Great protection. We just have to keep it going.”