FOXBOROUGH — The nickname is spot-on.
After the win in the divisional playoff over the Titans, one of the veterans on the roster praised the work of AWD: All-Weather Dola.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever been around a tougher guy, mentally and physically, in my 10 years of pro football,” special teams captain Matthew Slater said of Danny Amendola. “The guys, we joke around and call him Steady Eddie and AWD — All-Weather Dola. You love having a guy like that on your football team. He’s so reliable. He’s a competitor. It seems like in the big moments, he makes plays. He just makes plays.”
AWD. It suggests someone who can succeed in the heat of September, the chill of November or the frozen climes of January. Able to succeed in any conditions. Dependable. Trustworthy. Not flashy, but steady as they come.
Ask Amendola about his nicknames — Rob Gronkowski called him Danny “Playoff” Amendola after another tremendous postseason performance on Saturday — and he shrugs.
“We’ve got another playoff game this week,” Amendola replied after practice on Wednesday. “That’s really all I’m focused on. Playing well.”
“He’s a guy that you trust, that you want in the game, that you can count on and you know you’re always going to get his best effort,” offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels said of Amendola. “Like a lot of our guys, he can take himself to another level and try to do a little bit more than maybe what’s done in the past, and he does a great job of preparing hard to be able to do that.”
And the numbers speak to his success. Since the start of the 2016 season, only two wide receivers have 80 or more catches and a catch rate of 73 percent or better in the regular season: Amendola and Cordarelle Patterson. And despite the fact that he’s not a headliner, since 2014, he’s also the only Patriots wide receiver who has a catch rate of 72 percent or better who has at least 50 receptions.
That level of reliability goes to another level when the playoffs roll around: In his last three playoff games, he’s caught 21 of the 26 passes, an astounding 81 percent catch rate. Overall, dating back to Super Bowl XLIX, he has caught 33 of the last 46 passes thrown in his direction in the playoffs, good for a catch rate of 72 percent.
“He always plays big in the big games,” said McDaniels.
On Saturday against the Titans, he had 11 catches on 13 targets for 112 yards, the latest in a long line of memorable playoff performances. It included this memorable floater from Tom Brady.
Tom's magical throw to @DannyAmendola was impressive in real-time, and is even better in FreeD: pic.twitter.com/tjqWr7cIWP
— New England Patriots (@Patriots) January 14, 2018