FOXBOROUGH — Despite the fact that his team came away with the 27-20 win, Tom Brady didn't sound completely happy after the game.
The quarterback ended up 26-for-39 for 277 yards with three touchdowns and one interception (Tyrann Mathieu made a nice play on a batted ball). He hit eight different pass-catchers, and threw touchdown passes to Rob Gronkowski, James White and Phillip Dorsett. But overall, he didn’t seem satisfied with the performance of the offense.
“I don’t think we played anywhere near what our capabilities are,” Brady said afterward. “I think it’s good to win, obviously, but we’ve got to do a lot better than that I think. Just turning the ball over and not taking advantage of some opportunities that we had out there, all of us probably look at the game and realize we could have done a lot of things differently.”
Brady’s three touchdowns all came in the first half, the 18th time in his career he was able to pull that off. The Patriots are 17-1 in those games with the only loss coming on Sept. 25, 2011, at Buffalo. Brady had two games in 2017 with three touchdowns in the first half. His finest drive of the afternoon came at the end of the first half when he jumpstarted an eight-play drive that went 78 yards, took just 1:14, and was highlighted by a ridiculous catch-and-throw with Gronkowski.
Brady fits this ball to Gronkowski into double coverage and he makes the great catchpic.twitter.com/ATOYK13DKq
— Dov Kleiman (@NFL_DovKleiman) September 9, 2018
Naw I’m ok.. I rather go somewhere I can show case my skills for real.. if I line up next to Gronk hogan Edelman I’m for sure getting a 1 on 1 match up plus I won’t be getting criticized controlled for expressing my love for the game..Washington is cool as well https://t.co/lywVw8QzIa
— Dez Bryant (@DezBryant) September 9, 2018