Here's a good quote about the game, from Don Banks' article on the Sports Illustrated web site:

"We were given basically no chance,'' Jets linebacker Bart Scott said of New York's heavy-underdog status. "But we also knew that [Brady's] quarterback rating over the last four or five playoff games was about 66. The TD-to-INT ratio was high. And we knew when we looked on [both] rosters that we had all the playoff experience, and that they're a relatively young team. We've been in the pressure. Some of their guys were there last year and had been part of the ass-kicking by the Baltimore Ravens.

"We knew we actually had gone on the road and knew what a playoff atmosphere was all about," Scott said. "We could still perform and not get overhyped, and not be underhyped. We can handle the emotional moment and settle into a tough football game.''

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/don_banks/01/16/jets.pats.insider/index.html#ixzz1BIHk3sSR 

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I'm of two minds, again.

On the one hand, it was good to see NE lose.

On the other hand, the Jets won.

I guess I'm a gonna have to (temporarily) root for the Steelers, Hines Ward, Big Ben, and all.

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Was anyone else of hte mindset that the 4th Q was really weird? Why did the Pats keep running it and why did they do that 7 minute drive. Why not hurry it up when your down two scores. At one point, BB was yelling at the O because they did a run play. Was Brady checking out of pass plays???

The whole strategy in the 4th really confused me for a BB coached team.

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Did I hear correctly that the announcers said Tom Brady is 0-3 in his last three playoff games?

Why is it that the performances of some QBs who are regular-season warriors plummet during the playoffs? Brett Favre comes to mind, as does Peyton Manning, and it seems that Tom Brady is settling into this pattern too.

I agree with RedSoxExcel that I was baffled by the gameplan in the 4th quarter. Tom Brady seemed like he had no confidence in the pass.

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2007 Super Bowl--lost
2008--injured
2009--lost in first round to Ravens
2010--lost in first round to Jets

That's three in a row for the best clutch QB of our era. So either Brady is not as clutch as people think he is, or he hasn't had as much support from his teammates. I tend to side more with the latter theory. Just look at the changes in personnel for the Patriots in recent years. Only a handful of players besides Brady are left from their last Super Bowl winning team (2004), and Deion Branch is a retread.

I guess that great QB's performances usually decline in the playoffs because, in part, of the old adage that "defenses win championships." The teams with the best defenses tend to make the playoffs and advance the farthest. It is much less likely that a QB will come up against a very soft defense that will allow him to roll up big numbers. This is even more true of QBs on teams that earn first round byes, as the softies tend to fall by the wayside in round one.

That clock-eating fourth quarter drive was indeed very strange. If they had hurried, the Jets would've kept faking injuries, stopping the clock. It does show how well the Jets defended the pass, completely throwing the Patriots off their game. If the Packers make it to the Super Bowl, I would rather have them face the Steelers than the Jets.

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Great point. If I remember correctly, the Jets defense held the Packers to three fieldgoals the last time they met.

However, there we go again with the use of the word "clutch." In the second half, I kept thinking that if the Patriots somehow manage to eke out a victory, Brady will once again be heralded as a "clutch quarterback," despite having objectively sucked in the first three quarters. I think the term should be reserved for performances in which a player performs well during a game and pulls out a victory at the end because the opposing team made a good play when it counted, not for last second heroics that somehow manage to cover over a game's worth of sub-par performance. In other words, I think the term should be reserved for elevation of good performance, not for scrambling to compensate for poor performance.

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That's a fair point. The thing is, Brady WAS that guy who used to play well the entire game and then pull it out at the end if necessary. I am with you all the way on liking those kinds of QBs better than the ones who put themselves into a hole and then have to dig themselves out of it. But most people like athletes who noticeably elevate the quality of their play when a contest comes down to the wire.

People love drama, and I think they like seeing the human side of athletes--screwing up and then atoning for their sins, all that sort of thing. We got such a heavy dose of that with Favre (who wasn't a great comeback QB anyway) that I think a lot of us got thoroughly sick of it. I know I did. No more drama please! Just play your best football for 60 minutes and win the damn game!

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Is it Brady that has declined or is it that the League finally squashed some of the advantage that some of the practices of the Patriots and have returned them somewhat to the playing field.

When the Spygate scandal was brought to light.. they had enough tape on folks, current information, to string through for a while.. since some time has passed the Patriots haven't been the same Pats in the clutch that they once were.

Yesterday Billy Boy made several blunders.. fake punt and that late time consuming drive come to mind right away.

People can say all they want that there wasn't much advantaged gained.. but this team isn't the same machine it once was.. especially playoff time.

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All good points, Shawn. I just had fun watching how frustrated Belichick looked the whole game. He wasn't his usual smugly poker-faced self.

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I was hoping the icing on the cake might have been Rex throwing a right hook instead of a handshake. 😉

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