Written by John Breech at CBSSports.com
The NFL’s 32 head coaches, minus Bill Belichick, might want to get together this week and start brainstorming ways to stop Tom Brady, because right now, it doesn’t look possible.
The recipes in Brady’s cookbook must all be made using water from the Fountain of Youth because the Patriots quarterback looks like he’s in his prime, even though he’s 39 years old!
This isn’t hyperbole either, if you include New England’s 35-17 win over the Bengals on Sunday, Brady just finished one of the best two-game stretches of his career. Not this year, not of the past decade, but of his career.
Brady threw for 376 yards against the Bengals, which came just one week after he threw for 406 yards and three touchdowns against the Browns. Believe it or not, the past two weeks marks the first time in his legendary career that he’s thrown for over 375 yards with no turnovers in consecutive weeks. At 39, Brady is somehow still breaking career records and playing nearly perfect football, which should scare the daylights out of the rest of the NFL.
With Brady playing the best football of his career, everyone in New England is benefiting, especially Rob Gronkowski. Gronk has had some big games in his career, but he’s never had two bigger games than he had over the past two weeks. After putting up a career-high 162 yards against the Bengals, Gronk has 271 yards over the past two weeks, which is the best two-game streak of his career.
Apparently, everyone in New England gets better with age, because that was Brady’s explanation for Gronk breaking out the past two weeks.
“I mean [Gronk’s] only gotten better as he’s gotten older and understood more about the game and what he needs to do to prepare himself,” Brady said after the win over Cincinnati. “He just makes so many great plays. He’s a big target and he makes any quarterback look good.”
During the four weeks that Brady was out, the Patriots offense was decent: Jimmy Garoppolo and Jacoby Brissett helped New England average 346.3 yards of offense through the first four weeks of the season. Conventional wisdom said that Brady wouldn’t blow by that number in his first two weeks back, but this Brady we’re talking about, a guy who seems to laugh in the face of conventional wisdom.
Through two games with Brady, the Patriots are averaging 469 yards of offense per game. To put that in perspective, only one NFL team was averaging over 400 yards of offense going into Week 6 (Atlanta, with 457 yards per game).
If that doesn’t scare the rest of the NFL, maybe this will: Brady says the Patriots offense is going to get better.
“We’re still building,” Brady said. “We’re only six games into the year, so there’s still a lot more work to do, there’s a long way to go.”
Translation: We haven’t peaked yet and I’m already counting down the days until I get to rip the Lombardi Trophy out of Roger Goodell’s hands in Houston.
Buffalo 45-16 over San Francisco
49ers: D
The good news for the 49ers? Colin Kaepernick looked decent against the Bills in his first start of 2016. The bad news? Kaepernick doesn’t play defense, and apparently, neither did anyone else on the team in this game. The 49ers had no answer for the Bills running game, which totaled 312 yards in the game. If that sounds like a lot, that’s because it is: The 312 yards is the most the 49ers have given up in a game since 1958.
Bills: A
If LeSean McCoy was trying to get revenge on Chip Kelly for trading him while the two were in Philadelphia, I’d say it worked. Shady tied a career-high with three touchdowns against the 49ers. It was almost as if the 49ers couldn’t tackle McCoy, who rushed for 140 yards on just 19 carries (7.4 yards per carry). Overall, the Bills 491 yards of total offense was the team’s most of the Rex Ryan era and the team’s most since 2010.
Washington 27-20 over Philadelphia
Eagles: C-
Carson Wentz has turned into the Benjamin Button of the NFL: He looks younger and less experienced every week. Wentz got off to an ugly start and finished his ugly day 11 of 22 for 179 yards. Of course, it wasn’t just Wentz’s fault that he was bad, you can also blame the Eagles offensive line, which has looked pretty bad ever since Lane Johnson was suspended. Wentz was running for his life most of the day as the Eagles’ line surrendered five sacks to the Redskins.
Redskins: B+
Kirk Cousins and the Redskins’ special teams tried to give this game away (pick-six, gave up a kickoff return TD), but Washington’s defense wasn’t having it. Not only did they sack Wentz five times in this game, but the Redskins limited the Eagles to just 239 yards of total offense, marking just the second time since the beginning of 2015 that the Redskins have held an opponent under 240 yards. We should probably also mention Matt Jones here: The Redskins running back ran for 135 yards, which was a big reason why Washington was able to hit it’s highest team rushing total (230) since December 2012.
