Rodney Harrison: “Tom Brady Looks Like He’s Scared to Death”
After getting boat-raced in Kansas City last night, the Patriots have their work cut out for them on both sides of the ball. While coach Bill Belichick is probably repeating Lou Holtz’s classic “You’re never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you’re never as bad as they say when you lose” quote, at least one Patriots alumni is, let’s say, concerned about what he saw.
NBC analyst Rodney Harrison, who fans surely remember as a two-time Super Bowl Champion (or, depending on who you are, one of the guys that allowed the Helmet Catch to happen), laid everything out on WEEI’s mid-day show on Tuesday.
“I’m trying to be mellow, but it really hurt me,” Harrison began. “I’m not used to seeing a team go out that was so unprepared, a team that was flat-out embarrassed. You expect your best players to step up and be able to make plays, and you put on that tape and you just see quarterbacks not afraid to go at Revis, Vince Wilfork, he missed a tackle that could have stopped that touchdown, Mayo gets burned on a touchdown, Brady just looks like he’s scared to death back there.”
“It’s so many issues. If it was just one issue, then you could probably fix it. But it’s so many issues, that’s the concern that I have.”
Harrison went on to say “This was a case of the Patriots going into a situation and you’d think the players just showed up and said, ‘OK, I’m part of the Patriots, we’re going to win this game.’ But if you look at the Oakland film, Oakland should have beat the Patriots. So this is a team that everyone says, ‘Hey, don’t worry, they’ll be fine.’ No, you have to worry, because they have a lot of looming issues.”
He went on to list a few more specific concerns, including but not limited to just about everything fans were surely thinking last night while reaching for another beer.
“You look at the offensive line, they looked like basically Kansas City was going up against a high school offensive line. They have no deep threat. Where’s the deep threat? Then you pay Danny Amendola all this money and he’s just virtually nonexistent. So if I’m Bill, I’m definitely concerned. You look on the defensive side of the ball, you can’t even get a pass rush. So it’s a lot of issues there.”
“As a competitor you always want to go down with your team, regardless of the score, you want to be in there, you want to fight. Whether Bill pulled him because he’s afraid he was going to get injured, or Bill was trying to send him a non-subtle message, as a player your mind kind of starts playing tricks on you and you start thinking like, What’s going on? But at the end of the day, Tom needs to play better. The offensive line needs to protect him, but Tom — we’ve said it week in and week out — he’s missing opportunities that are there, he’s just floating the ball in the air.”
(It should be mentioned that Brady had taken two sacks on the night, and what looked like a helmet to the back chasing Chiefs cornerback Husain Abdullah after throwing his second interception, so it’s not unreasonable to think that Belichick was trying to keep Brady away from another big hit.)
Finally, Harrison touched on what Patriots fans have loved and rivals have been infuriated by for years: Tom Brady’s previously unshakeable confidence.
“When you feel confident and you’re feeling good about yourself on the field, everything slows down. It’s not slowing down for Tom. For years we’ve been so spoiled with Tom and his confidence and the arrogance with which great quarterbacks play. And he just doesn’t have that same swag.”
Swag or no swag, the Patriots have their work cut out for them with a short week to prepare for the Cincinnati Bengals.