Tom Brady goes back to the Super Bowl. For a tenth time. At age 43.
But this time it comes as the quarterback of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Brady and the Bucs have the no. 1-seeded Green Bay Packers thrashed 31-26 in NFC Championship game at Lambeau Field. They will now face the winner of the AFC Championship Game – the defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs or the Buffalo Bills – at the Raymond James Stadium in Super Bowl LV.
The Bucs will become the first team in NFL history to play a Super Bowl in their own stadium, while Brady will become the oldest player in any position to play in a Super Bowl.
The Bucs have not been in the off-season or won an after-season game in nearly two decades – when Brady’s reign with the New England Patriots had just begun. Yet Tampa Bay emerged as the dark horse with free agency that no one saw coming, when Brady decided to leave the Patriots in the off-season.
Many people felt that it was the biggest professional risk of Brady’s professional career to leave his longtime coach, Bill Belichick, and go to the Bucs. To make matters worse, Brady had no off-season to work with coach Bruce Arians and offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich and no preseason to work out the kinks in a new system due to COVID-19. Critics pointed to his struggle with the deep ball. They were afraid that his relationship with Arians was already unraveling.
Against the Packers, Brady completed 20 of 36 passes for 280 yards and three touchdowns, with Leonard Fournette turning his way to a fourth on the ground.
The defense played Vita Vea with 347 pounds nose for the first time since Week 5, firing Packers full-back Aaron Rodgers five times – three from Shaq Barrett and two from Jason Pierre-Paul – and forced twice. Nickelback Sean Murphy-Bunting picked Rodgers in the second quarter, and safety Jordan Whitehead forced a whisper restored by linebacker Devin White.
But then Whitehead left the game with a shoulder injury, leaving the Bucs without both of them’s starting safety, while the Packers began to contract in the second half. Brady threw three interceptions in the second half – twice to corner Jaire Alexander and once to safety Adrian Amos – while Rodgers threw the shot to tighthead Robert Tonyan and wide receiver Davante Adams.
The Packers had a chance to level the game, down eight points with the ball on Tampa Bay’s 8-year-old line, but decided to kick off a field goal on the fourth with just over 2 minutes left in the to play game. They never got the ball back.
Brady can now try to do something his younger idol Joe Montana could not do: go in his first year with a new team. Montana came close and led the Chiefs to the AFC Championship in 1993, but lost to the Bills 30-13.
So it’s back to Tampa for Brady and the Bucs. How fitting that workers have transformed Raymond James Stadium over the past few weeks – and replaced the signs of Buccaneers with those of “Super Bowl LV” and the Lombardi Trophy – that they comfortably kept one panel of the exterior intact, on the southwest corner entrance: the image of Tom Brady and Mike Evans.
Can just as well let it stand. And maybe fire the cannons.