FOXBORO — Two years ago, Tom Brady trotted out of the visitors tunnel at Gillette Stadium in enemy colors.
The Foxboro sky wept.
Rain fell throughout a Buccaneers win that Brady, of course, captained in dramatic comeback fashion. Later that night, having wiped away the rain, but still soaked in the glory of his victory, he teased a possible return.
“I don’t know what the future holds,” Brady told reporters. “(There) obviously could be an opportunity to come back here. We’ll see. … I’ll be up here quite a bit when it’s all said and done.”
On Sunday afternoon, Brady kept his promise. As the pregame clock wound under 10 minutes left until the Patriots’ season opener, he reappeared to thunderous applause. The Foxboro sky wept again.
These were tears of joy.
For the first time in three and a half years, Brady wore Patriots colors publicly and with pride. He beamed from the top of the stadium’s new 22-story lighthouse, pumping his magic right arm and waving to the raucous crowd below. Fans mirrored his passion, squeezing every breath from their lungs and ounce of pride from their football souls to cheer at him again.
Then Brady rang a bell in a new pregame tradition; perhaps a beacon of hope to start the Patriots’ fourth season without him.
Was Brady ringing in a new era?
Not so fast.
Before the first quarter ended, the Pats puked all over themselves, fumbling, firing a pick-six and tossing any sense of momentum straight into the trash bin. They also committed defensive penalties that wiped away a sack and a blown Eagles snap. Not 13 minutes had passed, and the score read: Eagles 16, Patriots 0.
The defense’s back bore a familiar ache from carrying the team like it has ever since Brady walked out the door. It fought anyway.
The Pats defense yielded 23 yards through halftime, while new offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien finally mixed the right ingredients and cooked up two touchdown drives. The sky cleared, and stadium boo birds sang a new song as the Patriots retreated into their locker room. Then came the chants.
“Bra-dy! Bra-dy! Bra-dy!”
Brady sprinted down the home sideline in his old No. 12 jersey, pumped his fist again and released a battle cry in the face of the crowd. He jogged near the tunnel he once left as a Buccaneer and veered back toward a makeshift stage at the opposite end of the field. Minutes later, after a glowing address from Robert Kraft and the start of his own speech, Brady gave voice to the understated truth of his legacy.
“There’s nothing significant in life that can be accomplished as an individual,” he said. “It’s always about the team.”
How quickly we forget.
Countless teammates and coaches dotted Brady’s two decades of excellence with their own greatness. Adam Vinatieri’s game-winning field goals, Bill Belichick’s game plans that thwarted Peyton Manning, Patrick Mahomes and The Greatest Show on Turf and legacy-defining stops by Ty Law to Malcolm Butler and Dont’a Hightower.
Brady never captured the Lombardi Trophy alone. He never took a hand-off, threw a block, made a tackle, snatched an interception or held a couple of the NFL’s highest-scoring offenses to 20 combined points in two Super Bowls. He mastered the mundane and the magnificent of his position equally, just as the Patriots seemed to for 20 years.
It wasn’t just that Brady annually ranked among the league leaders in game-winning drives, but also efficiency metrics and turnover avoidance. It wasn’t just that the Patriots usually ranked among the NFL’s best in turnover margin and explosive plays, but they took fewer penalties than their opponents and tackled better than them, too.
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It was together, with a clean, consistent cohesion that defined them as much as their celebrity quarterback and coach did, that the Brady-era Patriots won.
And it was together, the Pats fell Sunday; a mediocre team that wasn’t overmatched by the reigning NFC champions, but simply that failed to handle enough of the magnificent and mundane to beat them. Though, there were moments.
Mac Jones, facing a 16-0 deficit, orchestrated a 2-minute drill before halftime. Trailing by five late in the fourth quarter, safety Jabrill Peppers popped a fumble from Eagle quarterback Jalen Hurts to kill one drive. Moments later, rookie corner Christian Gonzalez batted a fourth-down pass to stop the next series.
But on his final drive, Jones took a brutal second-down sack inside the red zone. Two snaps later, he fired an apparent fourth-down completion to rookie Kayshon Boutte with 25 seconds left. But the catch did not survive review.
Boutte had failed to stay inbounds along the left sideline, a failure to master time and space and the clutch moment. The Patriots lost.
In all, they took seven penalties. They threw a pick-six and lost a fumble. They came within yards of clinching an upset on two potential game-winning drives in the fourth quarter and failed to finish.
This is who the Patriots have been and continue to be without Brady.
And this, at least for one game, in the starkest possible contrast between the franchise then and now, is their quarterback.
“I feel like in the most critical times,” Jones admitted Sunday, “I played my worst.”