Tom Brady Nearly Perfect In Second Half And Other Leftover Patriots Thoughts

BOSTON (CBS) -- The halftime stats were grisly. Tom Brady was 12-for-20 for 87 yards and a touchdown. Stevan Ridley had six carries for 13 yards; Shane Vereen had three for five. Rob Gronkowski headed to the locker room early. Dan Connolly was gone, Nate Solder was giving up sacks and quarterback pressures seemingly every other snap, and if it hadn't been for two forced turnovers on the plus side of the 50-yard line, the Patriots would have been locked in a 7-7 tie with the Buffalo Bills.

I don't know what happened in that locker room at halftime, but the Brady that entered was not the same Brady that emerged.

On the first play of the second half, Brady hit Aaron Dobson for a 9-yard gain. After a 10-yard Ridley run, Brady hit Julian Edelman for a gain of five. Two plays later, on a third-and-9, Brady patiently waited before hitting Brandon LaFell across the middle for a 17-yard catch-and-run. On the very next play, Brady reared back and fired deep with reckless abandon into triple coverage to Brian Tyms, a 25-year-old with two prior career receptions for a total of 12 yards.

Despite Stephon Gilmore's arm draped across the inside of Tyms' elbows, the receiver came down with the football while tumbling over the goal line.

The 43-yard bomb was most unexpected, given the offensive futility of the first half, but it was just the start of one of the best halves of football Tom Brady has ever played.

The QB completed a ridiculous 15 of 17 passes for 274 yards, three touchdowns and zero interceptions. All told, he connected with 10 different receivers, three of whom (Julian Edelman, Rob Gronkowski, LaFell) tallied more than 90 receiving yards. And he did it all behind yet another mix-and-match offensive line that featured Josh Kline, Marcus Cannon and Jordan Devey.

It was an exceptional performance from a future Hall of Famer, and it provided some pretty strong evidence that those claiming he's all washed up and that the Patriots should trade him and that it's Jimmy Garoppolo time ... well, it provided evidence that those people are crazy.

Anyone with a set of eyeballs could plainly see that Brady's struggles in the early part of the season were directly related to the offensive line's inability to provide any protection. It bottomed out on that Monday night in Kansas City, but Brady clearly turned a corner himself after that embarrassing loss. He took the field a man possessed last Sunday night, and this week in Buffalo, he threw caution to the wind and let it rip in the second half.

Add it up, and in the past two weeks, Brady is 50-for-72 (69.4 percent) for 653 yards, six touchdowns and zero interceptions.

Looks like Tom has learned to adapt.

That is, quite obviously, stupendous news for the Patriots. Now let's jump into some leftover thoughts from their 37-22 win over Buffalo.

--It's probably wrong to pile on the Bills after a big loss at home like that ... but how can I be expected to hold my tongue after one of the Billsiest afternoons in recent memory? From Duke Williams committing the most hysterically obvious pass interference penalty to C.J. Spiller fumbling when really the only goal was to run out the clock and not fumble before halftime to Kyle Orton throwing a perfect pass to Jamie Collins to Jarius Wynn jumping offside to give the Patriots a free first down when they were backed up inside their own 10-yard line and so on and so forth. Considering how jazzed all those Buffalo fans were, it's almost sad that the Bills couldn't do any better for them but to continue being the Bills. It was just ... so Bills.

--That being said, the Patriots had plenty of Billsiness in them, too. They had not one, not two but three false starts on wide receivers (though LaFell's was Brady's fault), and they had the rare false start by long snapper/bad snap on ensuing field goal attempt sequence bite them in the first half. Everyone's worried about catching Ebola these days, but for parts of Sunday afternoon I found it concerning that the Patriots had caught Bills.

--If you're like me, then you had trouble sleeping on Sunday night after Terry Pegula provided the most electrifying television appearance of all time. Pegula was a one-man thrill ride, stepping into the broadcast booth and unleashing his relentlessly energetic brand of passion and comedy. It was like The Rock owning the ring on Monday Night Raw, except it was The Rock multiplied by 10,000. I was ready to run through a brick wall when he was in that booth, and my blood was a-pumping long through the night. Finally around 3 a.m., my heart stopped racing and I was able to catch some shut-eye, but man oh man, Terry Pegula clearly made his billions of dollars by way of inspiring others with his magnetic personality.

Here's how some of that unforgettable interview went:

Q: Terry, first of all, congratulations. Welcome to a very exclusive club.

Pegula: Thank you very much. Thirty-two of us ...

(Silence)

Q: So what'd it feel like to have over 70,000 people chanting your name prior to the opening kickoff?

Pegula: Uhh ... like I said ... after following Ralph Wilson ... that's a daunting task ... I said to one of our guys in the organization who's been here 26 years, I said if I own this team as long as you did -- as long as you've been with the Bills, I will own less than half the time that Ralph owned it. So it's ... he's a legend. I'm excited.

Q: What's been the best piece of advice you've gotten from fellow NFL owners?

Pegula: Uhh ... enjoy it. That's pretty much uhh ... what the guys said to me. Um. It's an exclusive privilege ... and enjoy it.

Pegula: I got a question for Daryl -- uhh had you ever met uhh Coach Marrone before?

Johnston: Oh yeah, he was actually a teammate of mine at Syracuse for two years, so yeah, good friends with Doug.

Pegula: He's pretty intense.

When Terry Pegula is calling you intense, you must be a special person.

This guy knows what I'm talking about:

OK but really, what in honest hell?

--You know, you shouldn't go around holding the football like a can of soda while jumping into the air in the midst of a live football game. You might get demolished and then fumble the football. That being said, doing so does result in really cool photographs, so it's hard to say the risk isn't worth the reward.

Thank you, Boobie Dixon. And happy Breast Cancer Awareness Month to you.

--Kyle Orton was thoroughly OK as the Buffalo quarterback, which is to say Kyle Orton was basically Kyle Orton. He made a few nice throws, showed no escapability, made two or three terrible throws and looked like Dave Grohl while doing it.

I particularly liked his deep ball to Marquise Goodwin:

Juuuuuuust a bit outside.

But my favorite Orton play of the day came late in the third quarter. Linebacker Deontae Skinner delayed before rushing up the middle, and he had a huge free lane to Orton. The quarterback could see Skinner a full 8 yards away:

Yet rather than throw the ball, or try to run, or really try to do anything, Orton just went into statue mode and got crushed.

Bravo, Mr. Orton. You just don't see that strategy employed enough. Plus, now I know that if I ever go camping with Orton, I'm safe from a bear attack, because the bear is obviously going to get to Kyle in a standstill as I sprint away.

--Strange football thing: Jerry Hughes jumped offsides on one play, and Marcus Cannon subsequently held the charging Hughes in order to save Tom Brady's life. Now the play itself resulted in an 18-yard pass from Brady to LaFell, but it obviously didn't count due to offsetting penalties. But should the offense really be penalized for reacting to the defense's penalty? If the lineman doesn't hold the pass rusher who got a head start, the quarterback may end up getting his head knocked off.

It's tricky. I know it'd be hard to enforce, and I know they typically blow it dead if the pass rusher has a free shot, but in a case like this one where the play isn't stopped, I don't think the offense should be penalized by losing the result of the play in such an instance.

--The personal foul penalty on Jerry Hughes was, obviously, a grand miscarriage of justice. All the man did was congratulate his teammate after making a tackle. However, just three plays earlier, Hughes shoved Brady in the back well after the QB had released a pass, and it went uncalled.

You really think you can get away with touching the golden boy while escaping punishment? No way, Jose (Jerry).

--OK, admit it: When Stevan Ridley went down and you saw the football lying there on the turf, you cursed him for fumbling, didn't you? DIDN'T YOU?! Go run a mental lap, sinner.

--Now, I'm no offensive line coach, which is to say I'm no Dave DeGuglielmo, but I don't believe the scheme ever calls for the left tackle to get dominated and sandwiched into the quarterback.

Again, I'm no Dante Scarnecchia, and I understand the line had to sell the play-action, but I do not believe it's in the playbook for the left tackle to step toward his right while trying to reach out with his left hand to stop a charging pass rusher.

Guess how that play ended?

Tough day for Nate Solder and, subsequently, Tom Brady.

--It can't be captured via screen shot, but Jordan Devey's play in the fourth quarter was potentially much more dangerous to Brady. Hughes muscled himself inside of the left guard, and Devey, absent any other option, decided to shove Hughes down to the ground. The problem was that Devey shoved Hughes directly into Tom Brady's lower body.

Again, I'm not privy to the team meetings or the strategy on this particular play, but I don't believe the linemen are told to throw 250-pound men into the planted legs of Brady. Just a hunch.

--Many hours have passed. I'm still not sure how Brian Tyms made this catch:

--Have you ever noticed that Julian Edelman just can't get tackled normally. Whenever a defender wraps up Edelman, it always seems to be around the neck, or around the top of the helmet, and Edelman's body always ends up getting contorted as he somersaults on his way toward the ground. It looks like he loses his head or gets broken in half every single time he gets tackled. The poor fella.

This literally happens five times every game:

If that happened to me once, I would remember it as the worst day of my life. For Edelman, it's merely known as "Sunday."

--I'll be the first person to tell you that the foghorn at Gillette Stadium is slightly lame and grossly overused. But my goodness, the train horn in Buffalo is roughly 14 times more obnoxious than the foghorn could ever dream of being (if foghorns dream ... I'm not sure they do). The person in charge of the train horn at Ralph Wilson Stadium is just plain sick. Sick! That train was rolling on first downs, third downs, bathroom breaks, injury timeouts, officials' meetings and a whole host of other non-events.

Bills fans trying to claim "Seven Nation Army" is pretty lame, too. Come on, Buffalo. Come up with something on your own.

--Vince Wilfork may be closing in on his 33rd birthday, he may be coming off a torn Achilles, and his Pro Bowl/All-Pro days may be behind ... but the man is still a monster. Look no further than Skinny Vinny's tackle of Fred Jackson early in the third quarter, a tackle that he made with just one hand.

It's even better if you picture Vince yelling, "Get ... down ... child" while doing it.

--That wasn't the most impressive athletic feat performed by a Patriots defensive lineman, though. Those honors belong to Chandler Jones, who unveiled his Flying Wombat move (I may have invented that term, whatever, go with it) by getting his body around Cordy Glenn before leaping through the air to strip the ball out of Orton's hand and then landing on the loose ball. It was incredible. Really. Watch it. Over and over again.

--After Brady successfully ran a quarterback sneak for the millionth time of his career, the broadcast crew told us that Brady is 93-for-99 on QB sneaks in his career. Who's keeping that stat, and how? I feel it was missing a key detail, like whether it's 93-for-99 on third or fourth-and-2 or shorter, or something like that. And what if it's third-and-1 and his pocket breaks down and he tries to run for it? If he gets the yard, or if he gets sacked, is that factoring in? Show us the documentation!

As far I know, he's 100 percent effective when running the sneak on a gotta-have-it play. He's been stuffed on third down but never fourth down. That excludes the time in Baltimore in '07, when Rex Ryan called a timeout (he was a defensive coordinator and therefore wasn't allowed to call timeout, but he did it anyway -- sound familiar?) and bailed out the Patriots. Brady even joked after that game that he heard the whistle for the timeout, and that's why he didn't gain the yard.

Anyway, regardless of the official statistic (there is none), Tom Brady is really good at doing what's necessary on a football field.

--Touchdown, Rob Gronkowski! And Gronkowski spikes the ball in his hometown and ... oh ... never mind. Holding penalty on Jordan Devey.

Cue the sad tuba:

--Gronkowski was so fired up after the win that he forgot that he's on the Patriots and is not allowed to be his frat-boy self.

"We've gotta give that to one of the linemen today," Gronkowski told Tony Siragusa when asked who is the sexiest member of the Patriots. "All the linemen are sexy, they got that sexy body and everything. They played a great job. They're the ones who should get laid tonight -- those linemen."

Sure thing, Yo Soy Fiesta. Whatever you say, man.

--No Ridley, no Mayo and perhaps no Connolly and no Stork? That's bad news. But fortunately for the Patriots, it's a short Jets week, or as it's likely being referred to in the Patriots locker room, "our first bye."

--Sometimes in this cold, cold world, you lose faith in humanity. You wonder, "Does anyone really get it?" You fret that society is coming apart at the seams. You think unity and harmony can never exist in our world.

And then ... you post a six-second video clip of Bill Belichick fiddling with a microphone, muttering "stupid thing!" and eventually ripping the things into pieces ... and you see how much joy you've just delivered, and you see that people have played that video 200,000 times in a matter of hours.

And just like that, your faith in humanity is restored.

Stupid thing.

Read more from Michael Hurley by clicking here, or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.

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