Tom Brady Shoulders Blame For Patriots Loss To Eagles: 'Bad Quarterbacking'
BOSTON (CBS) -- While the New England Patriots' special teams unit had an uncharacteristically bad game on Sunday, quarterback Tom Brady shouldered the blame for their 35-28 loss to the Eagles.
Brady was picked off twice in the contest, including a 99-yard pick-six by Malcolm Jenkins in the third quarter that gave Philadelphia a 21-14 lead. Brady forced the third-and-goal pass into a double-covered Danny Amendola, and paid the price.
"That's about as bad as you can do for a quarterback," Brady said of the pick-six. "It was just a dumb play. There was really not much chance of a completion, so I should've just probably thrown it out of the back of the end zone or found someone else to throw it to. We would've kicked three points. It was just a bad play."
As for his second interception later in the third quarter, on first glance it looked like there was a miscommunication between Brady and receiver Brandon LaFell, who stopped running late in his deep route. After the game though, Brady said it was an attempt to throw the ball away that went terribly, terribly wrong.
"I kind of scanned the field, and we didn't have much. I was actually trying to throw it away and didn't throw it far enough, so one of those where if I'm going to try to throw it away, you've got to throw it away. You can't throw it where they have an opportunity to catch it, so that was another very, just a bad mental error," he said. "I mean, no one can save us from that. That's my fault. "
That pick led to another Eagles touchdown drive, part of 35 unanswered points scored by Philadelphia on Sunday. Brady said it was those two decisions (which he called "bad quarterbacking") that cost his team the game.
"The team trusts you to put the ball in your hands and make good decisions with it," he said. "So it's unfortunate because those cost you the game, and I've got to do a better job."
Brady finished the game 29-for-56 for 312 yards, three touchdowns and those two interceptions. He also ran one in from a yard out to cut Philadelphia's lead to 35-28 with three minutes to go, but the New England offense was unable to put together another one of those magical drives when the defense gave them the ball back by forcing an Eagles fumble with 1:58 to go.
Brady completed just one of his six passes that final drive (not counting a spike to stop the clock), with both LaFell and Amendola dropping balls that could have moved the chains. Any hope New England had at a comeback win was over when Brady's fourth-and-10 bid for Keshawn Martin fell to the ground when the receiver was hit by a pair of Eagles defenders.
Dropped passes plagued the Patriots on Sunday, and they don't have their full arsenal of weapons with Rob Gronkowski and Julian Edelman both sidelined. But Brady won't use either as an excuse.
"I've got to make good decisions with the ball," he said. "If I turn the ball over twice, I don't think we're going to have the chance to win many games, so I think that's what it comes down to."
New England now sits at 10-2 on the season following their first back-to-back losses since 2012. Sunday's loss dropped them to third in the AFC standings, leaving their margin for error thin the rest of the way if they want a first-round bye. But Brady's focus is now on next week's opponent: the Houston Texans.
"We can't do anything about what happened, obviously, tonight or last week just like we can't do anything about the ones before that. And I think we've got to just play better football," said Brady. "We're in a decent spot. We've just got to, if you want to win consistently, you've got to do things well consistently, and we just haven't played winning football for the last two weeks."