Antonio Brown Ran The Wrong Route For Super Bowl Touchdown From Tom Brady
By Michael Hurley, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- If you were a regular spectator watching Super Bowl LV and watched as Antonio Brown put Tyrann Mathieu on roller skates, you would have assumed that the All-Pro caliber receiver was in lockstep with Tom Brady on their touchdown connection.
You'd be assuming wrong, though.
That's because despite Brown getting open and despite Brady hitting him with a perfect strike, Brown ran the wrong route.
That much was known after the game, when the quarterbacks coach revealed to the world on Monday morning that Brown ran the wrong route. But it was shown to be quite true in the moment when the first bit of mic'd up segments ran on "Inside The NFL" on Tuesday night.
Immediately after the Brown touchdown, microphones picked up backup quarterback Blaine Gabbert gleefully yelling to head coach Bruce Arians, "I don't know what the [bleep] he ran, but he got open!"
Whatever works.
On Monday, QB coach Clyde Christensen spilled the beans on the route.
"A.B., on his touchdown catch, was supposed to go down and in, and then pop back out. But he goes out and pops back in," Christensen told The Pat McAfee Show. " I'm kinda going through the headset, 'Did he run the right route? Did he just do opposite of what he's supposed to do, and we hit it for a touchdown?' That was the case."
Christensen credited the 43-year-old Brady for reacting to the play in front of him.
"That's where Brady doesn't get thrown for a loop," Christensen said. "He just hits the guy. Hey, you get open, I'll hit you. And that's where he's pretty darn unique. A lot of quarterbacks will say, 'Hey, he's supposed to do this, A to B to C. This guy, AB, goes C to F, back to A, and he just hits him for a touchdown. It was unbelievable."
Neither Brady nor Brown were asked about the touchdown after the game, but Brown offered huge praise to Brady, as the quarterback was the driving force in giving him this second (or third? or fourth?) chance in the NFL.
"It's been a tremendous honor working with Tom, man. He's a legend. He's a winner. He's a good leader. One of the best human beings I know. Even a greater football player," an emotional Brown said in his postgame press conference. "I can't speak enough on him for what he's meant to me, this moment, everything I've been through."
