Tom Brady Has Passed for 100,000 Yards. Sort Of.
After last week’s game, it became apparent the Patriots were going to have the best offense in the NFL.
The defense wasn’t going to get nearly as many points, so the offense needed to do more than put up big numbers in a game where the Patriots couldn’t have ended up losing.
Brady wasn’t able to do that (or get help from other players on the team).
Brady said in a conference call this week that the pass-completion percentage was his worst since he has been a starter (2009). This is the one area that the Patriots have been able to turn around in the last year, with Brady completing more than 60 percent of his passes.
Brady is currently on pace for 61.1 percent pass completion percentage (the first of his three seasons with at least 70 percent completion).
So what happened to cause the drop in completion percentage? And what can Brady do about it?
There are only two logical explanations for Brady’s decrease in completion percentage: Either he has regressed in his ability to lead receivers into the end zone or he hasn’t been making the throws that lead to the completions.
The problem is that it makes no sense. From 2008 through 2010, Brady threw an average of 17 passes per game and an average of 16 touchdowns per game. In 2011, that dropped to 14 and 12. Those two numbers should be the same if Brady has been passing receivers the same way in 2010 that he has been doing in 2011.
I asked Rob Rang, and one of the league’s leading pass-catchers, if having receivers run routes that have become routine for him in recent years has affected Brady’s accuracy.
“It probably would,” he said. “It would definitely [be] a factor.”
The problem is