Monday night's blowout loss to the Kansas City Chiefs wasn't the lowest point in Tom Brady's career (Eli Manning has the market cornered there). But it certainly was one of the most unusual nights of it.
By the fourth quarter -- with the game long since decided -- ESPN cameras kept finding their way back to Brady on the sideline. The 37-year-old quarterback was staring straight ahead, quiet, clearly searching for answers. The Patriots had just been blown out on national television, and he had played his part.
"It was a bad performance by everybody and just want to make sure we never have this feeling again," Brady said after the game, via ESPNBoston.com. "I think there's not much we are doing well enough on a consistent basis -- run game, pass game, consistently when we have to throw it, have to run it, convert on third down, red area. It's all a problem."
As Gregg Rosenthal wrote Monday night, Brady was hardly alone in the offensive struggles. Bill Belichick continues to shuffle an ineffective offensive line, Rob Gronkowski doesn't look like the same player post-knee surgery and Kenbrell Thompkins and Aaron Dobson aren't even good enough to play.
Brady has been around the game long enough to know what's next. This week will be full of post-mortems on the Brady-Belichick era. If you're especially unlucky, you might even find yourself reading about a "quarterback controversy" in New England.
"There's going to be a lot of negativities," Brady said. "Everyone is going to tell us how terrible we are. That's just the way it goes in the NFL. But we have a lot of character in our locker room.
"If there's one thing, I can assure you of that. There's not a guy in that locker room that's going to quit. We stick together. We work on the things that we need to work on. We all feel we have a good football team. We just didn't play like a good football team tonight. We will see what we are made of this week."
Brady has faced challenges in the regular season before. This may be his biggest yet.
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