Brady wasn't pleased with his performance on the final drive.
FOXBOROUGH – Tom Brady expects perfection of himself. So it made sense that he was less than jovial when meeting with media after having to be bailed out by the defense during Sunday’s win over the Buffalo Bills.
“We certainly had more opportunities out there to score more points, but we didn’t and [the defense] made a great play at the end,” Brady said. “A couple great plays at the end.”
In reality, the offense had little trouble moving the ball against the Bills. The Pats gained 347 yards in the 37-31 win, but that figure would have been much higher if not for the Bills committing 14 penalties for 148 yards (the penalties took away some yardage opportunities from the offense).
Brady led New England to points on its first four drives, and completed 23 of 38 passes for 237 yards and two touchdowns. But the finish is all that Brady cares about, and once again the Patriots failed to close the door on their opponent.
After the Bills scored to make it 34-31, Brady got the ball back 7:47 remaining and a chance to put the game away. He took the Patriots down to the 2-yard line, where Stevan Ridley ran for a loss of two and then was called for a false start on second down.
On second-and-9, he threw an incompletion to Deion Branch and tossed the ball in the dirt on third down after evading the Bills’ pass rush. New England had to settle for a field goal, opening up an opportunity for Buffalo to steal the game. And it almost did until Devin McCourty came up with an interception in the end zone to end the threat.
"It's frustrating when we don't play as well as we're capable of," Brady said. "But it's part of the game and part of mental toughness to put those things behind you and to keep playing hard, and we did that so that's why we won."
It is why they won, but that doesn’t mean that Brady was happy about the result.
"We had plenty of opportunities to do something about it way before I was sitting on the sidelines," Brady said. "I had an opportunity to do something about it 50 seconds before that and the defense really saved the day."