JPP: Tom Brady is not God
Tom Brady #12 of the New England Patriotsanswers questions from the media during Media Day ahead of Super Bowl XLVI against the New York Giants at Lucas Oil Stadium. (Jan. 31, 2012) Credit: Getty Images
INDIANAPOLIS -- Tom Brady may be considered a football deity, but as far as the Giants are concerned, he's just human.
"Tom Brady is a great quarterback, but at the end of the day he is just a quarterback," Jason Pierre-Paul said Wednesday. "It's not like he is God, he can't be touched. We've just got to get to him, and going into this game we know what's at stake and we've got to get there fast enough . . . We've just got to get to him. We know it all starts up front no matter what."
It's no secret that the Giants' game plan for Super Bowl XLVI is to rattle Brady, and the defensive players have been getting in their verbal licks since last week. That's when Justin Tuck, the defensive captain, said that the Giants would have to bring down Brady with this serpentine analogy: "The way to kill a snake is to take off its head," he said. "The way to kill an offense as potent as that one is, is making sure you take care of Brady."
Since then, the Giants have not shied away from acknowledging that their plan is to get after the quarterback, just as they did in Super Bowl XLII. That became the blueprint for beating the Patriots, and Brady did not win another playoff game until this season.
"I always say the keys to football are the same: stop the run and get to the quarterback," linebacker Mathias Kiwanuka said. "Maybe they don't have as strong a run game as other teams do, but they are very effective passing the ball and that ball comes out quick. If we do our job up front and get to him, it will make everybody's job easier."
And how can the Giants get to Brady? Kiwanuka said it's rather simple.
"You beat the man across from you," he said. "The sack part of it is the easy part, but getting through those offensive linemen is what our job is, and they are very effective as a group. Maybe individually [the Patriots offensive line] might not be the greatest athletes or have the greatest stars, but as a group they get the job done and that's what we have to do, we have to beat them as a group."
The Patriots, of course, have been listening to all of this verbal abuse.
"You hear that every week from teams that you play that they want to get to the quarterback and hit the quarterback," Brady said. "In our team meetings, Coach [Bill] Belichick talks about getting to the opposing team's quarterback and hitting the quarterback. That's just what defensive football is all about. It wouldn't be the Super Bowl if they weren't talking about coming to knock me down and trying to knock me out. That's what I expect, and you know what, our offensive line gets paid to keep those guys out of there."
The difference here is that the Giants are built for just this kind of gameplan, with a rotation of pass rushers who can remain fresh and speedy. They can get to a quarterback with a three- or four-man rush, which leaves the linebackers and defensive backs to cover the receivers.
"This team has a very good pass rush," Brady said. "I've seen it game after game this year. They can get to the quarterback. They can hit the quarterback. They can force the quarterback into some bad decisions and some bad throws. We're going to try to eliminate those. We really can't afford too many of those on Sunday. We had too many of those the last time we played them, and we're not going to be able to win the game making mistakes."
