The New England Patriots enter their bye week in a pretty comfortable position. While their 37-20 loss left a bad taste in the collective mouths of Patriots Nation, the fact of the matter is this team is still 8-1 and controls their own destiny for home field advantage. During the bye week, Last Word at Pro Football will break down the roster, position by position, starting with quarterback Tom Brady.

Quarterback Tom Brady: New England Patriots Bye Week Report

The Good

Even at the advanced age of 42 years old, Tom Brady remains one of the best quarterbacks in the league. While he’s not playing quite as well as he did from 2014 to 2017, the six-time Super Bowl champion is still a top-10 quarterback by just about every measure. Through eight weeks of action, Brady is 9th in Football Outsiders DYAR, 11th in DVOA, and 10th in ESPN’s QBR metric while leading the league in passing attempts.

Brady’s managed to do all this despite playing with a constantly changing cast of passing weapons. Brady entered the season with Julian Edelman, Josh Gordon, Demaryius Thomas, and Antonio Brown as his top four receivers. That’s obviously an amazing grouping on paper, but three of the four are no longer in New England. Edelman is still great, Phillip Dorsett is reliable as ever, but it’s not the best cast Brady’s ever worked with. In the past, he’d overcome said circumstances and remain a top-three quarterback. However, he’s at the point in his career where he needs a little more help than he used to. Additionally, the offensive line hasn’t done well with Isaiah Wynn on the injured reserve. Hopefully, the return of N’Keal Harry and Wynn along with the emergence of Mohamed Sanu can be enough to bring Brady back to the NFL elite.

Perhaps the best thing about Brady’s season is that he can still sling it. Peyton Manning’s statistical decline came out of nowhere, but he never fully regained his arm strength following his 2011 neck surgery. As great as he was, it was easy to predict a decline with his limited throwing ability. Brady, meanwhile, shows no signs of slowing down. The three-time MVP can still make any throw and currently ranks sixth in air yards.

Here are Tom Brady's best throws through 8 games. Not bad for a "dink and duck" guy who leads the league in attempts over 20+ yards. Old man still got it. #Patriots pic.twitter.com/GhYCRZklpY — Ryan Spagnoli (@Ryan_Spags) October 29, 2019

The Bad

Tom Brady is still a great quarterback, but there is some room for improvement. Brady came out of the gate hot, completing 68% of his passes for 911 yards, seven touchdowns, and no interceptions through the first three games of the season. However, since Week 4, Brady has completed just 63.45% of his passes for 1,625 yards, seven touchdowns, and five interceptions. This includes one of the worst games of his career against the Buffalo Bills when he finished with just 150 passing yards, no touchdowns, and one interception.

It’s hard to nitpick the greatest quarterback of all-time, but Brady is also throwing the ball away at an alarming rate. As of last week, Brady and Aaron Rodgers were tied for the league lead in throwaways. Some of this is due to Brady not trusting his protection and playing with a lead. The Patriots typically play from ahead, meaning that it’s smarter for Brady to just throw the ball away and trust his defense instead of trying to force something into tight coverage. Still, Brady should look to decrease his amount of throwaways in the second half of the season.

Overall, Tom Brady is in the midst of what’s easily the best season ever by a 42-year old quarterback. This isn’t his best season on a throw-for-throw basis, but he hasn’t shown any sign of physical decline. With Harry and Wynn poised to return, Brady could go on a second-half tear and play like a top-five quarterback for the remainder of the season.

Overall Grade: B+

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