Of his 53 misses, 20 appeared to be due to the fault of the receiver. Eight passes were dropped (Edelman led with three), seven were the result of the receiver blatantly running the wrong route, and the rest were the cause of other factors, such as Aaron Dobson pulling up lame on a deep pass against Buffalo or Rob Gronkowski losing a pass in the sun. Taking those instances away, Brady’s completion percentage of deep balls rises to a more respectable 40 percent.
I guess I’ve given up ever expecting the Pats to be an offense under Brady that is just chucking up bombs left and right. They’ll play to Brady’s strengths till the end of his career, and that is making the right reads and completing the easy throws. Peyton’s season was basically making those same throws.
A “deep threat” won’t really matter, but it would be nice to hit a few more than they missed this season.
