Tom Brady’s first game back for his third season of calling games on FOX also doubled as a show-and-tell day.
The seven-time Super Bowl champion brought the play-call sheet from the New England Patriots Super Bowl LI victory over the Atlanta Falcons into the broadcast booth for Sunday’s Commanders-Eagles game.
However, Brady didn’t bring the play-call sheet to brag about his 25-point comeback victory over the Falcons. Rather, he brought it in the broadcast booth to teach fans how play-call sheets actually work.
“You can see everything shift together, and I think the viewer at home should really take notice,” Brady said. “These are the runs from two-receiver groupings. That’s runs from one-receiver grouping. That’s three-receiver groupings. Everything’s really segmented. You see third down, you see red area — everything’s really specific to the situation that they’re in.
“They’re not just randomly looking down to 120 calls. They’re actually looking at very segmented plays for each situation that allows them to pick the right one.”
The sheet Brady showed displayed a highlighted heading with several plays for each situation listed below. If you look close enough, you’ll see a play call that reads “G Trips RT 64 Slush Boot (FOOT) (TITANIC)” under the “Quick Dropback Passes — 1st and 2nd Down.” Look even more, and you’ll see another play that reads “Zing Echo LT Boom 79 Z Malone H Look” under “2-Point Plays.”
In terms of how the plays were categorized, some of them included the percentage of play calls the Falcons called defensively in those situations. For the third-and-6-to-9 category, the play sheet noted that the Falcons played man coverage 100% of the time and were in four-down fronts 60% of the time.
Those kinds of details helped Brady throw for 466 yards and two touchdowns in the Patriots’ Super Bowl victory over the Falcons, in which they came back from a 28-3 deficit to win in overtime. And Brady did give himself a moment to brag about the play sheet, too.
“Me and [Patriots offensive coordinator] Josh McDaniels called this a Picasso by the time we got to the end of the game,” Brady said.
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