PFF: Tom Brady is Nowhere Close to Being Washed Up
It’s easy to look at Brady’s box score stats and just assume he’s gone down the drain. After all, he’s averaging just 6.4 yards per attempt with a 65% completion percentage, and he now has three interceptions in two games. However, the fact of the matter is that it goes a lot deeper than that.
Brady topped his solid debut as a Buccaneer in Week 1 (77.8 PFF grade) by posting an 89.2 PFF grade in Week 2 against Carolina, the second-best of the week. He also tied for the most big-time throws (four) of the week and ranked fifth in the percentage of accurate passes thrown.
On throws of 10 yards or more, Brady threw six of 10 such passes perfectly, according to PFF’s ball-location data. And of those 10 passes, four of them were dropped by his receiving unit. In total, Brady finished the day with seven dropped passes, two more than any other quarterback.
So far this season,
Brady is tied for the most big-time throws in the NFL, with nine, and his receiving unit has dropped 36.4% of the accurate passes thrown 10 or more yards downfield (worst in NFL by eight percentage points). Brady has had a lot of yards and a few scores left off the box score this season because of drops or defensive pass interference. While his traditional stats don’t suggest it, Brady is outplaying most quarterbacks in the NFL right now.