Let’s go back to December of 2017 when the 10-3 New England Patriots traveled to face the 11-2 Pittsburgh Steelers.
The Steelers were rolling at this point in the season. They had just won eight games in a row and wanted to affirm themselves among the AFC contenders with a win over the defending Super Bowl champions.
Despite controlling most of the game, Pittsburgh ended up finding themselves in a situation no one wants to be in late in the 4th quarter. On defense, with the ball in Tom Brady’s hands, with a chance for him to win the game.
The Patriots offensive coordinator at the time was none other than Josh McDaniels. In honor of the recent number retirement ceremony of Tom Brady at Gilette Stadium, McDaniels took a trip down memory lane and relived and rewatched this iconic drive in video provided by the team.
The first play of this drive was an incomplete pass intended for Gronkowski, but they went right back to him on the next play.
“Pittsburgh was playing a lot of man coverage in this drive.” McDaniels noted. “Gronkowski is kinda in one of those unrecoverable states, he’s had games like that. And Tom gets us out of a bad situation.”
The beauty of Rob Gronkowski at the peak of his powers was fairly simple. He was too strong to be covered by a fast guy, and too fast to be covered by a strong guy. It took a special player to even have a chance of sticking with him in man coverage, and Tom Brady knew it, as did Josh McDaniels.
“If they are going to give me a chance, by putting safeties on this guy – as you can see the safety isn’t in a bad position.” McDaniels said. “And there’s a guy in the middle of the field. [Brady] is just saying, ‘me and my guy are going to go win this game.’.”
As the old saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And going to Gronkowski wasn’t broke on this drive for the New England Patriots. Brady found Gronkowski three plays in a row, all three completions for 69 (fitting) yards.
“This is one of those bull in a china shop drives, where I’m going to him, and I almost don’t care what they do. We are going to see if they can stop him.”
This got New England down to the eight-yard line, and Dion Lewis would do the rest on the next play, taking it to the house and giving New England the lead.
If you remember this game, however, Gronkowski’s magical drive probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. Getting the ball back with just 56 seconds on the clock, the Steelers took it down the field and appeared to have a touchdown to TE Jesse James, however, it was ruled that he didn’t maintain possession of the ball, and Ben Roethlisberger ended up throwing a game-losing interception two plays later. The controversial call could have been avoided if they could have just stopped Gronkowski.
