McCourty Twins Roll Their Eyes At The Tom Brady Decline Takes

Following the Patriots dreadful loss to the Tennessee Titans on Sunday afternoon, many anti-Patriot talking heads were ready and willing to cannonball into their already lock-n-loaded “Tom Brady’s on the decline” take that we’ve heard for the past few years whenever New England slips up in a contest. While appearing on NBC Sports Boston’s Quick Slants program this week, Jason and Devin McCourty both rolled their eyes at those takes, given that the team is still 7-3 on the year with some marquee wins that came in part because of Brady’s brilliance.

“Last week, we beat the Packers and put up 30-some points and no one questions him,” Jason McCourty said, via NBCSportsBoston.com. “We play the Kansas City Chiefs and as a defense, we suck and we give up a lot of points and Tom just keeps answering. He has the last drive to go down and put us up and the game’s over and it’s just, ‘There’s Tom Brady being Tom Brady.’

“Then as soon as there’s a bad game, it’s like, ‘Well, I guess Tom’s on a downward spiral … ’ — wait, two weeks ago, he was still the greatest? For me, that just comes with the territory of reaching that level of greatness. As soon as there’s a tad bit off everybody goes down in the dumps.”

So why do they do this time and time again?

“Everyone wants to call that out,” Devin added. “Everyone wants to be the smart person who said ‘I knew it was the end.’ In ’14, how many people said that?”

To answer Devin, plenty. And then the Patriots went on to win two more Super Bowls and appear in another.

Overall, it’s a fool’s errand to try and predict the demise of this Patriots dynasty, but it’s also still fair game to note the overall poor performance that the team put out down in Nashville last weekend. Devin McCourty’s aware of the team’s struggles, particularly on the road, and are using this bye week to try and correct it.

“Losing sucks,” the safety said during his press conference this week. “I think there’s always lessons to be learned but you have to – in this league, you speak about those lessons when it happens, but it doesn’t matter unless you change what happens going forward. We can see the stuff we did wrong in the game and all of that and it’s good; you have to do that. But it doesn’t really matter if you don’t fix it going forward.

“I think you always have to be careful of saying like, “We learned a lesson and now we know.” We’ve just got to go do those things. It’s not as important to kind of say it in your head and talk about it, but to come and put that work to use and try to show up for the following weeks.”