With seven Super Bowl titles and three MVPs, no player has had a more decorated career in NFL history than Tom Brady. But there’s only one moment from Brady’s playing career that made him truly seem immortal, and it came in the third quarter of a regular-season game.
When the New England Patriots made their first trip to AT&T Stadium to face the Dallas Cowboys in Week 5 of the 2015 season, Brady got his first taste of the unusual sunlight that beams into the building. The tough playing conditions created a memorable photo, though, with Christian Peterson of Getty Images capturing a moment where the sun perfectly shone on Brady and some of his Patriots teammates.
While Brady admitted that having to play through that glare was less than ideal, it provided one of the coolest moments of his career.
“The one thing I remember about that, and this is kind of a controversial take, is the glare through the glass at a certain time of the day at a certain time of the year was definitely in our eyes, which made it a little harder to play through,” Brady said. “But, the one thing that’s insane, I got one of the greatest pictures from that game of us heading toward that end with the glass. One of the sickest pictures coming out, with God looking down on this game, protected by my offensive line and standing in the shadow of my own goalpost.
“One of the sickest photos I ever remember from my playing days.”
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The photo wound up foreshadowing how the day would go for the Patriots. As the Patriots got possession coming out of halftime with a 13-3 lead, Brady recalled the play and drive that unfolded after the infamous picture was taken, jokingly saying it was “All for the ‘Gram!”
“It was in the third quarter, backed up to our own 10-yard line, hit Gronk (Rob Gronkowski) on (Cowboys cornerback) Byron Jones for a big gain down the sidelines,” Brady said. “We wound up going down — it ended up being a 90-yard drive, it started as an 80-yard drive, but we had a holding penalty. We went down and scored and took a pretty significant lead.”
As Brady alluded to, the drive ended with him throwing a 10-yard touchdown pass to Dion Lewis. Brady finished the day with 275 passing yards and two touchdowns to help the Patriots win, 30-6.
That’s not a bad result considering what the Patriots were doing in pregame warm-ups.
“I was very excited to go down there because you get to play in this huge stadium with this massive screen above,” Brady said. “We were trying to punt the ball and hit the screen in pregame.”
The win also improved the Patriots’ record to 5-0 at the time as they started the 2015 season 10-0. But New England didn’t win a Super Bowl that year, with Brady pointing to a biceps injury that offensive tackle Nate Solder suffered in the win over the Cowboys as an injury that “crushed us.”
“We were unbelievable at that point,” Brady said of the 2015 Patriots, who were the defending champions. “We were so good.”
Tom Brady called this image “one of the sickest” from his playing career. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
Coincidentally, Brady and the Patriots held a 5-0 record in the quarterback’s first-ever trip to Dallas in the 2007 season. But that game was the old Texas Stadium, with Bill Belichick tricking Brady ahead of that game.
“I remember the night before the game, Coach Belichick said, ‘Guys, we have 40 mph winds. It’s going to be windy, nasty and be prepared for a tough game,'” Brady said. “So, I went in there with Phil Simms and we had a production meeting and Phil was like, ‘Tommy, there’s no wind. It’s a canope. The field’s exposed, but there’s no wind in that stadium. I’ve played in that stadium forever.’
“I go out on the field for pregame warm-ups and even though it was windy outside, there’s nothing in there. It was just Bill trying to spook us.”
Belichick’s spooking worked for the Patriots that day. Brady threw for 388 yards and five touchdowns in a 48-27 victory over the 5-0 Cowboys. As the game was a matchup of undefeateds, then-Cowboys wide receiver Terrell Owens had said in the lead-up for everyone to “get your popcorn ready.”
Brady and the Patriots certainly had their popcorn ready that day.
“We went down there on a mission,” Brady said.
Brady heads back to AT&T Stadium this weekend to call Sunday’s Commanders-Cowboys game (4:25 p.m. ET on FOX and the FOX Sports app). While several quarterbacks have asked him for advice on how to play the position over the years, Brady’s offering advice to Jayden Daniels and Dak Prescott to get the best picture possible when they’re on the field.
“That’s all you gotta think about, think about how it’s going to look like on that one photo of you standing in the end zone, with the light shining through, in the backdrop. Listen, quarterbacks, just go in there and make it happen. How hard is that? I did it.”
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