Patriots’ Tom Brady shaves beard following embarrassing loss to Dolphins
Nothing looked good when the New England Patriots wrapped up their fourth quarter in their 33-20 loss to the Miami Dolphins. Some took solace in the fact that the last two times they lost the season opener, the Pats have won the Super Bowl. Tom Brady and head coach Bill Belichick have recognized that’s correlation, not causation. So, Brady has already made a change — a cosmetic one.
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“Well, the beard is gone,” Brady said during his Monday morning interview on Boston sports radio WEEI’s Dennis and Callahan show, via ESPN.com. “I was pretty pissed off this morning.”
Yes, Brady. The beard is to blame. Apparently, he laughed about it on-air and said that it wasn’t working. He went on to acknowledge that nothing else was working.
“We have to find ways to not get into those long-yardage situations where we become one-dimensional,” Brady said. “Because when you become one-dimensional against a good pass rush, that’s how they win a lot of games. Just not the way we needed to play that game.
“It’s on us players to do a better job. When we have opportunities to hit open passes, we have to hit them. That’s what it comes down to. You can’t draw up a magic play. We are trying to do everything we can to make the plays that we need to make. And the execution of it out there on the field — we need to do a better job of it.”
Cameron Wake and the Dolphins pass rush decimated the Patriots offensive line. Belichick didn’t get the memo this offseason — when Brady doesn’t have a clean pocket, he doesn’t dominate. No quarterback does.