Eagles Super Bowl victory over the Patriots still on Tom Brady’s mind

Nearly four years have passed since the Eagles defeated the Patriots in the Super Bowl, but that loss is apparently still on Tom Brady’s mind.

Brady, now with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, was asked about setting an all-time NFL passing yards record following Sunday’s win over the Patriots, in which he threw for 269 yards on 22-43 passing. Brady entered the game needing just 68 yards to surpass former New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, who has since retired and is now working for NBC.

“Guys did a great job catching for me the last 22 years, all of ‘em which I hope … felt a little piece of happiness tonight, watching that, because everybody contributed,” Brady told NBC Sunday Night Football reporter Michelle Tafoya. “I sure as hell can’t catch anything, everyone’s seen that drop against the Eagles in the Super Bowl.”

Brady is jokingly referring to the Patriots’ trick play during the second quarter of the Super Bowl, where he flanked out as a receiver but dropped a wide-open pass during a trick play. Pouring salt into Brady’s wound was Eagles quarterback Nick Foles, who hauled in a touchdown pass later in the game during the famed “Philly Special” play.

It’s not the first time Brady has recalled the loss to the Eagles. During the Facebook documentary series Tom vs. Time, Brady revealed the most difficult part of losing that Super Bowl was watching his kids cry, and opened up about the late fumble caused by Brandon Graham that essentially sealed the Eagles victory.

“I thought we were going to go down and score. I thought we were going to win the game,” Brady said. “I thought about that play 500 times in five days.”

Gotham Chopra, director of the Tom vs. Time documentary series, thought Brady and the Patriots were going to win, revealing in a Facebook post following the game that the loss to the Eagles forced the production team to rethink the series’ final episode.

“The truth is we had a plan, but unconsciously, it was tied to the Pats winning the Super Bowl and, when that didn’t happen (congrats, Eagles!), I felt like we needed to pause and recalibrate,” Chopra wrote.

Brady also opened up about the loss ahead of the 2019 rematch against the Eagles during an interview on SportsRadio 93.7 WEEI in Boston.

“You assume I’m over it? Come on now,” Brady said. “That’s a lot of mental scar tissue from that year. That was a tough game…They deserved it that year.”

Brady will face the Eagles for the first time since joining the Buccaneers on Thursday Night Football on Oct. 14, but the situation will obviously be a lot different. The Buccaneers are riding high at 3-1, while the Eagles are 1-3 and hoping to avoid their fourth-straight loss of the season Sunday against the Carolina Panthers.

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Looks like the Brady-Belichick bowl lived up to the hype.

The Buccaneers’ win over the Patriots on Sunday Night Football drew about 27.2 million viewers to NBC, the broadcast’s largest audience since 2015, according to Sports Media Watch’s Jon Lewis. The broadcast averaged a 34 share, meaning 34% of all households with televisions were tuned into the game, a new record for Sunday Night Football.

The exact ratings will be released Tuesday morning.

While impressive, especially considering the decline of cable subscribers over the past few years, the game didn’t come close to breaking into the top five regular-season broadcasts of all time (four of which were Thanksgiving games featuring the Dallas Cowboys):

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