Cheesehead
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- Mar 19, 2019
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GREEN BAY – The Packers have a chance to put Tom Brady in a tough spot.
A rather unfamiliar spot for him, actually.
With Tampa Bay coming into Sunday's showdown against Green Bay with a 3-2 record, the Packers could hand the Buccaneers and Brady their third loss already in 2020.
How rare would a 3-3 record be for a Brady-quarterbacked team? Very.
Dating back to 2003, when Brady's Patriots began a streak of qualifying for the postseason every year except one (2008, when Brady missed the season with a knee injury), Brady was 3-3 after six games only twice.
That's it. Twice. In 16 seasons, and not since 2012. The other time was way back in 2005, the year Packers QB Aaron Rodgers was drafted.
In fact, during Brady's postseason streak with the Patriots, he was saddled with his third loss prior to the midpoint of the season only one other time – in 2011, when a defeat in the eighth game dropped New England to 5-3.
In the other 13 years, Brady's third loss came in the ninth game or later, and five times he never lost three regular-season games at all.
On top of that, with the Buccaneers coming off a Thursday night loss at Chicago, the Packers are trying to hand Brady another rarity – back-to-back defeats.
Over those same 16 seasons currently being discussed, Brady lost consecutive games only nine times, and all nine were two-game losing streaks. None went beyond two games. (For comparison's sake, since 2009 when Rodgers has made the playoffs every year he's been healthy except one, he's had seven losing streaks in 11 years, with one of them a three-game skid and another a four-gamer.)
All of this is just to provide context for how difficult a task the Packers face Sunday against Brady, statistically and historically speaking.