Patriots’ loss leaves Tom Brady’s future uncertain

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — This was not how it was supposed to end.

Now, we’ll have to see if that, indeed, was the end.

Tom Brady, one of the greatest winners in professional sports history with six Super Bowl titles and three NFL MVP awards during a 20-year career, threw a pick-six on his final pass as the Patriots fell 20-13 to the Tennessee Titans in an AFC wild-card game at Gillette Stadium.

For the first time in his career, Brady will be a free agent this offseason and could have played his final game for the Patriots, the team that took him in the sixth round in the 2000 draft.

“I love the Patriots, it’s the greatest organization and playing for Mr. (Robert) Kraft all these years and for Coach (Bill) Belichick, there’s nobody who has had a better career, I would say, than me, just being with them,” Brady said. “I’m blessed, I don’t know what the future looks like; I’m not going to predict it. Wish we would have won tonight and wish we did a lot of things better over the course of the season, but we just didn’t get the job done.”

Brady, who finished 20 of 37 for 209 yards with the one interception, indicated that retirement at age 42 is not something that’s on his mind.

“I would say it’s pretty unlikely … I’d say it’s unlikely,” he said.

“I was proud to be part of this team, not just this year but every year. And, again, I just don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m not going to try to predict it, and no one needs to make choices at this point. I love playing football, I love playing for this team for two decades and winning a lot of games. I just don’t know what it looks like going forward, and we’ll take it day by day.”

It started off well enough for the Patriots (12-5), as they scored 10 points on their first two possessions. They would manage just three more points on their final eight possessions.

The Patriots had a chance to take a commanding lead when they drove to the Tennessee 1 leading 10-7 with 4:29 left in the first half. But in the span of three plays, the Patriots had two carries for negative yards, took two timeouts and didn’t attempt a pass. Instead of leading 17-7, the Patriots emerged with a 13-7 lead. They would not score again.

“We were just trying to get to our best play,” Brady said. “Have to give them credit, it was a good job executing on defense by them. Yeah, wish we could have scored there, but they made the plays when they needed to.”

The Patriots were shut out in the second half and mostly had to drive long fields, but appeared to get the break they needed when Duron Harmon intercepted Titans quarterback Ryan Tannehill on the first play of the fourth quarter. But in what was the story of the game — and the Patriots’ season, really — New England only advanced the ball 6 yards before punting away to the Titans.

From there, the Patriots just couldn’t make enough stops against running back Derrick Henry and the Titans offense. Henry was a bulldozer with 34 carries for 182 yards and a touchdown. He added a 22-yard reception that set up his own score with 35 seconds left before halftime to give Tennessee a 14-13 lead.

While Brady’s interception for a touchdown came with nine seconds left on a desperation play, his last real opportunity came with 4:44 remaining and the ball on the New England 11-yard line.

A 20-yard pass to James White on the first play got the drive off to a great start, and it wasn’t hard to think back to some of Brady’s other heroics over the course of his career, including game-winning drives to win Super Bowls.

But it was not to be, as the drive fizzled with a 6-yard pass to Phillip Dorsett, a drop by Julian Edelman and a contested incompletion to Dorsett.

That was, largely, it — and it was a microcosm of a failed Patriots season on offense.

The course was set in the offseason when All-Pro tight end Rob Gronkowski retired, and the Patriots failed to surround Brady with many weapons, especially at tight end. Even a trade for Mohamed Sanu from the Falcons didn’t work, as he had one catch for 11 yards on five targets against the Titans.

“I think anytime you lose games and don’t produce, there’s a lot of things we all wish we could do better — I certainly wish I could have done a lot better — but we didn’t,” Brady said. “It’s a results business, it’s about winning and losing. The more things you do right and well, the better chance you have to win. We just didn’t do enough things right.”

Belichick seemed to bet that his veteran defense, which limited the Rams to three points in Super Bowl LIII, could carry the team even with a lesser offense.

That was one decision by Belichick that didn’t hit the mark, as the offense struggled for consistency all season, especially down the stretch when the Patriots went 4-5 after an 8-0 start against an easy opening schedule.

The game was, however, a triumph for Titans coach Mike Vrabel and his team. In just his second season, the former Patriots linebacker went into Gillette and beat his former teacher, Belichick, and teammate in Brady.

The Titans (10-7) advanced with Tannehill, a castoff from the Dolphins who supplanted Marcus Mariota as the starter and went 7-3 down the stretch, throwing for just 72 yards on 8-of-15 passing for a rating of 61.0.

Tannehill beating Brady was not how a storied career, that had the feel of a storybook so many times, was supposed to end.

Brady doesn’t think the book has been written yet. Now we’ll have to see if it continues in New England or elsewhere.

Greg A. Bedard covers the NFL for the Review-Journal. He can be reached at gbedard@reviewjournal.com. Follow @GregABedard on Twitter.