"Yeah, but can Brady throw under pressure?"

I always like it when someone takes a professional athlete who is statistically the best in his position and says, "Yeah, but can he do this!"

There's an old Woody Allen movie in which the female lead is raving about some handsome, strong, perfect hero of a guy. Then wimpy-looking Woody asks, "But can he do this?" while doing a contorted dance movement that no one would ever need to do unless he had to.

That scene has been replayed in my mind countless times when after I wax poetic about the Patriots great achievements of this decade and then my friend Barack Abdul-Ali pulls out the meaningless sack statistic. Sacks are meaningful in any given game, just as interceptions, turnovers, quarterback hurries and third down conversions are meaningful. However, sacks are meaningful only if you can calculate ratios and outcomes, not simply raw numbers. The most sacked lifetime statistics belong to the greatest quarterbacks in history simply because they pass more often.

To put it more succinctly: Despite all of the hype, the defensive sack statistic on its own is a meaningless number, and only takes on real meaning when you put it into the context of pass attempts.

"Can he pass under pressure?" is another one. If a quarterback can always pass under pressure, it wouldn't be much pressure to speak of would it? It also ignores the ability of a quarterback to stand and throw more effectively in the pocket as if that is somehow a lesser achievement.

It's like saying that Ted Williams couldn't hit balls out of the strike zone or that Larry Bird couldn't slam dunk.

"The greatest passer in the game can't pass under pressure."

It's nonsense!

Sometimes I think these things are thrown at me just to see if I am paying attention.

What matters with Brady are the statistics at this point in his career, his winning percentage, the total number of games won, and the number of Conference Championships and Superbowl rings.

Two bright spots to today's game ...

You could just sum it up today's game saying the Jets played better defense and better offense. And just barely if you look at the game stats. It's a tough loss in a game that the good guys were favored to win, so that doesn't look good on the surface. It was due to Brady missing a lot of times when he normally connects a lot of times. But there are two bright spots.

1. Brady isn't going to have any more games this year without a single touchdown.

So with this one out of their system, it's off to the races! Just like last year when I said Matt Cassell was "going to be just fine" after he lost a few games -- (Oh great Barack Abdul-Ali, keeper of the archive, you can look that one up!) -- I am going to go way out on a limb here and say that Brady is going to be back to form really soon and we'll start seeing a few of those five to eight touchdown games again.

2. The Pats' defense, thought to be the weakest point of a solid team, also looked good.

Pat's fans are going to panic in the meantime. Although disappointing that Brady couldn't throw just one touchdown pass to tie the game -- like everyone was sure he would -- it isn't a concern in the grand scheme of the 14 games to come. It's just an anomaly.