Tom Brady calls New England Patriots' AFC Championship victory a 'great accomplishment'
Wednesday 24 January 2018 16:06, UK
Tom Brady has called New England's come-from-behind win in the AFC Championship game a "great accomplishment."
Brady led the Patriots back from two scores down in the second half to secure his eighth and the team's 10th appearance in the Super Bowl.
"It's pretty amazing. Just to be on a team that wins these kinds of games, it's just a great accomplishment," Brady said.
"I'm just so proud of everyone on our team, we made so many great plays. Defense played so great when they needed to."
The 40-year-old quarterback threw two touchdown passes in the fourth quarter as the Patriots came back from 20-10 down at home to the Jacksonville Jaguars, an achievement made all the more impressive due to the fact Brady was playing with 12 stitches in his throwing hand, the result of a collision in practice earlier in the week.
"I've had a lot worse," Brady said.
"I didn't know that on Wednesday. It was a crazy injury. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday was a little scary. Then I started getting some confidence and today we did just enough to win.
"Of all the plays, my season wasn't going to end on a handoff in practice."
New England coach Bill Belichick was a little more circumspect in his appraisal of Brady's injury: "He's a tough guy, we all know that, but we're not talking about open heart surgery here."
Jacksonville were hoping to reach the Super Bowl for the first time, but came up agonisingly short when quarterback Blake Bortles, looking for what would have been a winning touchdown pass, saw his throw knocked away by Patriots cornerback Stephon Gilmore.
"Guys are upset," Bortles said.
"It's not what anybody expects, contrary to popular belief. Those guys fully expected to win that game."
"Probably the more I think about it, the more it'll hurt and the more it'll weigh on my mind about what we could have done better," Jaguars head coach Doug Marrone said.
"Everyone in that room right now, everyone in that locker room, is thinking, 'what could we have done a better job of to win the game?
"Outside of, God forbid, someone passing away that you feel close to, this is probably as close a pain that you'll have.
"This is the pain that you deal with when you lose football games.
"It's something that we've got to deal with, and it hurts, and it stays with us for a long time."
You can see the New England Patriots play the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LII Live on Sky Sports from 10pm on Sunday February 4.
