To go long, they need to branch out

"I've never seen Brady so frustrated," said defensive tackle Vonnie Holliday. "I've never seen him get hit so many times. Early on he was able to move around in the pocket and showed us a lot of different things, but we knew we just had to settle down and play ball. We felt early on we put good pressure on him but didn't get anything, so we came out with four-, five-, and six-man blitzes and were able to get to him."

Even when the Dolphins weren't sacking Brady, they were hitting him (three hurries), jostling him, and squeezing him until his field vision began to shrink. Several times he was seen upbraiding his receivers, including one blistering of tight end Daniel Graham. Many more times he looked like a man without options when he dropped back to survey the field and found the unwanted presence of Jason Taylor, Matt Roth, Kevin Carter, Holliday, and even safety Yeremiah Bell in his face.

For a time, Brady held up and the Patriots' defense held on despite poor field position in the second half, but in the face of an incessant pass rush, an implosion was inevitable. Yet, when it finally came, it was still shocking.

"You could hear him tell his linemen to protect and his wide receivers to get open, but we kept getting after him," Roth said. "We knew that if we could get after Brady, we could confuse him a little bit by blitzing safeties, and with our defensive backs playing great [man] coverage, we could make plays."

Despite rushing for 123 yards, the Patriots' offense could neither control the tempo nor slow down Miami's rushers, who stormed around Matt Light, over Stephen Neal, through Logan Mankins, by Nick Kazcur, and under Dan Koppen so effectively that few of them were willing to speak about it after all was said and done. Light struggled mightily against Taylor, whom Bill Belichick called probably the league's most dominant defensive player this season. Nothing Taylor did detracted from that opinion and when Light was approached after the game, he did what he did during the game. He disappeared, taking his clothes from a hanger and slipping out without comment.