Tom Brady responds to Knighton
Patriots quarterback Tom Brady had a simple reply when asked about Broncos defensive tackle Terrance "Pot Roast" Knighton's so-called Super Bowl guarantee: "It doesn't matter what you say. It matters what you do."
"Pot Roast is a big man, so I would never say anything that would get him mad at me," Brady said Monday night in his weekly radio interview on Westwood One. "But I will just say there is a lot of football left to be played. [The Broncos will] have their chance and we'll have our chance, and we will do our talking on the field. ...
"And my dad always told me, 'Well done is better than well said.' In the meantime, we have a lot of football left to play, and it starts this weekend Sunday at the Jets, and nothing is really clinched at this point. There's still two very important games remaining on our schedule, and that's what my focus is on."
Following Denver's victory Sunday over the Chargers, Knighton told The Denver Post that his Broncos would be the team left standing at the end of the season.
"It doesn't matter what happens. At the end of the year, we're hoisting that trophy. I don't care if New England doesn't lose again," Knighton told the newspaper. "I don't care where we have to play. I don't care who our opponent is. We're not going to be satisfied until we hoist that trophy. So if we've got to go to New England [in the playoffs] and win somewhere we're not used to winning, we're going to make it happen. Write that. And put a big period after that one."
On Monday, in the Broncos locker room, Knighton, one of Denver's two defensive captains along with DeMarcus Ware, did not step back from his words, but he added that he would expect any player on a playoff-bound team to believe it would win the Super Bowl.
"Some people will call it a guarantee, some people will call it whatever they want, you know, anything less than a Super Bowl victory is a disappointing season," Knighton said. "I stand by what I said. I don't care who we have to play, where we have to play. We won't be satisfied until we're hoisting that trophy. If New England wins out and we win out and we end up meeting them, we'll have to go there and beat them. It's that simple."
Patriots fans have taken to Twitter to voice their displeasure at Knighton's guarantee, a fact he mentioned in a tweet on Tuesday.
The Broncos (11-3) are currently the AFC's No. 2 seed, behind the Patriots (11-3), courtesy of New England's dominating 43-21 win against Denver on Nov. 2 at Gillette Stadium. The Patriots have won the past five meetings between the two teams at Gillette, playoffs included.
Denver hasn't won there since 2006, a 17-7 victory when Mike Shanahan was the team's coach.
Asked if it would bother him if he heard a player from another team say that team was going to win the Super Bowl, Knighton said: "I hope that's everybody's plan. I hope that's what's on their agenda.
"I mean, when we started the offseason [workouts] back in April, everyone said, 'Super Bowl, Super Bowl.' Around this time teams start weeding themselves out. Obviously we've earned the right to talk about it because we'll be in the playoffs, winning our division. We still got two games left in the season. We want to win every game each week, you know, and whatever we seed, we seed. We're going to have the type of mentality, and myself and the leaders are going to make sure if we have to go on the road and beat someone then that's what we're going to do."
New England can wrap up the top seed in the AFC with a victory Sunday combined with a Broncos loss Monday night to the Bengals.
ESPN.com Broncos reporter Jeff Legwold contributed to this report.
