NFL

Sick feeling for beaten Brady

DENVER — Tom Brady should have stayed in bed.

Brady had missed Wednesday’s practice with a cold, and for much of Sunday’s game, he looked downright sickly against a hungry Broncos defense in a bitter 26-16 AFC Championship Game defeat.

“Anytime we lose, there are things I can do better,” Brady said. “Certainly, there are some things I wish I could have done better today.”

Brady’s mastery of Manning came to a screeching halt, as his head-to-head record dropped to 10-5 against Manning. Brady finished 24-for-38 for 277 yards and a touchdown, but most of that damage was done in the fourth quarter with the game all but decided.

“Tom congratulated me, wished me luck, I’ve said to him a number of times what a great player that I think that he is, and he was very classy in his conversation with me,” Peyton said.

“He played great,” Brady said. “They played great, they all did as a team. He certainly is one of the greatest players to ever play.”

Brady badly overthrew a wide-open Julian Edelman in the first quarter, a harbinger of things for come for him.

He never came close to imposing his will on the game or standing up to Manning.

Late in the third quarter of a 20-3 game, Bill Belichick went for it fourth-and-3 at the Denver 29, but Brady never got the ball out of his hand and Terance Knighton beat Logan Mankins for a 10-yard sack.

Brady scored on a 5-yard TD run that made it 26-16 with 3:07 remaining. But the Broncos stuffed Shane Vereen on the two-point conversion try as Shaun Phillips latched onto his left leg.

It was Brady’s last gasp.

Brady was left naked without a (LeGarrette) Blount Force Trauma running game and when he found a rhythm in the fourth quarter, it was too little, too late.

“I just found some spots and made some throws and catches. We found a little space in there,” Brady said. “I just wish we could’ve done it for four quarters,.”

Brady was standing helplessly on the sidelines at the two-minute warning as the orange sea chanted “Super Bowl, Su-per Bowl, Su-per Bowl” and waved orange pom-poms.

“It’s tough to get to this point,” Brady said. “I have had some losses in the Super Bowl which have been tough, and last year losing in the championship game was tough. They have a good football team. They are going to be tough to beat in a couple of weeks.”