The criticisms of Brady are crazy - Page 2 - New England Patriots Forums

Oswlek · 09-27-2006, 11:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brownfan80

Yes they are trying hard, but as we've seen through the years, when a read is made the wrong way, it's almost always on the WR.

Brady doesn't need to adjust to his WRs if they are reading plays the wrong way. How would he be a good QB if he gave in and started doing things the wrong way too?

The WRs we have are trying hard, but that doesn't mean that they're getting it RIGHT, or even close to right. Brady knows the way the offense will work. They have to do it his way, he's the future HOF pro-bowler. They are the low salaried who'deys. I'm sure Brady will adjust to them as in getting to know the way they run their routes and their speed differentials and their habits, etc.

But Brady will never change the way he reads and reacts in this offense, as it's predicated on BRADY's ability to read the defense. His WRs have to get to the point that they see the same thing HE sees, not the other way around.

You can be assured of this by the times you've seen Brady preaching to TROY BROWN about how a route should have been run. Troy is our best WR and an experienced NFL vet, but even he's taking direction from Tom Brady.

Yes, you are touching upon a good, often misunderstood point. Just because a receiver is open, does not mean that he is open where he is supposed to be. That could be, and likely is a reason why some of us have witnessed plays where Brady throws the ball away even though it seems that a WR is uncovered.

However, Brady has been off target enough that it clearly isn't *all* on the receivers.

Brownfan80 · 09-27-2006, 11:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oswlek

Actually, I do find fault in Brady's games so far. He most certainly has been off on some plays; Vs. Jets - a handful to Brown and the underthrow that should have been a TD to Watson. The pass to Gabriel was way underthrown. Vs. Denver - Underthrew a pass to Caldwell that would have been a long TD, overthrew the pass to Brown slightly (although Brown still should have caught it). Those are just the ones off the top of my head.

Can a case be made it is lack of comfort that is driving this, and I believe that firmly. However, Brady is definitely not above reproach for his play so far.

Agreed, Brady has had some bad throws, just as he had last season on his way to leading the league in passing yards. He's not beyond reproach, but to point to him as the one who needs to up his play is to ignore the problems of the other units.

Watson is dropping passes that hit him in the numbers, the OL is allowing Brady to get hammered way too often and not opening up passing lanes consistently. The running game being down in the Denver game meant that when the Pats got behind the defense just had to sit back and cover. The WRs not reading their routes the same way as Brady does most likely led to some of those over and underthrows.

I'll give you an example. If you go back and watch the DVDs from the "era" you'll see a replay where Givens ran a bad route and dropped a pass. In game-time what you saw was Givens having to stop, reach back for a ball that was apparently thrown behind him. Bad throw! we probably all thought at the time.

When you watch the DVD you find out that Givens read the coverage wrong and OVER RAN HIS SPOT ON THE FIELD. What looked like a bad pass behind the WR turned out to be a WR's mistake.

So all I'm saying is that to assume that an underthrow or overthrow is exclusively on the QB is both short sighted and incorrect.

I'm not saying that Brady's been perfect. What I'm saying is that knowing what we know about how the system works, and knowing what we know about Brady, we'd be crazy not to think that a new group of WRs are the problem.

Brady makes mistakes, but they are rarely mental in nature. Him throwing it away, while disappointing to us as fans, may have been the best option available to him. His over throws and underthrows may be because the WR or TE was not in the right place.

We'll probably never know, but all this Brady-bashing after one loss is crazy to me. I will postpone my judgements of his play until we see the whole WR set out there healthy and with some gametime experience under their belts.

Brownfan80 · 09-27-2006, 11:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oswlek

Yes, you are touching upon a good, often misunderstood point. Just because a receiver is open, does not mean that he is open where he is supposed to be. That could be, and likely is a reason why some of us have witnessed plays where Brady throws the ball away even though it seems that a WR is uncovered.

However, Brady has been off target enough that it clearly isn't *all* on the receivers.

Yes, that was a big part of my reply to you directly after your post here. I agree that Brady hasn't looked on-spot all the time. I felt that he overthrew Troy on the long bomb when I watched it clang off the turf, but then I realized how perfect the pass looked in the air, how it was about a yard beyond the defender and had to admit that Troy was probably a little behind the play rather than Tom being ahead of him.

lobster · 09-27-2006, 11:41 AM

Brady essentially said at his Press Conference today that the passing game is in transition but that the receivers are working very hard to get up to speed. He said it's very frustrating for them and for him, however physically he feels better than he has in a long time.

Obviously they worked in Gabriel this week and that gives them more confidence for the Bengals game and so on. In essence he's saying fans expectations are too high for where the passing game is at right now but they will try hard to get better.