But It's Not Mac's Fault....

[RDS11]

I really hope the Pats move on from Mac Jones after the season. But...anybody really think that with any other above average starting caliber QB the Pats would make the playoffs ? Other than Mahomes, anybody could take that offense and have a chance at winning playoff games ? Chances are, even if we are in position to draft near the top, the guy that will come in won't be as good as Mahomes, or as good as Brady was during the early years of the dynasty. It would be great to draft a Burrow, but then it could be Wentz or Mayfield instead.

Another thing that astonish me. Most of us have seen Brady for 20 years, and yet some of us are still somewhat diminishing the value he added to the team. Really, haven't we seen enough miracles over 20 years and doubt him ? Reading this thread, and seeing comments about Brady not being elite back in 2001...go take a look at his efficiency stats from 2001. Other than the sack rate, he was in the top of the NFL in most other efficiency stats. He was very much elite given his stats for adjusted yards per attempt, rating, completion percentage TD percentage and interception percentage. That's while throwing to the likes of Charles Johnson, Wiggins and Patten. He had Brown, and not much else.

Then, we also get the incredibly dumb argument that goes like : ''...but Brady couldn't win these Super Bowl alone !''
Of course not ! Who's stupid enough to think that ! Nobody could take a bunch of high school kids and win a Super Bowl. But guess what, this is the NFL, there are great players in all teams. Some teams have more talent than others, that's true. Brady played with a number of great players, some Hall of famers. But what have these players win without Brady : Mankins, Law, Seymour, Harrison, Bruschi, Revis, Milloy, or even Mike Evans, Lavonte David ? I'm not trying to take anything away from their great careers, it's just that without Brady, they have not won anything. They were key pieces for their time, but replaceable pieces. And while players were coming and going, Brady won in the 2000s, the 2010s and the 2020s.

Another dumb argument I'm tired of seeing from a fanbase that should know better : '' ... yeah, but Trent Dilfer won a Super Bowl''.
Yes, he did. But then again, he won with an historically good defense, one of the best of all time. Do we really think this is the model to achieve continuous success ? That's catching lightning in a bottle : for that to happen you need a great number of great players, all having a career year at the same time, and avoiding injuries. And then, some luck that during the 1 year all this is coming together at the same time, you don't have 1 bad game in the playoffs that wipe out everything. These Ravens were 10-6 the year after the Super Bowl, and 7-9 the year after that.

I don't want to get into the Belichick / Brady debate, because that's not the point. Belichick is probably the best game day coach in history. The fact that he has game plans in the HoF says something. But it's not a fringe top-10 quarterback that can save this mess. It would have to be a generational QB talent.

Alright, rant over.

 

[SEA_Pat]

The Marxist take is that anyone who succeeds does so by "victimizing" and "oppressing" those who have not done as well as they. By appeal to that lie, they secure the votes of that nation's losers. Often, as they gain influence, when the democracy they are seeking to destroy (as a "tool of capitalism") begins to weaken, leftists will so manage the economy so as to increase the number of losers on whose votes they depend. Witness "Bidenomics." They will also import losers from abroad to increase their voter base. Witness the current administration's "immigration policy." As this sort of sickness takes hold, there is a tendency to disparage anyone who aspires to or achieves success, and so it is that those with advantages in life - typically as the result of their parents' earned success in life - the Mac Joneses of the world are disparaged for those advantages, and any failure they may encounter serves as an occasion for sleazeball ressentiment and gloating, vindictive celebration. Wittness Pol Pot;s Cambodia, Soviet Russia, et al) The result is that losers, fools, and jealous dimwits come to dominate, weakening the nation preparatory to the replacement, in effect, of a functioning society (a gemeinschaft) with an autocratic bureacracy (a gesellschaft) which in fairly short order develops as sort of rabid institutional self interest which only enhances the totalitarian impulses of the new in-crowd. And that is how the present decadent ethos in the nation conduces to the sort of angry, smirky dismissive horseshit so common here re Mac. Everything really is, as even the leftists often acknowledge, political, even football chat. I could respond to your other points, but I find I am disinclined to cast further pearls before you, in keeping with the Biblical injunction.

LOL! Wow. So that's your understanding both of Marxism and what happened to Cambodia? Don't really know where to start (my wife is Cambodian, I lived there between 1993 and 2006, I speak Khmer, you haven't even the slightest of clues). If you want to have a discussion on an explicitly non-football thread, I'm up for that. I think you'll discover pretty quickly that you're WAAAAAAAYYYYYYY out of your depth.

Anyway, as you're apparently in the throes of the Biden Marxist revolution and can observe it when deeply embedded Marxists like myself (or am I Maoist?) are sending out our agitprop via Patsfans threads discussing Mac Jones (a clear and obvious red-blooded American free enterprise hero)...I really think you need to check your meds. Your take seems to be that Mac would be a great QB if not for the way the Left has destroyed him through Marxist propaganda. Have I got that right?

 

[Ring 6]

Aren't you arguing in another thread the Zappes two games is a good sample size?

No

 

[Ring 6]

I don’t recall Dilfer’s presence turning around his team from 0-2 and lifeless to champs or making his team better so I’d have to vote no on that.

Brady was elite right from the start. The team turned things around right away. Either you have it or you don’t. He had it.

A “slow start” in hindsight only. A team we know is good starting 0-2 = “slow start”. Did we know already at the time the Pats were good? Or was 0-2 who they really were? They were 5-11 the year before and literally on a downward trend since Tuna left.

Let me help your recollection. They were 5-3 then lost his first start and then won 11 in a row with Dilfer.
They were +57 in scoring differential without him and +189 with him.

Hindsight? We are discussing something that actually occurred. Expectation beforehand is irrelevant. The team that was 5-11 had one of if not the biggest personnel turnovers in the history of the league. That’s the point.

 

[Wozzy]

Mac has not yet distinguished himself as "the guy" worthy of a lucrative contract. BUT, some of what he gets blamed for is not his fault -- dropped balls, receivers quitting on routes, a musical chairs OL, etc. He has shown he can get the job done with proper support but is limited to that. The kid is what he is -- generally adequate but not a difference maker on his own.

We're pretending that all his good throws aren't bookended by really really bad ones that end up in the other team's hands.

We've also punted the third most times in the NFL, it's because they're near dead last on 3rd/4th downs. Mac sucks.

 

[PatsFan2]

Mahomes is a generational talent. It never helps your argument when you are using him as a QB who can make chicken salad out of chicken shot in comparison to virtually other QB in the league. Mahomes is one of the few QBs in the league that can elevate mediocre talent.

You can criticize Mac without comparing him to Mahomes or Brady or any other generational talent.

I think Burrow can too though he currently have Elites.

 

[PatsFan2]

We're pretending that all his good throws aren't bookended by really really bad ones that end up in the other team's hands.

We've also punted the third most times in the NFL, it's because they're near dead last on 3rd/4th downs. Mac sucks.

On Paper Based on injuries we should be favored to beat the hopeless Giants. But with Mac you never know he's that bad.

 

[Stu Pidassle]

So just a coincidence then that the very same team went from 0-2 and lifeless to 14-5 and champs after the QB change?

Brady 100% was elite from day one as a starter. He made everyone better. That's what elite QB's do.

Having a QB who was willing to follow the game plan and not looking to be the hero gunslinger was the big change. By that time Drew was conditioned to think that he was the offense and the team was complicit in that feeling. When TB12 took over everyone was on notice that they had to do their job. The QB and team had a few bumps, but continued to improve over the season and had just enough to win the super bowl. In 2023 Mac plays like he needs to make big plays while being afraid to turn the ball over and no one else seems interested in winning.