Even BB does not know what Jimmy G's future holds

[TruthSeeker]

I think the right comparison is more along the lines of Nolan Ryan who was a precursor to Brady in terms of how he maintained his health.

For those unaware, Nolan Ryan was a dominating fastball pitcher who kept his fastball until he retired at age 46 - when practically all fastball pitchers lose their fastball sometime in their thirties. The only old pitchers you see are those who rely on guile (e.g. Tim Wakefield and his knuckleball) or placement; you don't see old pitchers blowing the ball by the batter.

I keep hearing people talk about how Brady will age and they just don't get it. Comparisons to players who do conventional conditioning is pretty much irrelevant. We only catch glimpses of how different Tom Brady is, but when we do it's a "wow" moment. Brady's arm doesn't hurt now and it hurt all the time when he was 25? Brady now runs a sub 5 second 40 when his combine time was around 5.2? Brady has improved on every measurable every year for the past 3 years? Brady gets hammered time and again against teams like Houston and Atlanta and plays his best football in the fourth quarter rendering all those hits totally irrelevant on his late game performance?

The data is out there, folks. The example (Nolan Ryan - who tried to do what Brady is doing but with less advanced science) is there for the world to see. Use the data to make an informed opinion. Stop making comparisons to people who lead very different lives with totally different training and diet techniques.

We don't know how long this can last. But, in my opinion, to think TB is only going to be able to physically play at a high level for about 2 more years is either ignorance or bordering on foolishness based on what we DO know.

 

[PatsFanInVa]

We only catch glimpses of how different Tom Brady is, but when we do it's a "wow" moment. Brady's arm doesn't hurt now and it hurt all the time when he was 25? Brady now runs a sub 5 second 40 when his combine time was around 5.2? Brady has improved on every measurable every year for the past 3 years? Brady gets hammered time and again against teams like Houston and Atlanta and plays his best football in the fourth quarter rendering all those hits totally irrelevant on his late game performance?

Or, for 31 fanbases... 01:11

 

[patsfan13]

Rather than a quantum physics what if, I think the better analogy is BB as a chess or go grandmaster. The difference between a grandmaster and normal good/excellent player in this games is the ability to eliminate 98% of the moves when starting a search for the correct move going forward and looking to the next set of moves that are possible.

This is where BB differentiates himself from other gm and coaches, other players in the football management and coaching game are like very good chess players playing against the grandmaster champion in his prime.

 

[patfanken]

Two quick points, one of which comes out of Brady's own words from the King interview.

1. One of the key factors in JG's value ISN'T his potential and the general need for QB's around the league. It isn't about JG GETTING a job, it's about some HC and/or the GM KEEPING theirs

So normally a team wouldn't give a second thought to drafting a QB high, but this year's top QB's scream of FUTURE potential. None of them will be ready to lead a team in his rookie year. Watson, for all his qualities, has thrown over 30 picks in the last 2 years to COLLEGE DB's. Trubisky has started just 12 games in his college career, and Kinzer got pulled in 2 games on the college level this past season.

Lots of potential in these 3 kids, but the truth is why draft someone in 2o17 who is going to be a big help to the guy who REPLACES you down the road. The biggest example of this is John Fox. There's a guy who is on the brink. He needs a QB THIS year. Hue Jackson needs one too, but to a less degree, since's he's only in his 2nd year there. Actually the team that he'd fit in best as far as a system goes, would be SF, but Shanahan is the ONE guy would will have all the time he needs to develop a QB if he chooses.

That brings us back to the Bears. #2 is probably too high even given his desperate situation, so there are some other possibilities. The Pats get the #2 pick in trade for their #1. Or the Pats get the Bears' 2nd round pick (34) this year plus a conditional pick in 2018 that can range from a 4th to a 1st depending on the conditions. Both those ideas can work.

The Cleveland deal has been discussed ad nauseum, and would also make sense for the 12th pick plus a conditional pick in 2018 depending on JG's performance.

2. The 2nd point pertains to why I'm confident Tom will be here well past JG's due date. When talking about the future with King, he said something to the effect, that "The game is so easy for me now. With 17 years exeperience, I see the game so clearly. So why would I give it up when it's finally fun."

THAT is a mantra most great performers face. JUST when they finally get the mental side of the game down, their bodies fail. Well Brady's body HASN'T failed, for whatever reasons, plus the position he plays doesn't require peak physical abilities. His MIND not his arm is his most lethal weapon. I doubt after his last game, there would be very few who don't think Brady has at least 3 serviceable years remaining. That's puts him well past JG's "due date."

 

[jimnance]

Two quick points, one of which comes out of Brady's own words from the King interview.

1. One of the key factors in JG's value ISN'T his potential and the general need for QB's around the league. It isn't about JG GETTING a job, it's about some HC and/or the GM KEEPING theirs

So normally a team wouldn't give a second thought to drafting a QB high, but this year's top QB's scream of FUTURE potential. None of them will be ready to lead a team in his rookie year. Watson, for all his qualities, has thrown over 30 picks in the last 2 years to COLLEGE DB's. Trubisky has started just 12 games in his college career, and Kinzer got pulled in 2 games on the college level this past season.

Lots of potential in these 3 kids, but the truth is why draft someone in 2o17 who is going to be a big help to the guy who REPLACES you down the road. The biggest example of this is John Fox. There's a guy who is on the brink. He needs a QB THIS year. Hue Jackson needs one too, but to a less degree, since's he's only in his 2nd year there. Actually the team that he'd fit in best as far as a system goes, would be SF, but Shanahan is the ONE guy would will have all the time he needs to develop a QB if he chooses.

That brings us back to the Bears. #2 is probably too high even given his desperate situation, so there are some other possibilities. The Pats get the #2 pick in trade for their #1. Or the Pats get the Bears' 2nd round pick (34) this year plus a conditional pick in 2018 that can range from a 4th to a 1st depending on the conditions. Both those ideas can work.

The Cleveland deal has been discussed ad nauseum, and would also make sense for the 12th pick plus a conditional pick in 2018 depending on JG's performance.

2. The 2nd point pertains to why I'm confident Tom will be here well past JG's due date. When talking about the future with King, he said something to the effect, that "The game is so easy for me now. With 17 years exeperience, I see the game so clearly. So why would I give it up when it's finally fun."

THAT is a mantra most great performers face. JUST when they finally get the mental side of the game down, their bodies fail. Well Brady's body HASN'T failed, for whatever reasons, plus the position he plays doesn't require peak physical abilities. His MIND not his arm is his most lethal weapon. I doubt after his last game, there would be very few who don't think Brady has at least 3 serviceable years remaining. That's puts him well past JG's "due date."

Thats really the gist of (most of ) it. TB is highly likely to still be one of top 3 qbs in 3 years. Of course, theres no way JG can be here that long-he would never agree to that and the Pats would never pay a backup qb big big money for that long.

And due to the abysmal qb class in the draft, combined with the need of a bunch of teams-the demand for JG will NEVER be as great as it is now-and the Pats leverage will never be greater.

As Ive said many times, Id like nothing better than to keep JG until TB retires. But thats fantasy. Theres just no way for that to happen. The Pats COULD keep JG for one more year-as insurance-but theyll lose a LOT of leverage and they will not get a 1st rounder for him then. Part of the attraction teams have for JG is the fact they get him for one year really cheap now. I think theres about a 75% chance they trade him this offseason, 24.9% chance,they keep him thru 2017 season THEN trade him and a 0.1% chance hes on the team after start of 2018 season.

 

[PatsFanInVa]

Two quick points, one of which comes out of Brady's own words from the King interview.

1. One of the key factors in JG's value ISN'T his potential and the general need for QB's around the league. It isn't about JG GETTING a job, it's about some HC and/or the GM KEEPING theirs

So normally a team wouldn't give a second thought to drafting a QB high, but this year's top QB's scream of FUTURE potential. None of them will be ready to lead a team in his rookie year. Watson, for all his qualities, has thrown over 30 picks in the last 2 years to COLLEGE DB's. Trubisky has started just 12 games in his college career, and Kinzer got pulled in 2 games on the college level this past season.

Lots of potential in these 3 kids, but the truth is why draft someone in 2o17 who is going to be a big help to the guy who REPLACES you down the road. The biggest example of this is John Fox. There's a guy who is on the brink. He needs a QB THIS year. Hue Jackson needs one too, but to a less degree, since's he's only in his 2nd year there. Actually the team that he'd fit in best as far as a system goes, would be SF, but Shanahan is the ONE guy would will have all the time he needs to develop a QB if he chooses.

That brings us back to the Bears. #2 is probably too high even given his desperate situation, so there are some other possibilities. The Pats get the #2 pick in trade for their #1. Or the Pats get the Bears' 2nd round pick (34) this year plus a conditional pick in 2018 that can range from a 4th to a 1st depending on the conditions. Both those ideas can work.

The Cleveland deal has been discussed ad nauseum, and would also make sense for the 12th pick plus a conditional pick in 2018 depending on JG's performance.

2. The 2nd point pertains to why I'm confident Tom will be here well past JG's due date. When talking about the future with King, he said something to the effect, that "The game is so easy for me now. With 17 years exeperience, I see the game so clearly. So why would I give it up when it's finally fun."

THAT is a mantra most great performers face. JUST when they finally get the mental side of the game down, their bodies fail. Well Brady's body HASN'T failed, for whatever reasons, plus the position he plays doesn't require peak physical abilities. His MIND not his arm is his most lethal weapon. I doubt after his last game, there would be very few who don't think Brady has at least 3 serviceable years remaining. That's puts him well past JG's "due date."

Agree regarding your thoughts on Brady's thoughts on Brady. My heart agrees that Brady is, long-term, not going to decline, evah. My brain says that at some point prior to when he thinks/indicates that he thinks it's happening, it will, eventually, happen. He just did an interview a week after the SB talking about how he's got no ouchies from being hit so often in the SB, etc., and just skied all day. Well, hope so... I think that's also what he'd say anyway unless he broke something (in which case he'd say it's just a little minor break). So I do see many of the quantifiable things... fast 40 now than at the combine... with grains of salt. What I don't take w/a grain of salt is what he was able to perform in SB LI. That was amazing. His season was excellent (or for a spoiled NE fan "Meh, medium excellent." No drop-off yet.)

He certainly shows no signs of hitting the wall during JG's tenure. We'll see what JG fetches this year, cuz this is the year he's got to fetch it; believe it or not though, I still put the value low come the day the trigger is pulled. Everybody's seen the same few quarters of football as us. On the other hand, everybody's seen the same few quarters of football as us.

And at some point, don't Cassel, Hoyer, and Mallet (!) become a cautionary tale for other teams' GMs?

- caveat: deals and rumors of deals tend to either be right what we thought they'd be, or way off. I might be crazy, but this really feels like us making a deal with ourselves on Jimmy G, where the real deal will end up a 2 and a(n) X.

 

[Simpelton]

And due to the abysmal qb class in the draft, combined with the need of a bunch of teams-the demand for JG will NEVER be as great as it is now-and the Pats leverage will never be greater.

So great that every ream will be convinced someone else will get the kid and no one climbs in?

 

[convertedpatsfan]

One other thing to consider is what the dropoff will look like. Favre and Manning had dramatic dropoffs. Some blame the HGH for Manning, but that's consistent with seeing what Marino, Kelly, and other great QBs have experienced.

Brady probably has a few more elite years where he's a top-3 QB, that seems to be the consensus. But if he doesn't fall off a cliff like many old QBs, if he can play at a decent level (say top 10 QB), I think we would still keep him potentially as our starting QB and supplement with defense and a running game.

His salary is really affordable as far as elite QBs go. But if his decline is slower than we've seen, I could see him taking a more modest salary so the team could get bigger WRs with larger catch radiuses to help out more, get some more defensive weapons, and extend Brady's career.

We won in 2001 with a version of Brady that was not the GOAT, and other teams have done it over the years as well so I think as long as Brady doesn't get too obsessed about money (which he has shown no indication of doing), and he doesn't decline rapidly, we may get an additional 4 or 5 years of good, but not great Brady.

 

[PatsFanInVa]

Rather than a quantum physics what if, I think the better analogy is BB as a chess or go grandmaster. The difference between a grandmaster and normal good/excellent player in this games is the ability to eliminate 98% of the moves when starting a search for the correct move going forward and looking to the next set of moves that are possible.

Would like to see this observation sourced... I don't know how it can be anything but a turn of phrase, although I was never rated anywhere near the level we're talking about. I'm interested in the metaphor here.

It strikes me that "eliminating" moves is a strange way to go about creating the tree in the first place. Obviously the tree must begin at the state of play in the moment, with all possibilities spawned from that moment in the game. I think you would need to narrate - that is, see and create - from both your own point of view and your opponent's. To catch the opponent's long game, eliminating 98% of moves would leave one open; from one's own point of view, I could see that the grandmasters would be able to tell, e.g., a sacrifice planned to pan out 12 moves out, from one that could never do so. However, eliminating the 98% seems like it would eliminate a great number of productive avenues.

I'm thinking, of course, of humans who are still allowed to retain these titles. Flood the chess world with supercomputers and the humans all drop to novice ratings.

This is where BB differentiates himself from other gm and coaches, other players in the football management and coaching game are like very good chess players playing against the grandmaster champion in his prime.

So your point is that BB just knows what not to do at the beginning of the tree (wherever in the game we are placing the beginning of the tree)?

I'm just asking to flesh this out. Does this knowledge of what not to do come from a pattern recognition (more like "gut") process, or from a narrative (e.g., that which we'd so often associate with such decisions)? Does he rationally, with a traceable cognitive process, know what 98% of things not to do.... or is this an indescribable skill, that nevertheless repeatedly leads to similar outcomes?

 

[Simpelton]

If you want a football analogy on the same point, Brady himself has a legendary ability to quickly scan the field, identify possibilities, weigh them, and make optimal moves. he can't do that if he's considering every single possible play, all at once. He has to quickly scan through his options, separate the ones that make sense from the ones that don't, and of those, identify which one is the best possible move. And he's better at this than any other QB that ever lived.

This is what Patsfan13 is saying in regards to BB using the chessmaster analogy.

 

[Mr. Objective]

Patsfans.com has got to be the most intellectually challenging fan message board in the world. Where else do you need to understand the laws of thermodynamics even to participate? And where else do you need advanced degrees in physics, the philosophy of science, cognitive psychology, and game theory even to know wtf half the people are talking about?

 

[jimnance]

So great that every ream will be convinced someone else will get the kid and no one climbs in?

Anythings possible. that COULD happen. but highly unlikely

 

[NormZauchin]

Locked in a closet in his study, Brady has a portrait of himself painted when he was 23. The picture is now that of a 39 year old QB. When the portrait stops aging, Tom retires.

 

[PatsFanInVa]

Locked in a closet in his study, Brady has a portrait of himself painted when he was 23. The picture is now that of a 39 year old QB. When the portrait stops aging, Tom retires.

I think Mr. Objective missed literature (above)

 

[NormZauchin]

I think Mr. Objective missed literature (above)

Perhaps, but I was educated as an engineer myself, so I accept his point as a compliment to the participants on this site.

 

[PatsFanInVa]

If you want a football analogy on the same point, Brady himself has a legendary ability to quickly scan the field, identify possibilities, weigh them, and make optimal moves. he can't do that if he's considering every single possible play, all at once. He has to quickly scan through his options, separate the ones that make sense from the ones that don't, and of those, identify which one is the best possible move. And he's better at this than any other QB that ever lived.

This is what Patsfan13 is saying in regards to BB using the chessmaster analogy.

I'll let 13 speak for himself but to your point... that's absolutely consistent with what I've observed regarding Brady, and what every quarterback has to achieve/accomplish. Somewhere earlier on this thread he's quoted as saying something to the effect of the game finally slowing down for him so much that he can have some fun. That analogy is used a lot, "the game slowing down" (relative to the player's cognition).

Since we don't have MRIs or some better technology (I don't think) showing the QB's reactions in-game (just occasionally some dumb helmet-cam,) we don't know what's happening in the brain, but I bet it's different from what's happening in the brain of a rookie who just can't process it all (or a crappy QB who just never gets to the level of mastery TFB is at.)

I think what we'd say with TFB is that he's going through his reads, complete with possibilities that aren't in the play as drawn up, figuring in the behavior of the defense, whether it is/isn't the coverage he initially read, who's succeeding and failing in which assignments, etc., all of which he's visually acquiring and processing. You wouldn't call that a "narrative" process, although a commercial a few years back did an "inside Peyton Manning's mind" thing, where he's talking himself through some small part of such a process. But I dunno, you'd have to ask Brady, and/or measure somehow what he thinks is going on vs. what's actually going on.

I think that process, often happening over just a few seconds (for Brady) isn't a plodding exercise in thought as much as in-the-moment reaction - patterns are getting recognized in bunches, fed to his conscious mind half-processed, and informing decisions (next read, throw now, come back after checking next read, etc.) all very quickly.

I dunno. Just like I'm not a chess grandmaster, I'm not a QB. It seems that even at lower levels you can't be thinking through everything a QB does in a step-by-step narrative; it's digested for you, first through film study and practice, then, additionally, by the tells you see on the field.

The BB case is different - he's calling the game at the strategic level (or checking the calls of his OC and DC) and in periods like right now, he's plotting moves that happen in contract-pursuit time, not game-time. There is a lot more time for strategery (not to mention reams of statistics, which can play into playcalling but has to be "grokked" by a QB at a subconscious level in-game to be useful.)

 

[PatsFanInVa]

Okay as I typed that I realized there must be a whole neuroscience to how QBs make decisions... duh, of course there is. my first hit was an infomercial for some software that's supposed to make you think better.... still looking

 

[PatsFanInVa]

Perhaps, but I was educated as an engineer myself, so I accept his point as a compliment to the participants on this site.

I meant the Dorian Gray reference specifically

Good site though, I'm with you

 

[patsfan13]

Would like to see this observation sourced... I don't know how it can be anything but a turn of phrase, although I was never rated anywhere near the level we're talking about. I'm interested in the metaphor here.

So my source was reading done over 30 years ago but I did find some 'sources exploring subject:

http://wiki.c2.com/?GrandMasterEliminatesWrongMoves

So the main difference between a chess engine and a GrandMaster or a good human player is that GrandMaster Eliminates Wrong Moves. In the min/max tree the chess engines will try to analyze as many as nodes as possible trying to explore the search space exhaustively. In principle they do a breadth first exploration, with a little twist on it: there's a heuristic function that tells the engine to explore deeper on some paths because there is "tension" in the position. This avoids the situation where an engine stops the exploration of a path just one or two move of being mated or before losing material big time. Because of the time limit complete search is not possible so the engines take the decision to limit the depth of breadth first to what is appropriate on the particular CPU that they are running -- (if you want to beat a chess engine, run a little overload on the OS to take it into swapping, and the engine will go nuts because it will not be able to complete the search space it plans initially).



As opposed to a chess engine which tries very hard to explore as many paths as possible, a grand master tries very hard not to explore that many, so his intelligence is in selecting the paths that are really worth exploring, a process otherwise known in CS as pruning the search tree. And human mind is absolutely fabulous at pruning.


How does this pruning happen? Some anonymous contributor claimed that grand masters have a "database" of wrong moves stored in memory, and having good associative memory, recognize the wrong moves from the database. This is completely wrong. Chess players do use their memory quite a lot, but this is only in opening (where it's exactly the other way around: we already know the good moves, we might even play as much as 20 moves without blinking an eye, because it's a well beaten path).


What is at work in pruning the wrong moves and selecting the promising moves worth investigating is what I call (I might be using the wrong terminology),HigherOrderPatterns. First order patterns helps us recognize characters, faces, etc. This is an area where AI has made quite promising progress and it is well understood mathematically. But higher order patterns is recognizing patterns about patterns, or patterns about second order effect.

They also see patterns that most don't recognize:

Science secret of grand masters revealed : Nature News

"This is a new result in the psychology of chess, as far as I know," says Mark Orr, a chess enthusiast and Ireland's first international master. The research could help developing chess players to hone their skills, he adds.

In deciding which move to make, chess players mentally map out the future consequences of each possible move, often looking about eight moves ahead. So Michelle Cowley, a cognitive scientist and keen chess player from Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, decided to study how different chess players decide whether their move strategies will be winners or losers.

Along with her colleague Ruth Byrne, she recruited 20 chess players, ranging from regular tournament players to a grand master. She presented each participant with six different chessboard positions from halfway through a game, where black and white had equal chances of winning and there was no immediately obvious next move.

Each player had to speak their thoughts aloud as they decided what move to make. Cowley scored the quality of the move sequences by comparing them with Fritz 8, one of the most powerful chess computer programs available.

She found that novices were more likely to convince themselves that bad moves would work out in their favour, because they focused more on the countermoves that would benefit their strategy while ignoring those that led to the downfall of their cherished hypotheses.

Conversely, masters tended to correctly predict when the eventual outcome of a move would weaken their position. "Grand masters think about what their opponents will do much more," says Byrne. "They tend to falsify their own hypotheses."

Grandmasters don’t see pieces, they see patterns





Now apply this to how BB operates analyzing a roster knowledge of relative values of positions players how a player can be replaced which positions give the highest value and so on, using his training as an economist combined with his vast knowledge of football tens of thousands of hours watching tape being in game situations and so on.

 

[patfanken]

Going back to TB12's longevity, I came across some more of BSPN's perfidity. You know when you watch a clip. When it ends you get links to 4 more clips. Well I hit one and it was an ESPN clip discussing King's interview with Bill Polian. First they took several of his quotes out of context, and while not exactly being negative, the narrative they were presenting didn't match what Brady was saying.

Then, when asked if Brady was a better QB now than he was before, Polian stated with a resounding "No". Stating that he doesn't move in the pocket as well, nor does he have the same accuracy as he did when under pressure, and then used the 2007 as his examplar. He finally finished with him reminding us that father time is undefeated, and comparing him to what happened to Manning. (as if that isn't apples and oranges ) before finally admitting that it's POSSIBLE that could have a few more productive seasons.

God that man is insufferable. He really can't let go of the fact he's just a questionable ball spot away from NEVER having won a superbowl in the BB era, and having his Bills and Colts teams constant thrashed by TB12. I bet he STILL thinks Manning is the better QB, just because he was the one who picked him