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I'd agree with that. My defense is to push back on the people who feel it was minimal. And there is a lot of that, unfortunately.I don't believe I am. I think that what's happened is any criticism leveled at Belichick is ardently defended by his sycophants.
Nobody that's serious claims that Brady was the ONLY reason for the dynasty. It's a matter of how much each contributed. Nobody will ever agree on the percentages so they turn the discussion into ALL or NOTHING. It's dumb.
I think we're going to find out moving forward what the difference was because Bill put together so many game plans defensively that stymied opponents and gave them the chance to grab a lead and/or win games some thought they couldn't. When you have a guy like Brady, who could adapt insanely well and obviously could make the plays on offense, that changes everything. We saw first-hand that when you don't even have a quality starter, those game plans mean nothing if you can't score.
My fear with Mayo is going to be seeing if he's able to do the same things against top competition, with the hope that obviously they end up in a better position offensively to at least be competitive. Although, I'm worried they won't be able to stop people at the same rate. Bill's brain is going to be hard to replace. But at the same time, if the talent level on offense increases, maybe it will be a wash...but it's obviously tough to say right now with so many unknowns.
But you can't go another 20 years not being able to draft skill players in this league, especially now. Eliot Wolf's record drafting guys is pretty impressive, so I'm curious to see if this "collaborative" effort they have with this personnel group, scouts, etc. yields better results. Can't afford another Tyquan Thornton...albeit, he's bulked up significantly (which I'm assuming was at their directive) so we'll see if that finally translates for him in year 3.