Succession of greatness is almost always difficult and frustrating for fans. Rodgers/Favre and Young/Montana are great but you're right it's certainly not the norm. Overthinking the transition is problematic for organizations as well as fans. Honestly if asked, I wouldn't want to watch Brady play like Manning did this regular season...but look what happened in the end. That's not a bad coda. Let the man play. As much as anyone, Tom BUILT this. When he sucks, he'll go. Has he given you a reason not to take him at his word? Whoever is here at the time is the next guy. He might be Aaron Rodgers. He might be Jeff Garcia. He might be Ryan Mallett. You really do never know. Andrew Luck is basically Jay Cutler as a player and looks just as stupid, but one's on TV as the second coming and one's a pariah, go figure.
I grew up in IL as a Bulls fan and to this day I've never seen an organization more guilty of overthinking the transition than they were in the late 90s. As soon as the 2nd 3-peat run got started they were all ahead of themselves trying to figure out how to rip it apart and rebuild it to prove it was the organization - not Jordan and Pippen - that ran roughshod over the league for the better part of a decade. To this I give BB credit for always deflecting credit to the players - they do PLAY the damn game. The Bulls were even staring down a 50-game lockout season in 1999 that would have perfectly shortened the season for their older(ish) team but let MJ and Phil Jackson retire, traded Pippen, and let the ****ing 1999 Knicks make the Finals as an 8 seed anyway. You can't do that. It might be painful in the end. Might be. Watching a relatively well-tuned and healthy Brady take the biggest beatdown of his life last week was hard enough, watching it when it might actually be his fault in 4 years would be even harder. But if that came to pass, he earned the right to do it if he wants. There is no reason they can't win it all next year. When it gets to the end of the season and I can't say that, then it might be time to make a change. But that isn't here yet.