Luuked....I understand the points above regarding the various WR's that were contracted ie the good and the bad and about them not working out , so does this just support that there should be a greater emphasis in drafting younger players and developing them ? Then I hear from other posters that drafting WR's is a crap shoot so is this just something that never is resolved one way or another. ??? Was this just made worse in that as others have said Brady wouod not throw to rookies.....seems a no win ?
The way I read their team building on offense is that they think that most of the success comes from their playbook/system and the way Brady was directing it and not so much the exact talent of players especially if you manage to have a 1-2 playmaking chess pieces already.
The other assumption I make based on how they kept opting for veterans over early WR picks is that they thought its cheaper/easier/faster to bring in veterans to fill specific roles than to develop that young talent themselves. And with Brady getting older it made more and more sense to try skipping over the developmental phase and getting vets who can do certain things well (e.g. Hogan) while it also
decreased the risk of ending up with players that might end up not "getting it". The system is king.
But reality is that they have not found another LaFell or Hogan for a while in the bargain bin (Dorsett didn't grow into a bigger role, CP was too limited as a WR but too expensive as a gadget guy, Gordon was toast, AB a nutcase) and the chess pieces like Gronk and Edelman have gotten older and/or retired.
Personally, I can see how there is less value to be gained from investing any kind of major asset (whether thats an early pick or cap space) into WRs/TEs than into the defense or trenches while you have Gronk/Edelman being the motor of an offense that consistently has been in the top 3 for almost 15 years straight. It all comes back what gives you more bang for the buck. The return on investment on signing e.g. Gilmore in 2017 is much bigger than e.g. OBJ in an offense were 75% of targets will go to Gronk/Edelman/White. That doesn't mean I agree with every move they made. The way they the TE position unfolded over the last 2 years was simply a failure.
I think Brady's dissatisfaction with rookies has been overly dramatized by fans and the media. I don't think Brady had any specific issue with rookies but he expected laser precision when it came to execution from everybody. When we understand a subject really well we often completely underestimate how absolutely simple tasks can appear more challenging to people that don't have our experience because we take a lot of little things for granted. A lot of things that are obvious to the expert are non-obvious for beginners or even the intermediates.
I think his demand for perfection was a challenge for rookies because they not only had to learn a really big and convoluted playbook but also had to make the jump from student athlete to being a pro as a young adult in a totally new environment. Which again brings us to why it made sense to me that they were looking at vets more than draft picks.
I don't know if any of this answers your question but there are so many facets to all of this. The truth is that to sustain success under a salary cap over more than a decade you necessarily will have to rely on a combination of draft picks working out and veteran role players while trying to increase your return on investment when it comes to your assets. There are other models where instead you think in windows & accept rebuilding years or just keep leveraging your future like the Saints but none of them are sustainable.
This is also what made our run since 2011 so unique.. we never mortgaged the future or thought in windows, but consistently rebuild all units while going to 8 AFCCGs straight.
