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Again, it's stuff like this that is ruining this forum. The binary, either/or perspectives. That's a bad article and it's that mindset that's made this place so insufferable recently.
Are the Patriots worse-off without Brady? Absolutely. Was Brady's presence the only reason they succeeded in the past, and is his absence the only reason they're struggling now? Absolutely not.
The Patriots haven't been really good since 2016'ish. You saw it in 2018 (they got lucky with a late-season push). You saw it in 2019. And you're seeing it now. They cannot reliably stop the run, their DL is light inside, the LBs are lacking athleticism, and there's a complete void of offensive talent. Brady is one (admittedly large) piece of the puzzle, but he's far from the whole story.
It doesn't mean Belichick sucks, nor does it mean Tom was the only reason for their success; it's a nuanced and complex situation managing a football team.
The Patriots are no different than any other team: give them a good QB and talent across the team, they'll succeed. Give them a poor roster with holes in places, they'll struggle.
There's still no coach I'd rather have than BB, and I can promise you that 31 other owners and fanbases feel similarly.
I don't want to crap on Belichick. He is beyond reproach in many ways and has contributed so much to my happiness as a fan. I have read almost every book about him and think he is brilliant.
What I would like to see is for people to acknowledge that teams are great because of players, and in football, the quarterback is like the queen on the chessboard.
We have seen plenty of coaches with dynasties or teams that dominated for several years - guys like Paul Brown, Vince Lombardi, Don Shula, Chuck Noll, Bill Walsh, Jimmy Johnson, and Bill Belichick. Yet we've never seen any of them build two dynasties or show that a coach or coach/GM can carry a team through major personnel change; we haven't seen a coach go to a different team and have a lick of the same success, besides maybe Bill Parcells (who had his own issues and never built a sustained dynasty) or Shula (who went from one stacked team to another before going all that time with Marino and still failing to deliver.)
So the reason why the Aha! articles that Brady is better than Belichick are rather dumb to me is because this is the wrong way to look at it. Brady isn't "better" than Belichick. Brady is a quarterback and Belichick is a coach. It's like saying that Justin Tucker is better than Patrick Mahomes since Tucker's lead over the second best kicker is greater. Mahomes is, of course, going to be a much more valuable asset than Tucker.
Bill's dual role as a coach/GM certainly makes him more valuable than most coaches - there's little doubt about that, but I'll repeat what I've said for years, which is that there are basically no metrics to measure how his moves have compared to other GMs, how his coaching has compared to other coaches, and people tend to vastly exaggerate the results through selective confirmation bias, and then they blow up that argument by acting like his impact is infinite and immeasurable, while players have an assigned value and are replaceable.