OT: Official 2020 Tompa Bay Gronkaneers Thread

[Steve102]

There are plenty on this forum that have asserted that Bill is the GOAT GM. The most recent person that I can recall off the top of my head is @farn, but if you’d like I can find more. The search function on this forum is very good. I’m sure you came to that realization while frantically searching for a post of mine a few weeks ago.

EDIT: LMAO, DoctorDDS, above, just said the same thing.

Looks like you have people that want to fight you.

Based on the unprecedented 20 year run of greatness, you would be hard pressed to find a better GM. Bill Polian, for all his hatred of the Pats, Got it done for Buffalo, Carolina (to a certain extent) and the Colts. You don't have to love the guy to respect his body of work. Ron wolf, Ozzie Newsome, Bobby Beathard, Tex Schramm, Bill Walsh and George Young would all be on a short list. Bill is somewhere in there. I will go so far as to say Bill's inability to draft, develop and coach a top level, outside the numbers WR is the main reason the detractors hate on Bill so much. I think the GOAT GM is a very subjective title, but Bill certainly deserves a seat at the table.

Show me a GM who has done it better for longer, during the free agent period.

 

[Tony2046]

Those SB were brought about by guys who were brought to the team in 2014 or earlier. In 2016, 2017, 2018, it was the veterans and coaches who carried the team to SBs. There were no hot shot up and comers. Now that those veterans are nearly all gone, you are seeing the results of those 6/7 years of not drafting well in the top rounds.

Mitchell, Sony, Flowers, Bennett, Gilmore...etc etc?

 

[Doctor DDS]

Back to Brady and Gronk.

I think this match up is a tough one due to Washington's DL. Keeping Brady clean will be key and it will be interesting to see how often Gronk stays in to block.

 

[Steve102]

Back to Brady and Gronk.

I think this match up is a tough one due to Washington's DL. Keeping Brady clean will be key and it will be interesting to see how often Gronk stays in to block.

Bah. Chase Young sealed the Football Team's fate with his "I want Brady" crap. That stuff never ends well for guys. You'd think they would be smart enough to shut up.

 

[amfootball]

Back to Brady and Gronk.

I think this match up is a tough one due to Washington's DL. Keeping Brady clean will be key and it will be interesting to see how often Gronk stays in to block.

The Washington offense is pretty awful. I think Tampa wins but not in a blow out. Probably 10 point win.

 

[Lagaffe_07]

Back to Brady and Gronk.

I think this match up is a tough one due to Washington's DL. Keeping Brady clean will be key and it will be interesting to see how often Gronk stays in to block.

I am surprise to see that Washington is not great defending the run.

i would expect they will run Jones hard, use play action to slow down the pass rush a bit and they will have a lot a short to intermediate route to allow Tom to get the ball out quick. I think will see a lot of those WR screens

 

[sb1]

Bah. Chase Young sealed the Football Team's fate with his "I want Brady" crap. That stuff never ends well for guys. You'd think they would be smart enough to shut up.

21 year old rookie who doesn't know any better. He will learn his lesson this weekend.

 

[sb1]

The Washington offense is pretty awful. I think Tampa wins but not in a blow out. Probably 10 point win.

Smith is hobbled too. I don't see them scoring much.

 

[1960Pats]

Like I said previously, why would they change the system they used for 20 years and that 8/10 of the offense knows for a guy who was gonna be here for one year. You don’t force the entire offense to learn a new system for a rental.

i agree with you that it was the same system as before but I disagree with you that it was Brady offense. They didn’t run a third of what Brady was running. They add a lot of RPO to it but Cam was not even able to run it efficiently. I completely disagree with you if you think they haven’t dumb it down at the maximum.

If they didn’t, that means Bill is not as good as a HC I think he is.

it’s more like Cam is trying to say that it was not his fault to still hope someone will hire him as starting QB.

Agree. The Pats offense this year was much more different than with Brady. Cam ran more RPOs in one quarter of one game than Tom ran in 20 full seasons.

 

[203Pat]

The job of the GM is to field a competitive team and the BB led Patriots had a winning record 19 straight years and had a level of success never seen before in the history of the league. So counting actual results is certainly the crux of my analysis.

I also have this crazy opinion that someone like Red Auerbach was an all time great GM despite having some of the greatest players on his roster (I give him the credit for picking those players) I did not consider him an average GM after making several bad 1st round picks including back to back picks like Tom Boswell and Norm Cook when the Celtics sucked in 1977 and 1978.

When I think about a great GM I look at all aspects of that role and during BB's tenure managing the cap has been vital. The 2014 - 2018 run was accomplished by augmenting existing talent with crucial contributions from players like new contributors like James White, Van Noy, David Andrews, Chris Hogan Trey Flowers, Trent Brown ,,,,, They do not win any of those championships without players like that. I realize that many here consider draft success as the only true measure of success of a GM and with some recent struggles it is easy to bash BB but I will ask again what GM has been better?

Ozzie Newsome has been mentioned and he is a great GM but he's made a bunch of drafting mistakes over the years. (like every other GM) Matt Elam, Breshard Perriman, Arthur Brown..... the Flacco contract was not exactly a high water mark either.

I am not saying Bill is a bad GM overall. I am saying as of late he has been bad. While he has found guys like Van Noy, and Hogan outside of the draft he had to trade/sign them and pay them more because he whiffed at filling those spots in the draft. Geneo Grissom was supposed to be what Van Noy was but he was supposed to be cheaper. Hogan needed to be signed because the last guy he paid (Lafell) to replace the guy he whiffed on (Dobson) couldn't play anymore.

On the surface you say so what? He missed on Grissom in the third and traded for Van Noy and he missed on Dobson in the second but supplemented with free agents. Doesn't seem like anything too bad but when all those little deals for guys to replace bad draft picks start adding up it snowballs into where we are now. He has continually missed on cheap young talent and had to pay/trade for middling guys and hope they worked out. That is why when he misses on N'Keal Harry he has to hope AB won't go crazy and when he does go crazy you just burned $9 million dollars for one game. That then snowballs into a desperate trade for Sanu who you burn a second rounder on. So to fill a spot he swung and missed on he not only wasted a bunch of cap space he sunk a first and a second round pick into the position and has gotten really no production from it.

Bill isn't a bad GM (for the 10th time) but he has been bad for the last 5-6 years and that is why we see Brady succeeding on a team that hit on quite a few draft picks (outside of the most important one at QB) while he looked like he was nearing the end with this team Bill assembled last year. All the little things add up when you miss in the draft continually.

 

[RobertWeathers]

Looks like you have people that want to fight you.

Based on the unprecedented 20 year run of greatness, you would be hard pressed to find a better GM. Bill Polian, for all his hatred of the Pats, Got it done for Buffalo, Carolina (to a certain extent) and the Colts. You don't have to love the guy to respect his body of work. Ron wolf, Ozzie Newsome, Bobby Beathard, Tex Schramm, Bill Walsh and George Young would all be on a short list. Bill is somewhere in there. I will go so far as to say Bill's inability to draft, develop and coach a top level, outside the numbers WR is the main reason the detractors hate on Bill so much. I think the GOAT GM is a very subjective title, but Bill certainly deserves a seat at the table.

Show me a GM who has done it better for longer, during the free agent period.

Agree but I think there needs to be a distinction.

In one corner you have pure GMs. Polian, Beatherd, Wolf, Finks are great GMs

Then you have team builders who are coaches but also had final say on personnel. Lombardi, Landry, Shula, Walsh, Gibbs, Noll, Andy Reid, Parcells.

I still think BB would be a great "GM" because of his economic approach to player acquisition and talent evaluation but it's obvious he is a great coach who establishes a great culture and maximizes a player's abilities.

 

[upstater1]

Mitchell, Sony, Flowers, Bennett, Gilmore...etc etc?

In the 2018-2019 Super Bowls, we had several key players who had just joined the team: Cooks, Thuney, Andrews, Mason, Flowers, Van Noy, Malcolm Brown, Elandon Roberts, Gilmore, Burkhead, Jonathan Jones, Trent Brown, JC Jackson, Danny Shelton. These were not layers that were on the team prior to the 2017 Super Bowl.

 

[amfootball]

Two things can be true - Bill can be a very good/great GM who also has not had much success as a GM the last 6 years.

 

[Steve102]

Agree but I think there needs to be a distinction.

In one corner you have pure GMs. Polian, Beatherd, Wolf, Finks are great GMs

Then you have team builders who are coaches but also had final say on personnel. Lombardi, Landry, Shula, Walsh, Gibbs, Noll, Andy Reid, Parcells.

I still think BB would be a great "GM" because of his economic approach to player acquisition and talent evaluation but it's obvious he is a great coach who establishes a great culture and maximizes a player's abilities.

I agree with your post. As I said, it's subjective.

 

[NYCPATS4LIFE]

I

Two things can be true - Bill can be a very good/great GM who also has not had much success as a GM the last 6 years.

The last years haven’t been great. Joejuan was a reach. Also still trying to figure out how harry went ahead of guys like brown, metcalf and samuel .

 

[sb1]

I


The last years haven’t been great. Joejuan was a reach. Also still trying to figure out how harry went ahead of guys like brown, metcalf and samuel .

Which is why I think Brady's success is one of the best things that could have happened now for the Pats rebuild. I expect there will be no more messing around with fringe prospects and never-will-be's and some real talent with upside is finally coming to Foxboro starting this April.

 

[Lagaffe_07]

In the 2018-2019 Super Bowls, we had several key players who had just joined the team: Cooks, Thuney, Andrews, Mason, Flowers, Van Noy, Malcolm Brown, Elandon Roberts, Gilmore, Burkhead, Jonathan Jones, Trent Brown, JC Jackson, Danny Shelton. These were not layers that were on the team prior to the 2017 Super Bowl.

here are the list of the player you cited and when they join the team. Only 3 joined the team in 2018.

Cooks: 2017 only
Thuney: 2016
Andrews: 2015
Mason: 2015
Flowers: 2015
Van Noy: 2016
Brown: 2015
Roberts: 2016
Gilmore: 2017
Burkhead: 2017
Jones: 2016
T. Brown: 2018 only
Jackson: 2018
Shelton: 2018

Edit: my bad, I misread your post. For me, SB 51 is still the 2016 season SB. Still 4 players were on the team prior to SB 51 ;-)

 

[upstater1]

I


The last years haven’t been great. Joejuan was a reach. Also still trying to figure out how harry went ahead of guys like brown, metcalf and samuel .

These aren't reaches. Williams went where most draftniks egged him to go.

Metcalf was criticized by a lot of people. There's a reason he dropped to the late 2nd round. Everyone found faults in him.

We need to rewind back to when these players were chosen. People were praising the Patriots for the Harry pick. Go back to the draft 2 years ago. Read all the articles.

Belichick has certainly reached in the past for players like Dowling and Jordan Richards, especially at the DB position. But the players listed above went where they were predicted to go.

 

[upstater1]

here are the list of the player you cited and when they join the team. Only 3 joined the team in 2018.

Cooks: 2017
Thuney: 2016
Andrews: 2015
Mason: 2015
Flowers: 2015
Van Noy: 2016
Brown: 2015
Roberts: 2016
Gilmore: 2017
Burkhead: 2017
Jones: 2016
T. Brown: 2018 only
Jackson: 2018
Shelton: 2018

Thanks for the list since it reinforces my point. The original post claimed this: "Those SB were brought about by guys who were brought to the team in 2014 or earlier."

So I was looking for guys who played in those Super Bowls and who joined the team after 2014.

 

[Lagaffe_07]

These aren't reaches. Williams went where most draftniks egged him to go.

Metcalf was criticized by a lot of people. There's a reason he dropped to the late 2nd round. Everyone found faults in him.

We need to rewind back to when these players were chosen. People were praising the Patriots for the Harry pick. Go back to the draft 2 years ago. Read all the articles.

Belichick has certainly reached in the past for players like Dowling and Jordan Richards, especially at the DB position. But the players listed above went where they were predicted to go.

When he had Brady bill has always drafted players with how the player will fit the team in mind over talent. When you do that, you often pick a player with less talent. Now he has to go with talent over the fit of the team because we don’t have any. We will see if he does that.

I thought he often draft player who can do a specific thing high in the draft. And he often doesn’t draft a player who can do multiple thing. Williams for example was drafted with a specific role in mind.