In 2010 the Patriots made Tom the highest paid player in the NFL... in fact from 2005 until 2014 when he wasn't the highest paid player in the NFL he was still
one of the highest paid players in the NFL... the Manning brothers were overpaid, nobody was going to eclipse them. Their father was bitter about his pro football experience and made sure those boys bled every dime from the league.
Tom should be commended from 2014 on for not taking top dollar, for sacrificing to win. But that's not all that happened, for those saying nothing else was different the last six years. The Patriots started using all their players, especially their highest paid player's contracts as collateral, using their contracts to push salary cap down the road. They did it with Brady right up until he left, did it with Gronk, Gilmore, Amendola, Cannon, Burkhead and many others. These guys got the money owed to them, but the team restructured their deals and pushed
salary cap into future years so the team could sign other players. This is why when you look at those tweets I posted about Gilmore, these restructure's often happened at the trade deadline.
This is why they won 3 rings and appeared in 4 Super Bowls from 2014-2018... depth. When Gronk got hurt Marty Bennett was sitting right behind him and played well in the playoffs. When the special teams units were underperforming in 2018, BB went out and acquired Albert McClellan who became the ST MVP the moment he was added to the roster and another ST ace in Ramon Humber. I know some nitwit will say something that amounts to
"special teams don't matter," so let me just preempt that by calling you a fool in advance in the hopes you don't embarrass yourself by showing your total ignorance of the game. TEAM's win Super Bowls, not QB's alone... that's fandumb... a total fanboy take.
The only other time the Patriots went on a tear of 3 Super Bowls was from 2001-2004, and what was unique about those teams in relation to 2014-2018... what did they have in common? Brady was cheap, he made 372K in 2001. He was getting paid like a 6th round draft pick. If you only have 5-10% of your salary cap dedicated to your QB, then you can spend the remaining 95-90% on the rest of your roster. This isn't hard, it's simple math. They traded Bledsoe in 2002 and like magic they were dominant.
In between these two Super Bowl runs,
an entire decade passed where they only appeared in two Super Bowls and lost them both. One could even argue the 2007 was the last gasps of that early dynastic period. Those in between teams were thin. They let Richard Seymour walk because he was too expensive, because they had Wilfork locked up and immediately signed Ty Warren to a big deal... that season Ty suffered a career ending hip injury and for the next few years we had to watch UDFA jag Kyle Love start next to Wilfork. They had no money for depth, they had no money to improve immediately. They gave Leigh Bodden a hefty deal for a corner in his advanced years, he immediately got hurt and his career was over. When you have no cap room or money to spend, injured players and missed draft picks hurt that much worse. And before you say
"yeah but the draft picks," everyone misses on draft picks. The Chiefs were completely unaffected by blowing their second round picks in multiple years because Patrick Mahomes was paid like a rookie. The clock starts now for them, the same way it started for the Seahawks the moment they paid Russell Wilson and the Legion Of Boom immediately got dismantled.
For all those saying BB screwed up the cap the last 5-6 years again, you don't know what the F you're talking about. They were playing to win, they were designing teams to win now... not for development down the road. These were some of the oldest teams in the NFL for a reason. They traded out of drafts, they paid vets instead of using cheaper rookies, they only drafted rookies they thought could contribute immediately. Brady wanted vet weapons, vets don't have to be trained, if healthy they're more reliable, they're also more expensive. There's value in rookies, that why our team is slowly going from one of the oldest teams in the league to one of the youngest this year and next.
The term is salary cap, it's the
"cap" that some of you completely don't understand. If you think 3 Super Bowls is
"mismanagement" then you're a mouth breather. The Eagles went 43 years without winning a championship, now they're terrible all over again.
Super Bowl or NFL Championship win droughts... Cardinals (73 years), Lions (63 years), Titans (59 years), Chargers (57 years), Browns (53 years), Bills (55 years), Vikings (51 years), Falcons (55 years, have never won), Bengals (53 years, have never won), NY Jets (52 years), Dolphins (47 years), Raiders (37 years), Bears (35 years), Washington (29 years), Texans (19 years, have never won), Jaguars (26 years, have never won), Panthers (26 years, have never won)...
Tell us again how horrible it is having to go 22 months since your last duck boat parade... ridiculous. Entitled garbage.