You're honestly making a big deal about an extra $5M on Brady's 2020 cap hit? Patrick Mahomes just signed a $503M contract; Aaron Rodgers signed a $134M extension in 2018. We are really talking about an impossible burden of fitting in $5M extra? And $30M overall for an NFL quarterback? Did the team not pay Joe Thuney and Devin McCourty $29M in 2020? This is high risk?
You and the members of the cult can keep bringing up the numbers and all I can tell you is that he simply would have not been worth 25M and certainly not 30M+ given the roster. He showed in 2019 that he can't elevate an offense like that. There is no argument in the world you can show me that will change my opinion that it was the right decision to let him go given his contract, salary demands and pissy attitude. **** keeping someone around for nostalgia.
On the other hand he was absolutely worth the money for Tampa because he had a stacked offense that acted as a multiplier for him and a pretty good defense.
I don't see how paying Thuney or DMac has any comparison value to the QB situation. If you move to a younger QB -- which was the plan until Cam agreed to a dirt cheap deal late June -- what you want to have in place is a very stable OL. It made sense to keep Thuney. Obviously it would have been nicer to extend him instead of tagging him but the two sides couldn't find common ground in an offseason that saw pretty few long term extensions amid COVID uncertainty. It is what it is.
Similarly DMac has been -- together with HT -- THE key defensive player of the 10s. Keeping him around makes sense on the field, in the locker room and also as a mentor.
Go away and join some Bucs board if you believe this absolute ********. Please. Everything in this sport is first about risk mitigation and finding an edge that you can ride.
This wasn't based on the salary cap; it was based on (a) thinking he's probably done, and (b) believing in The Patriot Way over any indivdual player.
This is just Felger level dumb. It is ALWAYS about the salary cap. Everything and every move is based on it. If Brady would have accepted a ~ 15M deal he would have gotten his multi year contract and still been the QB here. The only way to define value in the league is by association to the salary cap. This has always been the way in this organization since BB took over.
This entire narrative of "they thought he was done" is just a strawman looneys spun up to pointlessly grief against BB and Kraft because they felt like the two took something from them that was rightfully theirs. But then again that is par for the course with the maybe worst fanbase in this sport that behaves like playoffs and titles are their birthright.
I don't see why you can't just acknolwedge that the Patriots have (a) been great for 20 years at keeping Brady happy and building championship teams around him, and (b) undervalued him, or overvalued Bill, or whatever you want to call it, in 2020. I'll take that tradeoff every time. But we're talking about what happened last year now.
Exactly how did the Patriots undervalue Brady ? Nothing he did in Tampa has any relevance for what he would have been able to do in another year throwing to (injured) Edelman, Meyers, Harry & co. This team wasn't a contender with or without Brady. At least we saved a lot of money and didn't have to dismantle the backbone of our defense.
You are acting like we would have been a SB contender by keeping him which is just a drug-fueled pipedream.