We have a rookie QB because we decided to let the greatest quarterback of all-time leave.
Since then, said QB has won a Super Bowl and put up 2 MVP caliber seasons while our team has 0 playoff wins and a 17-17 record.
It annoys me how people keep acting like our rebuild was because our QB retired or something and not because Belichick's ego thought he could win without him.
Look, for all stuck in counter-factual land:
The Brady of Tampa Bay might not be the Brady we could have had.
In fact, the TB Tom Brady, in my eyes,
is not the Tom Brady we could have had in New England. I would love for him to have retired a Patriot. He didn't. He
chose to leave.
In the situation we were in, we could mortgage the future to squeeze out a little more Brady, and have zilch left to give him any weapons. You think our roster during the Cam year - with
less cap money to give him the supporting cast he wanted - was going to do the trick? I don't. And make no mistake about it, we were taking a hit all at once, using Cam at QB for minimal pay, because we did not have it to spend in 2020. Not because we'd spent it all on Brady - he was cheap for what he brought here. We'd spent it on "having it all" for 20 years, by comparison to others.
The risk-benefit decision at that point was that the price point they offered wasn't what he wanted. We don't know, really, what the agent/team/Brady/Brady Sr. conversations were like. We just know he walked.
Loved the guy, he's gone. Crying about it now is ridiculous. Anybody ever crying about being "cheap" with an NFL QB at 43 is silly,
especially the first time it ever happened (now you can say "what about Tom Brady?") He was an outlier.
But you also have to know he was on a hair trigger to be gone--look at how football became "fun again" once he was gone. Why do you think he was so pissed we wouldn't let AB play? He felt like he had a new toy and they bwoke it. How'd that work out?
Anyway, complain all you want, he's not here. Cheer up, we still have the Patriots south and the other Patriots (West) QB to cheer for this season. We can also think about the Patriots proper, who none of those guys play for, in 2022.
What's the point in trying to re-litigate letting Brady go 2 years later?