BB in damage control mode regarding Brady's departure

[SHOWTIME15]

I jumped into the fray just to see where his mind was at and I get that you can't argue the QB rating, but the end result is what it is and the rosters Montana played with were significantly better - especially on offense - than Brady's. You can argue the small details but the bigger picture is what matters. I know he's just needling people for fun and I get it. But I also fall in the middle in terms of how great Brady and Belichick were together and I don't think either of them win 6 rings without the other. My biggest disappointment was seeing the Patriots not go to the playoffs in '08. I would have loved to have seen what Cassell might have done with that group of players. They had just started playing well down the stretch and I feel like they had a good shot to surprise people.

Montana's Rosters:

-Jerry Rice (1985-1990)

-John Taylor (1987-1990) (only one 1000 season with Montana)

-Roger Craig (1983-1990) - only 3 1000 yard rushing seasons.

Brady's Roster:

-Rob Gronkowski

-Randy Moss

-Wes Welker

-Julian Edelman

-James White

-Corey Dillon

-Mike Evans

-Chris Godwin

-Antonio Brown

-Leonard Fournette


Other than Rice, it's clear who had the better talent over the years and it ain't Montana...it's an absolute myth that Montana played with a stacked offense. Next I'm going to hear that those players Brady played with sucked and it was only Brady who made them good.

 

[1960Pats]

you can't hold this against brady men. How in the world can brady affect when the opposing offense drive ends? He has no influence on this.Could be a minute, could be 2 could be 20 seconds.

If Brady had influence over the defense the Pats would have a 2007 SB ring and a 19-0 season in the bank.

 

[1960Pats]

Trading for Sanu was the nail in the coffin of the dying dynasty. Then releasing him less than a year later.

Wow, was that bad.

BB's just in a slump and will coach everyone up and get us our 7th ring, tying us with Brady. Honest.

 

[1960Pats]

I've come to the conclusion that Kraft should be the one blamed for Brady leaving.

Why wouldn't Bill want to maximize his last few years coaching by going all in on Brady.

Honestly given Krafts cheap nature, I wouldn't be surprised if it was his decision to move post Brady so he could keep the team competitive past Brady.

The Bucs have gone all in on Brady, and most likely following his retirement the team will plummet for a few years. I don't think Kraft wants that for the Pats

Does it really matter if it's Bob or Bill screwing the current fans? The truth is probably both but they've managed to get some fans to actually blame Brady for leaving.

 

[sb1]

Bill's contract ends in 2025. I don't think he'll see the end of the contract.

 

[1960Pats]

Not keep Thuney on his FA tag.

Signing bonuses to Chung, Mccourty, Hightower, and some other vets to spread the cap into the future

Brady’s death pill caphit that hit if a new contract wasn't done on the new year.

There were a lot of options, which would have required borrowing future capspace.

Every team has to spend close to the cap every year. The difference is paying future money.

For simplification, say the cap is always 100mil. That means an owner expects to pay a salary of 93-100mill in annual expenses.

Now if a team wanted to gain salary advantages, they could borrow from cap space, say 10mil a year for the next 4 years, to give an added 40mil in spending for the current year.

Here is the thing, now the owner has to pay out 140mil instead of just 100mil.

Now they could keep borrowing each year after and effectively they would be spending 110-140mil every year in salaries instead of 100mil.

That's why Kraft is cheap, he doesn't want to operate spending beyond the cap every year

In actual money spent I think the Pats are average or below. They don't call him Krafty Bob for nothing.

 

[1960Pats]

As they say, one picture is worth a thousand words.

 

[sb1]

This team wasn’t winning with or without Brady in 2020.

Would have at least made the playoffs in 2020 and then won it all last year. We'd be right there again this year too.

 

[SHOWTIME15]

Would have at least made the playoffs in 2020 and then won it all last year. We'd be right there again this year too.

We have geniuses on this board who think that we'd have salary cap space in 2021 for Brady and Bourne, Henry, Smith, Judon, and Agholar...

 

[sb1]

We have geniuses on this board who think that we'd have salary cap space in 2021 for Brady and Bourne, Henry, Smith, Judon, and Agholar...

And yet other teams seem to find room for their guys. The Patriots would have found a way.

Brady puts this team over the top and still would. No doubt about that.

 

[SHOWTIME15]

And yet other teams seem to find room for their guys. The Patriots would have found a way.

Brady puts this team over the top and still would. No doubt about that.

Bill's primary concern is with the T-E-A-M. He was not worried about getting Tommy his 7th super bowl or satisfy the Tommyites. Tampa was a desperate organization with talented players on both sides of the ball who needed a QB. They were (and still are) in a different boat than NE, who has won 6 titles in the past 20 years. When they signed Brady, Tampa's strategy was to maximize the next 3 years or so and go all out. On the other hand, Bill was concerned about the NEP for the next 10-15 years and didn't want to put the team in a bad cap situation. Oh, and on top of that, Tom tried to get rid of Bill...

 

[Guts]

Bill's primary concern is with the T-E-A-M. He was not worried about getting Tommy his 7th super bowl or satisfy the Tommyites. Tampa was a desperate organization with talented players on both sides of the ball who needed a QB. They were (and still are) in a different boat than NE, who has won 6 titles in the past 20 years. When they signed Brady, Tampa's strategy was to maximize the next 3 years or so and go all out. On the other hand, Bill was concerned about the NEP for the next 10-15 years and didn't want to put the team in a bad cap situation. Oh, and on top of that, Tom tried to get rid of Bill...

Uhm how does your first point make sense? If Tom would've won a 7th here that would have been the best for the T-E-A-M since that's the ultimate goal a Superbowl lmao We shall see how it plays out with Mac hopefully he delivers and you know the Brady wanting to get rid of Bill is BS. I'm sure there was friction like any relationship, but it was a mutual split. They both let their feelings known towards each other when Tom semi retired

 

[SHOWTIME15]

Uhm how does your first point make sense? If Tom would've won a 7th here that would have been the best for the T-E-A-M since that's the ultimate goal a Superbowl lmao We shall see how it plays out with Mac hopefully he delivers and you know the Brady wanting to get rid of Bill is BS. I'm sure there was friction like any relationship, but it was a mutual split. They both let their feelings known towards each other when Tom semi retired

The goal is long term success. Tom did not play well in 2019. It was time to move to the next QB, which we found in Mac. It turned out that Brady was still good, but only with talented players that NE didn't have. Brady himself recognized this as he chose a team with Godwin and Evans and recruited Brown, Gronk, and Fournette.

When Tom semi-retired, it took Bill a whole 24 hours to come out with a statement, which is unusual. Tom didn't even mention NEP in his retirement post. On top of that there were no plans for Tom to sign a 1 day contract with the Pats. Of course, Tom may have known all along he was coming back and his "retirement" was a concocted way of getting rid of Arians.

 

[crawhammer]

Yes, but my point is how many game winning drives does he have getting the ball with 45 seconds or so left?

Who cares? Why is starting the game-winning drive with 45 seconds or less the benchmark? A game-winning drive is a scoring drive in the fourth quarter or OT that puts your team in the lead to the conclusion of the game. The length or duration of the drive doesn't matter. If you're going to hone in on a time then it should be something like 2 minutes or less and OT. That makes more sense than one random example of 45 seconds.

I posted their results and you said that meant I said they were elite. So you drew that conclusion not me.
How can you not take scoring seriously? If you say you don’t take points scored and frequency of scoring as a serious yardstick for an offense, you only prove you are a fool.

Those stats are important. However, I don't agree with you that they represent the conclusions you seemed to have been drawing. We can reset your characterization of the 2021 offense... bad, fair, good, very good or great... which one of those would you use? I say good. Improved from 2020.

10 wins is 3 more than 7. 10 wins and #6 scoring, #2 scoring % with a rookie QB is almost unheard of.

That's what I'm talking about, right there, you're suggesting the 2021 Patriots offense represented some noteworthy unprecedented accomplishment. I don't agree with that sentiment. The offense was good, better than 2020, and I agree an encouraging sign for the future.

There was a similar improvement from 2000 to 2001, except of course the 2001 Brady led team played well enough to win a Super Bowl. Also, despite the 10 wins and all of the encouraging signs from the current offense, they got smoked in the wild card round and really did not resemble a playoff caliber team.

These numbers were introduced into this thread in the context of 2 things.
1) From where the offense stood before free agency, these are remarkable results, so those trashing the impact of the offensive free agent acquisitions are wrong. And 2) accomplishing those results with a rookie Qb and almost all new targets is a very encouraging sign fit the future.

I don't entirely disagree with how you've stated it here. However, if you want to cherry-pick FA signings like Bourne and Henry then of course you can point to their favorable impact on the improvement of the offense. But one could also single out Agholor and Smith (two more prominent signings) as not working out.

And generally all of the FA signings... what are we talking about here?... at best a 50% success rate of their investment. Also, what's the longer term impact of that 2021 FA class for the Patriots? It limited their ability to spend this offseason so if they're going to continue to improve then they're going to have to get better returns on that FA class overall.

It is not impossible to say what the roster would have been if Brady stayed, because they used all the resources they had without paying him, so the roster they had minus whoever wasn’t there to pay Brady is what they would have had. By all means let’s use math and pretend the 2019-2020 Patriots were just as good as the dynasty and had no drop off. Jesus try to think a little.

We're not going to get anywhere on this because it's too hypothetical and there are too many unknowable variables. Generally I believe they could have kept Brady with a representative supporting cast and would have remained postseason competitive. The past two seasons they haven't been that without Brady and with all of those FA signings. Conversely the team Brady plays for now went from not postseason competitive (for 17 years) to Super Bowl champions.

On the other hand, Bill was concerned about the NEP for the next 10-15 years

15 years?? He might not live that long never mind remain HC of the team. I also think Belichick wants to win every single season and operates as the GM accordingly. His objective is to put together the best possible team for success in any given season. Under no circumstances do I believe Belichick ever goes into a season where winning the Super Bowl isn't his primary goal.

 

[Ian]

We have geniuses on this board who think that we'd have salary cap space in 2021 for Brady and Bourne, Henry, Smith, Judon, and Agholar...

We would, but it would have forced them to push Brady’s salary out. They did it for 20yrs, but you can’t make it work going year-to-year and they just weren’t willing to make the gamble.

 

[Ian]

Montana's Rosters:

-Jerry Rice (1985-1990)

-John Taylor (1987-1990) (only one 1000 season with Montana)

-Roger Craig (1983-1990) - only 3 1000 yard rushing seasons.

Brady's Roster:

-Rob Gronkowski

-Randy Moss

-Wes Welker

-Julian Edelman

-James White

-Corey Dillon

-Mike Evans

-Chris Godwin

-Antonio Brown

-Leonard Fournette


Other than Rice, it's clear who had the better talent over the years and it ain't Montana...it's an absolute myth that Montana played with a stacked offense. Next I'm going to hear that those players Brady played with sucked and it was only Brady who made them good.

If you start telling me Montana could have been as good with guys like Reche Caldwell, my head just might explode.

 

[Ian]

Including playoffs, yes.

at some point the Tommy-lickers on this board will realize that Brady led the league in a number of offensive categories...because "gasp" he threw the ball more than anyone. In fact Tommy had the 2nd most passing attempts in NFL history per season last year. Ya think he's going to lead the NFL in yards, TDs, completions, etc?

So doing it at age 44 at level doesn’t mean anything? Give that same number of attempts to some of the younger QBs in the league and I feel like the turnover ratio would have been WAY higher

 

[SHOWTIME15]

If you start telling me Montana could have been as good with guys like Reche Caldwell, my head just might explode.

Perhaps you should get the tylenol ready...

Montana's best receivers in his first two super bowls:

1981 - Dwight Clark and Freddie Solomon (only Clark was a pro bowler that year)

1984 - Clark, Solomon, and Craig (none were pro bowlers that year)

 

[Ian]

Perhaps you should get the tylenol ready...

Montana's best receivers in his first two super bowls:

1981 - Dwight Clark and Freddie Solomon (only Clark was a pro bowler that year)

1984 - Clark, Solomon, and Craig (none were pro bowlers that year)

I watched Caldwell play. The above doesn't make your argument.

 

[SHOWTIME15]

I watched Caldwell play. The above doesn't make your argument.

Not sure what you're getting at - Caldwell had 760 yards and 4 TDs with the Pats in 2006. Montana turned a no-name guy like Freddie Solomon into a nearly 1000, 8 TD in 1981 and similar in 1984. Both QBs won super bowls with a bad receiving corps.