Who took the bigger risk (for the Patriots)?

[lancerman]

Sorry, but you are all over the map here. We had Brady, we pissed him off by going year to year when all he wanted was the deal Bree’s got: 2 years $50m. Don’t know what you’re trying get at with your Mahomes comment.

He's deflecting because one of his arguments was it's unfair Belichick was let go after 4 years and didn't get another chance with a new QB because it's hard to hit on a QB, but that is undermined when you bring up that the entire situation was created because he pissed off Brady and tried to go year to year with him and let him know he wanted to be able to throw him out like trash whenever he felt like it.

Year one post Brady could have been the 2023 season when Brady retired at 45 like he always said and BB would have had a floor at QB for 3 more years. Then we'd be sitting here today with Belichick in year two with a new QB or maybe this would have been the year we'd draft a QB and be starting the next phase.

 

[signbabybrady]

All the more reason to not to start ****ing around the GOAT QB you already have on your team. Again, he created his own mess and then compounded on it by screwing up all his attempts at fixing it.

1. Don't start a pissing match with Brady by trying to set up his exit.
2. Don't ignore him all offseason when he can walk and then give him some mediocre deal that shows you didn't want to retain him.
3. Don't go into the off season with a dud like Stidham as your replacement.
4. Don't show the whole world you ****ed up by scrambing to get Cam Newton who was washed at the time as a bandaid for your own mess.
5. The next year when you need a QB don't play passive and wait for the last QB projected in the 1st round to fall to you and let other people trade over you so you don't have any say in who you get.
6. Don't take that QB and create a QB controversy with another QB who was a total sack of **** anyways.
7. Don't saddle them with a guy like Matt Patricia who has never coached an offense at a high level a day in his life.
8. Don't constantly all your QB's over the last 5 years **** weapons and a **** line.

And that's just the QB position that he screwed over. We could talk about how he mismanaged the kicking role during that time, we can talk about how he extended all his old favorites on defense and turned it into Jurassic Park with a bunch of slow guys, we could talk about how the team looked less prepared every single year and were making stupid decisions that were comical and news worthy by the end, we could talk about how every single one of his drafts for years were absolute failures. We can talk about how he only surrounded himself with old favorites on his coaching staff and couldn't ever find new forward thinking coaches. We can talk about how whenever he had a decision to make between players in free agency he always went after some sort of value deal over the more talented guys and was consistently getting duds (Sanu, Smith etc). We can talk about how the offensive line had been a mess since at least 2019 and he never fixed it and it's still a problem to this day. We can talk about how all of a sudden for the first time in the whole Belichick era we had a head coach who was starting to make excuses for himself and was covering his own ass instead of taking a "the buck stops with me" approach like he had for many years.

There's no way a reasonable person can look at where the team was when Bill got fired and think he deserved to stay on for any reason besides blind nostalgia.

Hindsight is 20/20

 

[Boomer B]

You can continue to put your head in the sand, there were plenty of credible reporters with sources on the team that were saying members of Bill's coaching staff thought they could win with any middle of the pack QB. That was around 2017.

I believe that was in the lengthy ESPN article and many believe (not confirmed) it came from Joe Judge.

Imagine being that full of yourself and seeing Brady’s excellence on a daily basis to think that they could replicate what he did with a middle of the pack QB. By that point a lot of Bill’s sycophantic coaches had their heads firmly up their own asses and enjoyed it.

 

[signbabybrady]

You can look back at my posts when Brady left and I defended Belichick and said that it was a good time for both to leave and that Bill needed to rebuild and it was better for Brady to go off somewhere he could win and for Bill to be free to start a rebuild without being stuck trying to sell out to win with Brady when the team didn't have it anymore.

I was proven wrong because Bill proved he was not the man to do that and that many of the problems that occurred around the time Brady left continued and it was all on him.

And you decided all of this based on just Mac Jones. I think he earned more.

 

[lancerman]

Hindsight is 20/20

Well unfortunately sometimes you don't get a chance to un ring a bell and have to live with what happens next. Bill rang the Brady bell because he cared more about flexibility and he had to prove it was the right move.

Let's be real, it was better that this all played out the way it did. There's a reality where Brady doesn't turn it around in 2014 and Belichick has every excuse he wants to go to Jimmy G, then we only have 3 SB's and spend the better part of the last decade suffering through a chronically injured QB who chokes in big moments and then go through the **** we dealt with at the end.

 

[signbabybrady]

Sorry, but you are all over the map here. We had Brady, we pissed him off by going year to year when all he wanted was the deal Bree’s got: 2 years $50m. Don’t know what you’re trying get at with your Mahomes comment.

He didn't just want that. He wanted to play until he was 45 and he wanted that after 2016. What your calling year to year was Bill holding him to a contract that ran through age 42. Bill's leverage never actually got to year to year because Kraft gave away the tag.

My Mahomes point is that it would have been nice to be able to pull off what Tampa did instead of drafting a rookie but Mahomes wasn't available.

 

[lancerman]

And you decided all of this based on just Mac Jones. I think he earned more.

I decided it based off every issue with the team. Mac Jones was far from the only problem the team had despite people wanting to pretend it was. Belichick had the opportunity to start Cam, Stidham, Mac, and Zappe over those 4 years. And even Maye proved that the team Bill built would let down a QB aside from Mac Jones. The offensive line and receivers we had last year didn't just materialize in one off season. That was what Bill put out there and what we had to build on, and it almost got our new investment killed.

 

[lancerman]

He didn't just want that. He wanted to play until he was 45 and what your calling year to year was Bill's leverage it never actually got to year to year because Kraft gave away the tag.

My Mahomes point is that it would have been nice to be able to pull off what Tampa did instead of drafting a rookie but Mahomes wasn't available.

We didn't have to pull off what Tampa did because we already had the guy Tampa got. We lost him because Bill pissed him off and then in the two extra seasons he got with him couldn't fix the relationship and play nice enough. This whole thing could have been resolved with one phone call with Bill saying "Tom I appreciate everything you did, you want to play until you're 45, I'll give you a contract that keeps you here until you are 45, I trust you to do the right thing if your body starts to betray you and you aren't helping the team".

But then we would have to go back to the reality that we weren't winning a SB even with Brady in 2020-2022 because our GM built a piece of crap team that was declining every year.

 

[signbabybrady]

Well unfortunately sometimes you don't get a chance to un ring a bell and have to live with what happens next.

And because you guys are butt hurt the Brady bell rang you're holding it against me because I didn't think it was time to ring Bill's bell.

Same point I've making all year we can't unring this bell either. And we got stuck with Mayo because of it and who knows how long the cycle could last.

We do know that Brady was the one who chose to leave nothing Bill could do at the time but Kraft and you Bill haters didn't have to walk away from Bill. You chose to put your grudges ahead of what's best for the team. And that certainly wasn't Mayo.

 

[signbabybrady]

We didn't have to pull off what Tampa did because we already had the guy Tampa got. We lost him because Bill pissed him off and then in the two extra seasons he got with him couldn't fix the relationship and play nice enough. This whole thing could have been resolved with one phone call with Bill saying "Tom I appreciate everything you did, you want to play until you're 45, I'll give you a contract that keeps you here until you are 45, I trust you to do the right thing if your body starts to betray you and you aren't helping the team".

But then we would have to go back to the reality that we weren't winning a SB even with Brady in 2020-2022 because our GM built a piece of crap team that was declining every year.

Bill should have given him the contract until 45 Ive never said otherwise. Just because he didn't doesn't mean we should have tossed him aside for Mayo instead.

 

[lancerman]

And because you guys are butt hurt the Brady bell rang you're holding it against me because I didn't think it was time to ring Bill's bell.

Same point I've making all year we can't unring this bell either. And we got stuck with Mayo because of it and who knows how long the cycle could last.

We do know that Brady was the one who chose to leave nothing Bill could do at the time but Kraft and you Bill haters didn't have to walk away from Bill. You chose to put your grudges ahead of what's best for the team. And that certainly wasn't Mayo.

Here's the issue. There was no indication Belichick was capable of changing the trajectory he was on for the last 5 years.

Let's say he got Maye, which is NOT a given, why should anyone believe a guy who hasn't had a good draft since 2014 AT BEST was going to fix the offensive line that almost got Maye killed this year OR was going to get better WR's when he had sucked at that for years.

So he gets a 5th year, we likely get another bad result, you're going to say "oh well he deserves a 6th year".

We knew the team needed something different from what we've been dealing with for years.

We saw what he was capable of at this point his coaching career. The answer was not to let him run wild and do more damage than he already had.

 

[lancerman]

Bill should have given him the contract until 45 Ive never said otherwise. Just because he didn't doesn't mean we should have tossed him aside for Mayo instead.

We didn't toss him aside. We gave him 4 seasons. If Belichick even had a .500 season in 2023 he probably would have been given the benefit of the doubt.

But it was getting worse each year.

 

[stinkypete]

That is a RLKAG if I ever saw one.

 

[signbabybrady]

Here's the issue. There was no indication Belichick was capable of changing the trajectory he was on for the last 5 years.

Let's say he got Maye, which is NOT a given, why should anyone believe a guy who hasn't had a good draft since 2014 AT BEST was going to fix the offensive line that almost got Maye killed this year OR was going to get better WR's when he had sucked at that for years.

So he gets a 5th year, we likely get another bad result, you're going to say "oh well he deserves a 6th year".

We knew the team needed something different from what we've been dealing with for years.

We saw what he was capable of at this point his coaching career. The answer was not to let him run wild and do more damage than he already had.

I think 2 more years with another QB choice was a way better choice than Mayo. And time will tell how other options do.

 

[signbabybrady]

We didn't toss him aside. We gave him 4 seasons. If Belichick even had a .500 season in 2023 he probably would have been given the benefit of the doubt.

But it was getting worse each year.

It wasn't getting worse each year.

Things were actually looking good after 21 and he lost a bunch of his top coaches and front office guys and then he was given just 2 years. That's all 6 SBs get you 2 years after making the playoffs is it.

 

[Boomer B]

I think 2 more years with another QB choice was a way better choice than Mayo. And time will tell how other options do.

Mayo wasn’t ready and isn’t a good coach, we all know that, but the fact Mayo ended up sucking doesn’t make keeping Bill the right call. Bill’s time was up and Mayo sucked. Both of these are true. The mistake was securing Mayo to the head coach in waiting contract a few years earlier.

 

[signbabybrady]

Mayo wasn’t ready and isn’t a good coach, we all know that, but the fact Mayo ended up sucking doesn’t make keeping Bill the right call. Bill’s time was up and Mayo sucked. Both of these are true. The mistake was securing Mayo to the head coach in waiting contract a few years earlier.

You guys can keep telling yourself that giving BB a chance with another QB instead of entering the coaching carousel wasn't the right move even though we've already fired another head coach. It's probably easier for you to double down than to admit you're wrong. Probably even a little embarrassed to have wanted Mayo (or whatever other random coach you want to insert) over Bill.

 

[lancerman]

You guys can keep telling yourself that giving BB a chance with another QB instead of entering the coaching carousel wasn't the right move even though we've already fired another head coach. It's probably easier for you to double down than to admit you're wrong. Probably even a little embarrassed to have wanted Mayo (or whatever other random coach you want to insert) over Bill.

Belichick's team was getting worse for 5 years since the last SB aside from one uptick in 21. His drafting was horrible and had been for almost a decade by that point. The team the last couple of years were the most undisciplined team the Pats have put out on the field since before the Parcells years.

You want to double down on that over just moving on from a 70 year old who had been in decline for a while and can't get another job in the NFL or even at a premier college team

 

[signbabybrady]

Belichick's team was getting worse for 5 years since the last SB aside from one uptick in 21. His drafting was horrible and had been for almost a decade by that point. The team the last couple of years were the most undisciplined team the Pats have put out on the field since before the Parcells years.

You want to double down on that over just moving on from a 70 year old who had been in decline for a while and can't get another job in the NFL or even at a premier college team

You can rehash all you want the answer is still yes I wish we let the guy who won us 6X SB championships pick one more QB and see if he could get it right over handing it over to Coach X. We're lucky a coach like Vrabel who played here and had an affinity for here was available or we'd probably have a worse option than Mayo was.

 

[lancerman]

You can rehash all you want the answer is still yes I wish we let the guy who won us 6X SB championships pick one more QB and see if he could get it right over handing it over to Coach X. We're lucky a coach like Vrabel who played here and had an affinity for here was available or we'd probably have a worse option than Mayo was.

And my point is I don't think any amount of time would have been respectful enough. If it was 5 years, you'd say say he deserved more than one year with Maye. If it was 6 years, it would be "he took the earliest QB's he could, it's not his fault they didn't pan out, you have to see what he can do with someone who can play".

There is zero evidence that there was a single player on the team that he didn't 100% approve and green light and you still hid behind "he should have never been forced to collaborate" as cover for his failure as a GM, despite his drafts being awful for years before that point.

Then there would be some point where he's in his mid to late 70's and we wasted years giving him every possible chance when he spent a career not doing that for any player he had. The guy was failing for a long time, showed no ability to turn the corner after being given years to do so, and he was at an age where every coach you could compare him to had either already been retired or was a year away from retiring.