‘The Last Dance’ Jerry Krause = BB the GM?

Doctor DDS · Jun 17, 2020

The 2008 defense was 8th in points allowed and top 10 in yards. They were far from horrible and had the 5th best point differential in the league. Not sure where the "defense was horrible"is coming from. If Brady was the QB they would probably have been top 5 on defense as the offense would have been substantially better and controlled the clock and shifted field position beyond scoring substantially more points.

sb1 · Jun 17, 2020

lancerman said:
Yes I did. It’s foolish to think Brady who played much better wouldn’t be a big enough difference maker.

He came back in 09 and finished one game worse than Cassel did so...

sb1 · Jun 17, 2020

Doctor DDS said:
The 2008 defense was 8th in points allowed and top 10 in yards. They were far from horrible and had the 5th best point differential in the league. Not sure where the "defense was horrible"is coming from. If Brady was the QB they would probably have been top 5 on defense as the offense would have been substantially better and controlled the clock and shifted field position beyond scoring substantially more points.

That’s because they played a schedule just as easy as the first half of this past season.

Against AFC playoff teams:
L 38-13 (Miami)
L 30-10 (Chargers)
L 18-15 (Colts)
W 48-28 (Miami) - certainly not a banner game for the defense either
L 33-10 (Pit)

Also lost 34-31 to Jets and allowed 26 points to the Raiders (ranked 29th in scoring) and 21 to the Seahawks (ranked 25th in scoring).

Yeah the defense was kinda lousy that year and it’s hard to argue against that. Cassel was pretty good and getting better as the season went on. Quite a difference from preseason. And got them to 11 wins? That’s coaching for ya. Seems to me the only difference between us in 08 and the Colts in 11 was Belichick.

If Brady was here in 08 I can’t see any clear cut extra wins. Maybe they beat the Colts as that one was on a Cassel pick in Indy territory. Maybe they also don’t beat the Dolphins the second time in Miami. Cassel has thrown back to back 400 yard games something Brady hadn’t even done up to that point. Who knows.

lancerman · Jun 17, 2020

sb1 said:
He came back in 09 and finished one game worse than Cassel did so...

Team was slot different and he was still struggling from his injury. Schedule also wasn’t as historically weak in 2009. There was one winning team in the 8 games we played on the divisions we were paired with and that team was 9-7. Brady easily improves that record. The Steelers defense and maybe the Colts are the only real question marks

Doctor DDS · Jun 18, 2020

So the Pats were the only team to have an easy schedule in 2008? No one is saying that the defense was great but they were certainly not lousy. The team went 11-5 and smoked the Cardinals 47-7 week 15 then shut out the Bills 13-0 to finish the year. They finished the year winning their last 4 games 133- 54 and would have been a tough out in the playoffs if they got in. Offense and defense were both weak by Patriots standards but not by league standards. That team wins the division and gets a bye if Brady plays the full year.

1960Pats · Jun 18, 2020

DropKickFlutie said:
Terrible post I wish could downvote the OP 100 times. There are zero similarities between Jerry Krause and Bill Belichick. Belichick is 0.750 on the Pats without Brady. I love Tom but Belichick is the best coach/GM combo in the league by far the last 20 years.

Bill is the GOAT, but I think his record on the Pats without Brady is 19-19 (5-13 with Drew, 11-5 with Cassell and 3-1 in the stolen Brady games from 2016).

1960Pats · Jun 18, 2020

Doctor DDS said:
So the Pats were the only team to have an easy schedule in 2008? No one is saying that the defense was great but they were certainly not lousy. The team went 11-5 and smoked the Cardinals 47-7 week 15 then shut out the Bills 13-0 to finish the year. They finished the year winning their last 4 games 133- 54 and would have been a tough out in the playoffs if they got in. Offense and defense were both weak by Patriots standards but not by league standards. That team wins the division and gets a bye if Brady plays the full year.

That was the end of the great defense that carried the Pats to their first three titles. It was too bad that by the time Brady was back at full strength, after his lost season, that defense was done.

sb1 · Jun 18, 2020

Doctor DDS said:
So the Pats were the only team to have an easy schedule in 2008? No one is saying that the defense was great but they were certainly not lousy. The team went 11-5 and smoked the Cardinals 47-7 week 15 then shut out the Bills 13-0 to finish the year. They finished the year winning their last 4 games 133- 54 and would have been a tough out in the playoffs if they got in. Offense and defense were both weak by Patriots standards but not by league standards. That team wins the division and gets a bye if Brady plays the full year.

Yup they were playing their best football in December and starting to peak and I agree it would have been interesting to see how far they went. With Cassel at QB and a sub par defense (yes it was). Looks like the coach gets credit for that.

Huh. Guess he didn’t need #Tommy to be a good coach after all.

sb1 · Jun 18, 2020

lancerman said:
Team was slot different and he was still struggling from his injury. Schedule also wasn’t as historically weak in 2009. There was one winning team in the 8 games we played on the divisions we were paired with and that team was 9-7. Brady easily improves that record. The Steelers defense and maybe the Colts are the only real question marks

I look at that schedule and I don’t see one game that I can definitely say yup they win that one with Brady. Not one. I see a couple of games they could have won with better QB play but also I see games they could have lost with worse.

DropKickFlutie · Jun 18, 2020

1960Pats said:
Bill is the GOAT, but I think his record on the Pats without Brady is 19-19 (5-13 with Drew, 11-5 with Cassell and 3-1 in the stolen Brady games from 2016).

OK but all this stuff to try to subtly diss Belichick is just so silly. Red Auerbach's record wasn't amazing without Bill Russell either. Bill Walsh's 49ers weren't that good with Montana.

Biffins · Jun 18, 2020

fnordcircle said:
Bill Belichick is so stupid.

Krause and BB are both HoF calibre GMs. Just saying someone made a mistake doesn't mean I am calling him stupid. BB is capable of erring as well.

Biffins · Jun 18, 2020

DropKickFlutie said:
Terrible post I wish could downvote the OP 100 times. There are zero similarities between Jerry Krause and Bill Belichick. Belichick is 0.750 on the Pats without Brady. I love Tom but Belichick is the best coach/GM combo in the league by far the last 20 years.

"BB is 0.750 on the Pats without Brady".

Very small sample set. A more accurate sample set would be BB as HC without Brady. See the following quote and link it's taken from. 0.46!! Not even breakeven.

We'll soon have a larger sample set of BB as Pats HC without Brady too and let's see how next few years ago. I am afraid it will fail to be anywhere close to the lofty years with Brady as QB.

"In fact, if you add it all up, Belichick is 54-63 (0.46 winning percentage) in regular-season games where he has not had Brady as his starting quarterback. By contrast, Belichick is 219-64 (0.77 winning percentage) with Brady under center"

Bill Belichick Is Playing a Dangerous Game With His Legacy.

Biffins · Jun 18, 2020

Doctor DDS said:
Krause had the great fortune of becoming a GM with Jordan already in the fold. Having the best player in the NBA almost always leads to titles contrasted with the NFL there is the "MVP curse" That said, Krause absolutely blew it by not trying for one more title. Jordan was only 35 years old and arguably the best player in the league, the Eastern conference was incredibly weak and with no dominant team in the West and a shortened season the Bulls probably had a 50% chance of winning it all. Figuring out how to bring Pippen back would have been the big challenge.

The Pats situation is much different. Brady will be 43 when the season starts and even if he returned the Pats would have been no better than 3rd choice in the AFC behind the Chiefs and Ravens. The Pats cap situation also needed to be dealt with. Now they could have moved some money around and postponed the cap problem into the future and they would likely be in a better position this year but a title would still be unlikely and they would be worse off moving forward.

I wanted Brady back and for them to try for one more but the move was nothing like what Krause did.

Jordan had just won the '97 Championship
Brady is one year removed from winning the '18 SB.

Yes the situation is different, but it's different by 1 year. It would be the same if BB had tried to break-up the Pats last year and IN FACT he played hardball with Brady, refused to extend him, gave him a last minute crappy 1 year deal, and effectively told him to F off after 1 year which Brady did.

Biffins · Jun 18, 2020

farn said:
Thought vilifying Krause was the worst part of the series. It’s immature, rewriting history, and taking every awkward word and facial expression of his career to make him be the bad guy in absentia. Classless and baseless.

Krause if a HoF GM who mad et tough calls, yet rebuilt around two alltime greats TWICE.

Jordan & Pippen were exceptional players, but also a-holes and babies. The latter whines about how he’s portrayed, yet as a 50 something he offers that he’d “do the same thing” (walk out of a playoff game). Jordan didn’t NEED to be a huge massive you-know-what. Russell didn’t. Brady didn’t. It’s his huge ego and personality.

The portrayal of Krause was BS. Having said that, BB is just one level ahead - even as a GM. The entire BB crybaby bad GM crowd around here has no idea what they are talking about. BB is a HoF GM even w/o coaching a down.

I agree Krause is a HoF GM. And so is BB.

We can recognize the greatness of a career and still scrutinise individual mistakes.

Brady can be the greatest football player in history and can still throw a lame duck pass that gets picked off.

Biffins · Jun 18, 2020

captain stone said:
Yeah that percentage is going down - way down - after this season.

I am afraid so as well.

Biffins · Jun 18, 2020

farn said:
I don’t think the Bulls % would have come close to what it had been - if that team had been kept together.

We'll never know what they could have done if they had stayed together. We do know what Krause tried to do with the rebuild did fail. We also know that Jackson was a great coach who went on to have future success. We also know that Jordan was willing to play longer for Jackson. We also know that many great basketball players can play well into late 30s and Jordan was 35. While we don't know the counterfactual completely, and yes it's possible they dropped off from the performance of their 2nd 3-peat, on balance it's not hard to speculate that the Bulls would have been better off having kept the original group together for a year or two more.

Biffins · Jun 18, 2020

Tottie said:
I can sort of see the point the OP is trying to make but I have to agree with a poster above in thinking it would line up a bit better if Brady was traded instead of Jimmy, maybe even a year earlier, and we never won another superbowl. Even so I think it's pushing it though, BB is just too good overall.

Again, it's about the counterfactual. It's hard to imagine that if we had kept JG that we'd have won 2 of the next 3 SBs, and gone to all 3, which is what we did by keeping Brady. So in hingsight we know for a fact that BB's instinct to trade Brady was wrong even know we couldn't have known that at that time.

Same situation now, we don't know for sure if this is the right decision. If Stidham has awesome success then clearly I am wrong. If Stidham completely fails and is bust, and Brady/Gronk start dominating, it would not be hard to speculate that keeping Brady/Gronk with this world class defense might have given us better results. And the truth might be inbetween and not clear cut. We'll only know in hindsight. Obviously BB is doing what he thinks is best for the team. But he was wrong before (as stated above) when his instinct was to trade Brady and keep JG. So he's not infallible.

Biffins · Jun 18, 2020

farn said:
« Grossly underpaid ». There are two parts to that. Yes, other players in the league were earning more $. Yes, Pippen was most likely top 5 in the league.

But, Pippen had accepted long-term financial security instead of rolling the dice and betting on himself. I don’t invest money on risky stocks. I don’t spend my life savings on risky ventures. I like being cautious and living well, while knowing I’ll never be wealthy. I don’t cry about being underpaid, because I’m choosing security over the bet of getting richer... Pippen got security. No one forced him to sign a long term.

Yeah agreed. Reminds me of Gronk a bit. He signed a 8 year contract with escalators and was happy to have security with his back issues and health concerns. Then he had monster years and started whining how he's underpaid despite being highest paid in the League in his position and had to be given top-ups.

Biffins · Jun 18, 2020

sb1 said:
11-5 with Cassel and a subpar defense. 3-1 with JG and Brissett.

yeah I’ll take my chances with the greatest coach in the history of the sport.

Small sample set for HC of Pats without Brady

For HC without Brady (including Browns) BB is 0.46.

Biffins · Jun 18, 2020

vuudu said:
Hot garbage. If you want to take a shot at the man, come directly at him and stop with this Krause weak source. Krause can't light BB's cigar.

You're right. I've never "come at the man" before. I haven't yet defended Brady and criticised BB in any post ever before. I am only using this Krause example and not coming at BB directly.................... oh wait.............

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