Unfortunately, Team Tom has a lot more ammo than Team Bill. Maybe all Pats fans would be better off if they both had similar careers apart but they didn't.
I've never been a coaches guy. What that means is that if you give me a choice of the GOAT QB or the GOAT HC, I'm taking the QB every time.
As for Belichick needing more than a year, he had that already and it doesn't help his case. But it does help mine. I know from seeing Bill coach that he's the GOAT HC, but he hasn't done anywhere near as well without Brady, the GOAT QB.
I think it's dumb to be on either "team." I still found myself rooting for the Cowboys to beat Tom when he didn't have the ball, and smugly satisfied when Tom beat the Cowboys, "Adam n Leave" style, when the Patriots had the ball.*
*omg. I meant Bucs.
I think the reason we love him (other than the fact that he started here) is it's just never over while a Tom-Brady-led team is still on the field. He won't LET it be over. There were guys, a precious few, who were more accurate. There are many who average bigger numbers of yards and TDs - a handful every year. What Tom is is the phrase, "All he does is win."
That's something that everybody has sometimes, but only one guy has it at that level every time. So you can try to coach it into people, you can try to find that guy with that elusive assumption of victory
combined with awareness of what it takes, every moment, to get there.... and so on and so forth... but you'll find pretty quickly that you're just looking for Bradyness.
For 20 years, Bradyness combined with Belichikness has been Patriotness, so we associate times of Bradyness with Patriotness and some of us get confused, believing we let the franchise go. We didn't. We let go a certain number of years of Brady. We have to assume that number to be finite, and in fact fairly small (sic).
I don't really have a dog in this fight. I like how Ken (and others) nailed the Is-what-it-is-ness of the dilemma. It was time for it to happen all the way around, for whatever reasons. I buy the "playing in your 40s while the team is broke sucks" explanation myself. Maybe with just a dash of ego - while they've both been good at tuning out the noise, for a competitor like Tom, it might be a nagging question: can you only do it with this Belichick character? But the main thing is, you had to pay Tom a non-insulting amount, and any additional amount would come out of your maneuvering room to give him weapons.
By the way, Bill did manage to have maneuvering room exactly when an insane downturn hit the NFL in the form of 2020 revenues, and had money to spend
exactly when the cap went
down 8% for the 2021 year, making each available cap dollar that much more significant. Screw the Wuhan virology lab, they're going to find a lab in the bowels of Gillette where that pony-tail guy from 12 Monkeys
really worked and you mark my words, we'll lose two more first round picks because of it.
But I digress.
To the main point, media will look for drama. It is what we buy. What is the obstacle to the dreams of the protagonist? Or better yet,
who? That's why you get "Brady vs. Prescott" takes. They never face each other, but to the average fan it might as well be Rocky vs. Ivan Drago. All the little side stories have that dramatic flavor too... because the real drama is boring usually to the average fan. Don't give them a tough 7-yard run as the signature play of a drive, they want a quick perfect strike downfield. Most plays, especially by those standards, nothing much happens, and there's an eternity between them. To me, the game is
exciting when the lead is getting traded back and forth or when it's really close, and you are pulling for a
team to succeed. By that standard, the team is the protagonist, not a coach or a QB.
But I think we've gotten a lot of fans over 20 years who don't understand that basic idea of football enjoyment... they get stuck at the storyline level, Brady vs. Manning, Brady vs. Brees, Brady vs. Belichick. The 60 minutes of broken-up, imperfect drama of competition is just too short-lived and imperfect for their tastes. I'm not saying
all of any camp... I'm just saying they're going to be out there with a superstar "winning" personality on the field.
I mean, I do it too, to an extent. I am thrilled to tell Peyton Manning jokes, etc. But when you create nontroversies about whether a coach is better than a QB, come on man. (But if we're going to pretend that's a real question, the real answer isn't "I don't pay to see a coach coach." That's just the answer to why you like watching.)
Apples and oranges, and who gives a damn which is more important if you can get them into the bowl together.
