In the first 4 years (5 or more back in the early 2000's) of a QB's career, they're a cost controlled item. Even high draft picks are relatively (NFL) cheap. In that time you can surround said QB with a lot of talent, spend a lot of money on other positions, lock cornerstone players into longterm contracts. These QB's are a blank slate, so you can give them any (young/inexperienced) weapon and they will work with them because they don't know any better. You can field a better offense, defense and special teams because the single largest expenditure on any given team is usually the QB. Patrick Mahomes was the best QB in the NFL in 2018 and won league MVP, the Chiefs paid him 1.2 million dollars.
Look at the Chiefs and Ravens now in full bloom, then look what happened to Seattle once they had to pay Russell Wilson... the "Legion Of Boom" dissipated faster than bacon wrapped scallops on the buffet table. Seattle went through down year and to his credit Carroll rebounded nicely. But it's easy to field a great team when you're paying a QB a rookie wage. Once they've proved themselves and garnered a massive contract, you'd better have your core players already paid or on long term deals that paid them a large sum upfront for the long haul. This isn't the old days where the "Monsters Of The Midway" or "The Steel Curtain" were locked into team friendly deals, this is the era of modern free agency where players have the ability to go out and get what they're worth. Chuck Noll never had to deal with the salary cap.
When BB says they "sold out to win the last five years" you need to look at the results, look at the wild success the first five years, look at the wild success the last five years. The middle of Brady's carer just so happens to be when he received the largest contracts of his Patriot's career. And the teams back then were good, but had little room for error or injury. They let Richard Seymour walk and paid Ty Warren a really good contract, not Seymour big but near top dollar, a year later he suffered a career ending hip injury and for the next three years we had to watch Vince Wilfork play next to Kyle Love instead of another blue chip DT.
The last five years they've had some of the best O-Lines, Defense and Special Teams units in the NFL, some of the deepest teams in the league, and each year the money slowly drained away, the cap debt slowly accumulated and they borrowed from the future to make sure they were deep enough to incur injury, sign free agents mid-season, to give themselves the best chance to win.
BB is not making excuses. The guy has an economics degree from Wesleyan and his boss is a billionaire who saved the NFL during the labor dispute... they know what the f**k they're talking about. The majority of NFL teams model themselves after the Patriots Way and have emulated their business model for the last decade or more. This isn't John Madden football with the salary cap and trade restrictions turned off, this is real life with real NFL salary cap rules in place.
BB is not making excuses, he's telling you the truth. Some posters here (myself included) pointed this out when they decided to move on from Brady and hit reset. It was a big picture, longterm view in the best interest of the franchise going forward. Media members have been waiting years, decades in some cases to spell the Patriots doom, opposing fans around the league are celebrating the demise of the team that stomped them out and made the NFL seem unfair for two decades.
Ignore the noise, ignore the media hate, learn to enjoy the process once again. Try to remember what it felt like back in the early 90's when Parcells arrived and there was hope on the horizon, when you took satisfaction in watching the growth of young players.
BB isn't making excuses, some of you can't see the big picture or are buying the media hype... some of us saw this coming.
"We've already spoken at length about Stidham, a lot is riding on if he can do the job and how well. They're probably a year away from competing for a ring even if Stidham is "good" to "great," and the schedule is a grind. I'd say the same thing if Brady were starting. The talent is there to compete, the young talent probably isn't ready or experienced enough to compete. Enjoy the process." - Wozzy May 4, 2020
"I didn't expect them to win a ring before optouts, now they have to rely on rookies and second year players more than they did before. This is a reloading year." - Wozzy: Aug 12, 2020
