So Covid caused Bill to offer Brady a crappy contract that would trigger $13.5 mill in dead money? Covid caused him to pay a guard $15 mill when we had no cap space? Covid caused him to pay Antonio Brown $9 mill for one game?
He has been bungling roster management for the last few years and now everyone wants to say "Well Covid made it hard to have camp and practice!". Obviously that is the case but even more so is a lack of talent. Bill knew Covid would create issues with practices and game plans and he had a QB who could run the offense with his eyes closed and he shoved him out the door. His drafting and personnel moves have brought us here. We could have kept the run alive if he hadn't treated the second round of the draft like an extension of the practice squad and trades for guys who fizzled out badly. The AB's, Sanu's, Eric Rowe's Joejuan Williams's, and Duke Dawson's of the world were going to catch up with us sooner or later and surprise surprise, the season the greatest QB of all time left us is when the sand ran out of the hourglass.
This whole "So [strawman argument nobody said]..." tactic is as irrelevant as it is annoying.
Do you want me to say "So there is no coronavirus"? Same tactic. Don't be an idiot.
Teams were hit to different extents in different ways, like the usual "injury bug" on steroids. It did affect this season's outcomes.
Your logical error is believing that everybody's arguing your pet theorem of "Bill Belichick bungled roster management and the cap for the last few years. Discuss." That ain't the topic for me. I will say it strikes me as extremely unlikely that you'll finally pay the piper on what remains of a franchise QB, after a run that includes 9 SB appearances and 6 SB wins in 19 years, and not have an issue or two regarding cap space.
If you really want to have that spat with someone, I'd suggest yourself, the only one picking that fight -- but I'm gonna humor you, champ, and pretend that what you care about matters.
Factor in the pro with the con, and factor in the results. (1) If this is the cratering year and we end up in the vicinity of .500, not bad, (2) factor in his "cheapness" with Brady versus bank-breaking contracts. I'm not arguing that BB really was super-cheap with Brady, but he extracted several contracts with "hometown discounts" as compared with his peers at the top of the league. I think that finally got to Brady along with everything else. Not so much that he thinks he'll have to borrow lunch money, just the signifier of being taken advantage of. Fine. What did BB
get by being this terrible human being who lost TFB? What's been the cap
savings over the years, if you want to complain about how badly he's managed the cap?
Would I want Brady gone sayyyyyy before 2018? In retrospect, hell no. Was he winning another ring here? Maybe/Forever unknown. What other weapons would he have? We might be in the hunt, but what I see is a guy catching fire at the right time, with a superstar receiving corps in Tampa, but he himself is not a dominant QB anymore. So - what did we
save through BB's trademark grumpy cat attitude about overpaying? Because what TFB can win with Tampa's weapons =/= what he could win with NE's.
That's just one devil's advocate position on the cap, and I'm sure (half of) our local capologists -- the ones that disagree with you, of course -- can think of many more. And no, I'm not super-invested in taking the "con" point of view against your position of "Wahhhhhh you must be saying the opposite of my belief about BB being terrible at everything having to do with the roster." This is a really good year to get your yayas out regarding BB critiques, particularly from the "BB the GM vs BB the head coach" contingent. Usually it's about as cogent as the game day crits of "the playcalling" being "terrible." Whatever you did was terrible -- you should have done the opposite. Yeah sure, and Marshawn Lynch woulda shoulda coulda run it in from the 1. You're always right in counterfactual land.
So yeah, have the opinion you want about how terrible BB is, be Captain Hindsight and make sure you do it selectively, and feel free to froth about it all you want... but try to do it without putting words in everybody else's mouth.
You've pretty much stated the obvious that some bills came due this year. Eu-fckn-reka. You've discovered the key to the universe. But if this is the big collapse of western civilization, after a 19 year run of dominance, you have nothing to complain about. Looks like about the best job you could hope for. Of course, if this is the beginning of something worse, your point is stronger.
So you root for that, champ.