Bullsh1t.
Although I'll admit in '14 I was like "holy crap, maybe we're seeing it happen." I sure wasn't rooting for it to happen, and I was plenty happen that Brady came back stronger.
You'll notice that in the 07 offseason, f'rinstance, they got Moss, Welker, and Stallworth, having whiffed on Jackson and Maroney (although at that point the jury was still out,) and with a Brady in his prime, unwilling and unable to send him out there another year without the firepower to do what they needed to do the previous season. (The rules had also just been changed to favor airing the ball out, although the NFL* phrased it as a "point of emphasis.")
This offseason they did add offseason firepower but they have also made moves (some during last season, some this offseason) to shore up the defense and (apparently) to have more options to pick from in the running game.
I don't think that means "Brady is out the door and soon," I think that means that BB et al. are managing risk. Of course one natural response is that "Yeah, that's why they kept JG, because you don't want to have a Cassel situation in 2017 without someone to play the Cassel role."
Either way they have a choice to make after 17, or after 18 if they want to spend double-digit millions of cap dollars to put the decision off a year. Whoever Kellerman is, if "age is a number" and Brady just gets better this year, I dunno WHO has the balls to show him the door.
OTOH if they're looking at him the way we'd look like a stock, can you think of a better example of buying low and selling high?
The alternative narrative -- that he's the GOAT so he always starts forever and ever until he dies of heart surgery complications at the age of 80 -- is the opposite. You'll end up getting nothing for him.
So don't name me as wanting him gone. Count me as wanting to trust professional risk managers to manage risk.
And stop being simpleminded and looking for an enemy. Risk is never simple. You don't know the future. Neither do I.
I have a friend who urged me to buy Apple stock when that first bowling-bag-sized MacIntosh came out. He turned out to be right. He drank all the Kool-Aid. He knew Steve Jobs dropped acid and Bill Gates didn't. He knew that Steve Jobs learned calligraphy. He told me all the stories of the Apple II and the garage. He bought a few shares of Apple and told me he was going to plow whatever he made into more shares of Apple. We were both in our 20s. Then we lost touch.
If he held on when Jobs was kicked out he still made a tidy little sum, but he's not super rich. If he held on through the Scully years, I am sure he's filthy rich.
On the other hand, if he decided he has a crystal ball, fell in love with some Dot Com entrepreneur in the 90s, and loaded up on Enron or something, not so much.
People who brag about their smart stock choices aren't usually keeping a moving balance sheet and tracking against the moving average of a broad basket of stocks. They brag and brag, note that they just made 40K by taking a big risk on a stock that doubled, buy a sweet new ride, and disregard the other 40K of risk they have hanging out there (then dot-commiserate when a market or a stock tanks).
Just a more tangible example of how risk works. Of course nobody on the board has anything but emotional stock in Brady. And of all the emotional stockholders, I think that you've bought in up to the eyeballs.
Great bet, to start out with. We're lucky - we all got to buy low in 2001. If Brady were a stock, this would be the wrong time to re-invest. The quibbling is over a year or two or three here or there, not on whether the stock will tank.
I am all for him making it to 45 with 5 more SB rings in a Patriots uniform. And by the way in that Chiefs game season, you really think hearing/seeing "this might be the end for Brady" had no effect on him?
If you think a fan like me is lining up at that door ready to kick TFB through, well, that's bullsh1t. You're making up an imaginary me and sticking him into your cookie cutter of "brady hating" Pats fans. But if Brady responds to such opinions by proving them wrong... you want me at that door. You need me at that door.
