Re: Felger:A Perfect Pairing.
Which 2-3 games would we have won with Brady that we lost with Cassel?
Not the Chargers of the Dolphins, those were defensive nightmares, so I guess you mean the Jets, Colts and Steelers?
I went into a mini-rant about this a while ago, so I won't replicate it, but the truth of the matter is that no one can possibly predict how this season would have progressed if Brady were healthy.
A Brady-led team may well have won every game on the schedule this year. The gameplans, the play selection, everything is different if Brady is the starting QB. If the Patriots get up 14-0/21-0 on the Dolphins, are they able to break out the Wildcat? Similar examples can be applied to the other losses.
But on the flip side, perhaps Brady loses those games and 5 more. What if the Patriots attack the Jets in Week 2 heavily through the air, but Revis picks off 2, taking 1 to the house? What if Brady can't make a throw up in Seattle to pull that one out? What if, what if...?
In the aftermath of the Week 17 debacle, when everyone was commiserating about which single plays cost the Patriots a loss here or there, I argued that you can't play that game, because any little change to one play can make monumental changes to the entire season, to history, even. The example I used was how the manner in which the ref flipped the coin in Week 1 cost Brady his season.
You know who else I blame for Brady's missed 2008 season? Asante Samuel. If he holds on to that INT in the Game Which Shall NOT Be Named, the Patriots get the Thursday night opener in Week 1 of 2008, which is likely NOT against the Chiefs, and even if it is, it's at a completely different time, under completely different circumstances. Chances are very high that Bernard Pollard doesn't get near Brady's knee, and he stays healthy all year. Or maybe someone ELSE from a different team... maybe Dwight Freeney, or Joey Porter, goes at Brady and does even MORE damage to his knee... ending his career, perhaps. Who knows, perhaps Brady being injured in the manner he was helped save his career... no one really knows.
I think we'd all agree that a healthy Brady would give the Pats a better chance at winning than Matt Cassel, and that BB/Pioli give the Patriots a better chance at winning than BB/whomever, but there's no real way of knowing that... not now, and not even after the fact.
But the one thing that remains is Felger is a douche, lol, and I didn't even read this column... I don't think ANY chain of events could change that...