Tampa with Brady and Patriots with Jones are comparing apples and oranges. One team is elite and still a Super Bowl contender, the other one is rebuilding and at least 2 seasons away from being ready to compete in the AFC.
Unless the question is would you rather have Brady or Jones on the Patriots for 2022? Then that's easy. Brady. Bill can work around the deficiencies on defense with Brady on the team. With a young QB still figuring things out it's way harder as we all saw.
Right, if you get to ignore the salary cap...
Brady costs $18M against the cap in 2022 and has two voidable years 2022-3 pretty much guaranteeing a $25M cap hit in 2023 even if he is not playing for Tampa. He can do to Tampa what he did to us, leave for greener pastures, or just retire, but either way Tampa is stuck with the big bang on the salary cap.
Mac costs $3.5M against the cap in 2022, then $4.2M in 2023 and $5.0M in 2024.
The difference in salary cap means you can have Mac
plus an elite class FA signing for the next three years, vs one year of Tom then salary cap hell the year after, or maybe 2-3 middle class players, all depends on how you structure the deals.
If no salary cap you take TB12, he's the ****ing GOAT! But that ignores the fact that one big reason he isn't here still is the salary cap.