Like Brady's a puppet?... LOL! What you're saying IS totally ridiculous. Brady negotiated with New England for years with Brady coming out on the short end of the stick. Brady's demise was being talked up as early as 2014 (before Brady won 3 more SB MVPs). Brady openly pleaded with the press to question the Krafts about his contract during the final negotiation. After they offered him one last underwhelming contract he agreed to the one year deal with the no franchise clause. All this is what "turned him against his team" and not the subsequent conversations with Miami. Your argument entirely collapses when you consider Brady did NOT sign with Miami, so obviously he wasn't invested in working with them at that time.
Makes no sense because it didn't happen that way. How much of that supposed money was guaranteed or tied to incentives? You don't have the details of that unconfirmed contract offer. We know what his final actual contracts were... incentive laden in 2018 with a supporting cast unworthy of the incentive targets and the one-year farewell deal in 2019.
The team overpaid Devin McCourty heading into the 2020 season with a two-year $23 mil contract. They also inexplicably franchised Joe Thuney at a whopping $15 mil. That's already a hefty chunk of what would have been needed to retain Brady. There are always several opportunities to shuffle cap money around. The hypotheticals become too many which is why the "dumbass approach" is easier. None of these scenarios are actually happening... it's just interesting to say plug player X into team Y and speculate on the outcome. They win the division in 2020 and 2021 with Brady. By they I mean nearly every team that didn't a division in 2020 or 2021 (Jets, Jaguars, Lions and Giants excluded... probably).
You have your facts wrong.
How was Brady “coming up on the short end”? He was one of the few highest paid players in the league willingly taking less to help build a team that went to 8 straight AFGCCG, 5 SBs in those 8 years, 4 in the last 5 winning 3 of them.
In 2016 Brady with one year left on his contract, agreed to a 2 year extension for 41 mill taking him through 2019. He was fine with that deal.
In 2019 the Patriots came back with the exact same scenario, this time adding 2 years and 53 million. Why suddenly is this unacceptable, and insulting? The patriots took the exact same approach but increased the amount from what they had done 2 years prior.
What changed? The Dolphins tampered. I don’t know what you mean by puppet but when it is proven that a division opponent was tampering and purportedly offering ownership and suddenly for the first time ever Brady makes comments like. “I’m jjust an employee” “I just want to be appreciated” and “I’m the most miserable 8-0 qb” and turns down the exact and contract he agreed to before clearly they got through to him.
Rather than taking an additional 2/53 extension Brady sign a 2 year extension that has void years, gets an extra 9 mill for the 2019 season and the team forfeits the right to franchise. This happened in August WHEN THE DOLPHINS WERE TAMPERING. Two things here. If the Patriots treated him so poorly why hand him an extra 9 mill for the year he is already under contract and give away rights they don’t have to? And what did Brady threaten to get them to do that and how much was that influenced by the tampering?
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So when you ask how did tampering affect the Patriots, well the tampering happened while they were trying to extend Brady and that ended up with them gifting Brady an extra 9 mill and giving away rights. That’s a big impact.
You ask how much was guaranteed who cares? The 2021 money being guaranteed would only matter if Brady were cut after 2020. That wasn’t happening. And guess what, if it did, he would make more money in the broadcast booth. Are you honestly saying Tom Brady left because he demanded 25 mill from the Patriots in 2021 in the event they no longer wanted him and no other team did either? Really? If I believe you, my opinion of him goes down because that’s just stupid.
If you lose McCourty and Thuney in addition to the other players lost then you are not improving upon the team that limped to the end of 2019. You void sign anyone by cutting a bunch of players. That doesn’t improve your team. So at least you admit keeping Brady would have required FURTHER SUBTRACTION from the 2019 unacceptable team.
Finally, you cannot spend 50 million on Brady in hindsight and say you are just plugging him into the same team that it took that 50 million to build.
At least we agree ignoring that is a dumbass approach. And there are zero opportunities to “shuffle 50 mill around”.