My main issue with the retrospective of 2001 and even 2002 and sometimes 2003 is people forget the impact of Brady. There is so much talk about how he wasn't a great QB early in his career. That he became great later and was carried early. To me this is misremembering history and a bunch of non-sense. He was raw early, sure. He wasn't as good as he was going to be. But in 2001 he was already one of the top 10 QBs in the NFL. And it didn't take long either.
The issue usually comes down to looking at his stats from 2001 and not finding them impressive enough. They were actually very good considering the era. People make this mistake because they compare him to Peyton Manning and the Rams offense, as those are the things they remember. Those things were huge outliers back in the early 2000s. Brady in his 14 regular season starts averaged 200 YPG. That isn't a lot, even for back then. But it isn't like that was bad. It puts him right about in the middle of the NFL. It looks even better if you take out his first two starts, when he was admittedly a little carried and figuring this out a bit. From that point on he averaged 247. Though this does keep in his biggest game of the year against SD. But you can't just ignore that game either. That puts him right in line with many of the most elite QBs at the time. Putting up anything above 240 that year was huge. Only 3 QBs managed to do that. And they all had STACKED offenses.
A lot of people also fondly remember the 2001 Patriots offense. This to me is just not reality. They didn't have anyone all that good. Yes, they had a lot of nice pieces, and Brown had a pretty damn good year and was a GREAT return man. But being a great return man doesn't make you a great WR. Devin Hester and Brian Mitchell are arguably the best return men of all time. And neither was a very good player outside of that role.
Who did they really have on offense that was a difference maker? Troy Brown? David Patten? Antowain Smith? Glenn? Let's not get silly. Glenn was barely on this team during Brady's run. He had that great game against SD, but was gone after that. So he wasn't on this team for much of Brady's tenure. Smith was a good RB, and he made some big runs. He also made a lot of runs that didn't go anywhere. He was a workhorse, but not a terribly efficient one. 4 YPC was his average that year. That isn't so great. It's not bad. But it's not great. We remember the big runs he broke, but not the ones that went nowhere. And who did this team have besides Patten and Brown to catch the ball? No one. No one else who was on this team besides them (after Glenn left) was that good. No one else even had 200 yards that year.
Faulk was still a bit in the doghouse, due to his fumbling issues the first two seasons. And wasn't used like he should have been. Are we really going to talk about Wiggins and Patrick Pass like they were great players? They made some key plays that year, they also had long periods of time when they did nothing. We elevate these players in hindsight, but they honestly weren't that good.
As for Patten and Brown, they had nice stats that year and were good players, but part of it was because the ball literally had to go somewhere. Patten will always be remembered for his amazing game against the Colts. Fantastic game! No question. Outside of that game, was he fantastic? Or was he just a good big play option who wasn't able to get open all that much (compared to Glenn at least). Patten was a solid to good, but not great WR. He had a hugely memorable game, against the Colts. That doesn't mean the rest of his season was particularly impressive. As for Brown, I don't want to play down how good his season was in the least, but his stats were a bit inflated due to lack of options to catch the ball. He was clearly the best WR they had, and the ball went his way 142 times because of it. That isn't unheard of obviously, but it hard not to have good production when you are given that many looks. It isn't like he didn't do anything good with them mind you.
I'm not trying to say there weren't good players on this side of the ball. I'm not trying to say they all sucked. This was a huge team victory all around. But let's be honest. This was not a great offensive cast Brady had to work with. And he put up good numbers for what was a fairly mundane cast on offense. He made the pro bowl that year and rightly so imo.