The Mortality of Tommy Francis Brady: A Parable

[mayoclinic]

Time to put a big target on my chest for people to shoot at.

From 2001-2006 the Pats under Brady compiled a regular season record of 70-25. During those years they made the playoffs 5 times, compiling a playoff record of 12-2, with 4 AFCCG appears and 3 SB appearances, all victories. The most yards Brady ever passed for in those seasons was 4110; he never attempted more than 530 passes except in the 2002 season (601), which (coincidentally or not) was the one season out of those 6 in which the Pats failed to make the playoffs. He never passed for more than 28 TDs. Brady never won an MVP in those 6 seasons, though he won 2 SB MVPs. He didn't put up the glitzy numbers of Peyton Manning, who won several MVPs during that time. And some called him a "game manager", though others considered him the best QB in the NFL in the clutch.

After the Pats lost the 2006 AFCCG to the Colts 38-34, they opened up the offense and put the team squarley on Bradey's right shoulder. Except for the 2008 season, which he essentially missed, Brady has passed for 565 or more attempts in 4 out of the 5 seasons he has played since 2007, has passed for 4398 yards or more and 34 TDs or more in 4 out of the 5 seasons (and 4800 or more in 3 of the 5), has won 2 MVPs, and has eclipsed previous season records for TDs (50, 2007) and yards (5235, 2011, though Drew Brees passed for even more yards). During those years the Pats have gone 65-15 during the regular season and earned the #1 seed three times and the #2 seed once, but have gone only 5-5 during the playoffs over those 5 years, losing twice in the divisional round (2009, 2010), once in the AFCCG (2012), and twice in the SB (2007, 2011).

Clearly the Pats lost a lot of talent after the 2004 Super Bowl, and again after 2007 when key players got old. The team was rebuilt around Brady, and he has produced historic numbers. But perhaps the team has been asking him to do too much, rather than building a more complete team around him. Certainly at times over the past 3 seasons in the playoffs, it seems as though Brady has been pressing too hard and trying to do too much.

It reminds me a bit of John Elway's early vs. late SB history with the Broncos. Like Brady, Elway started in 5 SBs. However, Elway lost his first 3, all fairly convincingly (losses of 39-20, 42-10 and 55-10 to the Giants, Redskins and 49ers). Those Denver teams were not particularly strong teams, and Elway was basically the "super man" who got them to the Super Bowl in the first place. But it wasn't enough against better teams from the NFC. It wasn't until Elway was past his "prime" and in "decline", and until Denver had built a more complete team around him, that the Broncos found Super Bowl success in back to back years in 1997 and 1998.

The Pats have been asking Brady to carry them for a long time. But they've also been methodically building the team up, piece by piece. Perhaps we need to get to the point where others guys step up and carry more of the burden, and where the team doesn't have to rely on Brady to carry them so much. That may be hard for Brady to do, and the team certainly hasn't reached that point yet. But the talent level is pretty close to being where it needs to be.

My guess is that Brady can carry this team only so far, and it's probably not quite far enough to win the Super Bowl. He's certainly among the GOAT. But maybe the route to more trophies is by asking him to do less, and others to do more.

OK, fire away.

 

[BelichickFan]

I think Brady needs to accept that it's OK if he never wins another SB; that would alleviate a lot of self induced pressure and I think would make him more likely to win one. Having a defense he is more confident in makng a stop would help, of course - except for desperation drives at the end both of our defense giving up a game winning TD drive. But I think he could help himself by treating the playoffs as just a run of the mill regular season game.

 

[ThatllMoveTheChains!!!]

My guess is that Brady can carry this team only so far, and it's probably not quite far enough to win the Super Bowl. He's certainly among the GOAT. But maybe the route to more trophies is by asking him to do less, and others to do more.

OK, fire away.

The questions are: how do you go about this and how will Brady react. I can't envision a way to do this that won't make a highly competitive player like Brady feel he's being handcuffed.

 

[patsfan13]

Brady consumes far more of the salary cap now than he did early in his career, my guess is that the O dominates the salary cap distribution with the contracts of Gronk, Hernandez and Welker being put in the mix with Brady.

This makes it difficult to build a 'complete' rpster that can endure the number of injuries of say the 2003 team.

 

[Brady2Moss]

Mayo I agree wholeheartedly, he has so much pressure on his shoulders and he puts even more on himself because of the feeling that its him or bust. I think the point about the pass attempts is a good one too, maybe his arm is tiring out toward the ends of these seasons.

I think the team has to get to a point where they are comfortable running it on 3rd and short in do or die situations, like being down a score in the playoffs. The trend I've noticed is the play calling becomes pass, pass, pass if we're even down a single point.

Give Tom a good defense and running game and we should be in position to win one or two more trophies, but we will need luck too to bring it home those SBs are like coin flips.

 

[mayoclinic]

The questions are: how do you go about this and how will Brady react. I can't envision a way to do this that won't make a highly competitive player like Brady feel he's being handcuffed.

I think that Brady wants to win more than anything else. I think the problem is that he's one of the most competitive guys I've ever seen, and he gets so psyched up, it's hard for him not to want to try and do more. He needs to be more patient. But the coaching staff also has to be more patient, and use more of the team. The Baltimore game was a classic - they didn't involve Vereen at all in the offense, they pretty much kept things bottled in the middle of the field, they didn't run outside, they didn't try and tire out the Ravens' LBs by getting them in pursuit.

I don't know the answer, and I'm certainly not criticizing Brady. But I do think that perhaps Brady accepting that he can't do it all himself and put the team on his shoulders may be part of the solution. That will take other guys stepping up in a big way, just as Troy, Tedy, Ty and Rodney did in the past.

 

[supafly]

Give Tom a good defense and running game and we should be in position to win one or two more trophies, but we will need luck too to bring it home those SBs are like coin flips.

I think this is a good point. There certainly are some breaks that are involved with not only calls, ball bounces, etc--but also with potential matchups too.

The weight should not be all on Brady, this defense (particularly the pass) needs to be able to hold playoff opponents to around 20 points or so. The teams of old won close, low scoring games. That has not happened in the new era, and is a big reason why we keep losing.

No one complained about the "lack of offense" in the following games:

Divisional Round vs TEN 17-14 (win)

AFCCG vs IND 20-6 (win)

SB vs STL 20-17 (win)

That's because our defense was able to win in low scoring games by holding the team to less points. It's also why the defense is the side of the ball to blame in Sunday's most recent loss, as it was a 1 point game in the early 4th quarter.

The defense was the side of the ball that allowed BAL to score 3 straight TD's in the last 20 minutes or so of the game, and we've seen it a lot lately with the entire field driving late game TD's that they gave up in their last 2 SB failures, even though the offense scored enough to be winning in the last few minutes of each game.

It's unacceptable, and that is what is holding them back.

 

[mayoclinic]

The defense was the side of the ball that allowed BAL to score 3 straight TD's in the last 20 minutes or so of the game, and we've seen it a lot lately with the entire field driving late game TD's that they gave up in their last 2 SB failures, even though the offense scored enough to be winning in the last few minutes of each game.

It's unacceptable, and that is what is holding them back.

You might want to say "the defense minus their best CB and their best pass rusher was the side of the ball that allowed BAL to score 3 straight TDs in the last 20 minutes or so of the game". It's hard to compete when you've lost your best pressure option and your best big CB to man up on the bigger WRs. We saw in the divisional games that even Seattle's very good secondary had trouble stopping Matt Ryan from driving down the field in 30 seconds with the game on the line when they didn't have Chris Clemons and couldn't get effective pressure.

But yes, the defense will have to do better, injuries or not. So will the offense, which squandered multiple red zone chances and turned the ball over multiple times.

 

[ThatllMoveTheChains!!!]

Mayo I agree wholeheartedly, he has so much pressure on his shoulders and he puts even more on himself because of the feeling that its him or bust. I think the point about the pass attempts is a good one too, maybe his arm is tiring out toward the ends of these seasons.

I think the team has to get to a point where they are comfortable running it on 3rd and short in do or die situations, like being down a score in the playoffs. The trend I've noticed is the play calling becomes pass, pass, pass if we're even down a single point.

Give Tom a good defense and running game and we should be in position to win one or two more trophies, but we will need luck too to bring it home those SBs are like coin flips.

They also need to get comfortable attacking teams with the run. Their use of Ridley in the Raven's game was about as unimaginative as possible. It seems like if running how their running isn't working they decide running isn't working rather than trying something else. The Raven's likewise used Rice pretty poorly, but at least they gave Pierce a good number of touches and attacked the Pats all over the field with him.

 

[Brady2Moss]

They also need to get comfortable attacking teams with the run. Their use of Ridley in the Raven's game was about as unimaginative as possible. It seems like if running how their running isn't working they decide running isn't working rather than trying something else. The Raven's likewise used Rice pretty poorly, but at least they gave Pierce a good number of touches and attacked the Pats all over the field with him.

Yup, Mcdaniel's to me always seemed pretty limited in adjusting his game plan especially in SB42. We should have tried running off tackle with Vereen or Ridley I understand we partly couldn't do this because our tight ends stunk blocking.

Notice how the instant Vereen came in he was open always, partly because Baltimore may have gone into prevent, but still I think they should have featured him in the game plan, instead he was only in when Ridley got injured. Sometimes this coaching staff is so stubborn.

 

[RIpats88]

offensively, I think we've been hurt by not having Gronkowski...he is our ONLY physical mismatch where you can just throw it around him and he will come up with it...the only thing we are missing is a physical big receiver like demarius Thomas who can be a physical mismatch on the outside...hopefully we can get one in the draft(mcdaniels has been pretty solid drafting receivers lately)

Honestly, I think the pats are very close to having a solid defense once again....we have alot of young pieces. and guys like Dennard, Jones, Hightower are only going to get better next year and that should improve our defense...

I think we are a semi-shutdown press man-corner(Talib perhaps) and a safety who is better than Gregory/Chung to be the #2 guy to play beside McCourty. and we will be much improved

 

[DocHoliday]

The 'problem' of Brady feeling so pressured by himself to win will fix himself if/when he sees talent around him.

He'll know then he can take the easy pass and trust his teammates to do the rest.

 

[supafly]

The 'problem' of Brady feeling so pressured by himself to win will fix himself if/when he sees talent around him.

He'll know then he can take the easy pass and trust his teammates to do the rest.

I respectfully disagree, Doc.

I think that's exactly what this offense represents...high percentage completions, receivers/targets who gain YACs with their talented shiftiness and moves, physical personnel in the trenches (including the TEs), taking advantage of personnel mismatches, pre-snap reads and countermoves, the ability to retain possession of the ball without turning it over, etc, etc, etc.

All of that has been added with a rejuvenated and better balanced running attack to boot, helping to control the clock.

There is certainly "talent" around Tom Brady right now. That shouldn't be a debate.

 

[mayoclinic]

From KC Joyner:

All of the above issues could be enough to hinder Brady's future, but the biggest of his woes may very well be a significant decline in accuracy. His tremendous attention to detail in practicing the proper passing mechanics has led to Brady being, by far, the most accurate passer I've seen in 10 seasons of breaking down game tapes. But that trend took a big step back this past season, as Brady's accuracy was well below its norm.

This led to a tremendous number of missed completions (46 by my tracking sheets) and additionally caused a large number of completions to potentially fall short of their yards-after-catch upside because the receiver had to adjust to a pass that wasn't thrown to the proper spot.

Brady is still so far ahead of most other quarterbacks that, even with a drop-off in his performance, he will likely be a top-tier passer for the next two to three seasons.

The issue for New England is that any level of decline in his play could reduce his effectiveness in mitigating a multitude of this team's personnel issues.

NFL - For Tom Brady, New England Patriots, the decline has begun - ESPN

The Pats shouldn't plan on masking deficiencies by putting more and more pressure on Brady to perform miracles. It's less and less likely to happen, great as he is. But if they ask him to go back and be the Brady of 2001-2004 - efficient, but not the alpha and omega of the offense, and not carrying the entire team - and address the other areas, then maybe we can get back to winning games in the postseason with more regularity.

 

[ausbacker]

From KC Joyner:



NFL - For Tom Brady, New England Patriots, the decline has begun - ESPN

The Pats shouldn't plan on masking deficiencies by putting more and more pressure on Brady to perform miracles. It's less and less likely to happen, great as he is. But if they ask him to go back and be the Brady of 2001-2004 - efficient, but not the alpha and omega of the offense, and not carrying the entire team - and address the other areas, then maybe we can get back to winning games in the postseason with more regularity.

Joyner should be embarrassed by that article.

If you listened to the media vultures back in 2009, Brady was on the decline and finished then. Everyone is lining up to take their shot at the Patriots.

 

[MoneyFX]

Great post. I have been thinking the same thing too. For the last few seasons, it's been if Tom Brady doesn't play perfect or close to perfect, the Patriots lose. Or specifically, if Brady doesn't throw for 300+ yds, 2-3 TDs and 0 INTs, the Patriots don't have a chance to win, just because the defense isn't good enough to help the offense overcome mistakes/poor play.

This team will be great if they can win games when Brady and the offense are off. And they haven't shown that in the past few seasons.

I never thought it would happen this season, because the defense was improving with Aqib Talib getting everyone in their right positions (McCourty, Arrington, etc.) and the run game was good enough to dominate games and provide balance to the passing attack. But if the young running backs continue to get better and the defense can add depth and speed in some areas along with resigning Talib, Brady won't have to do as much, which will be a positive sign.

 

[Triumph]

Joyner should be embarrassed by that article.

If you listened to the media vultures back in 2009, Brady was on the decline and finished then. Everyone is lining up to take their shot at the Patriots.

Brady isnt as good as he used to be.

Hes will be 36 by the start of next season. Look, the records are falling like dominoes. NE was 67 - 0 with the lead at home, never lost a AFCC at home.

 

[Fencer]

the entire field driving late game TD's that they gave up in their last 2 SB failures

Not just in the losses.

 

[ausbacker]

Brady isnt as good as he used to be.

Hes will be 36 by the start of next season. Look, the records are falling like dominoes. NE was 67 - 0 with the lead at home, never lost a AFCC at home.

Brady has been playing at an absurd level since 2010. To say he is not as good as he used to be is ridiculous. Brady is playing better than he ever has. The reality is, the team around him isn't as good as it used to be, especially on D (it's getting there).

What have you done for me lately right?

 

[DocHoliday]

I respectfully disagree, Doc.

I think that's exactly what this offense represents...high percentage completions, receivers/targets who gain YACs with their talented shiftiness and moves, physical personnel in the trenches (including the TEs), taking advantage of personnel mismatches, pre-snap reads and countermoves, the ability to retain possession of the ball without turning it over, etc, etc, etc.

All of that has been added with a rejuvenated and better balanced running attack to boot, helping to control the clock.

There is certainly "talent" around Tom Brady right now. That shouldn't be a debate.

Sorry, I was referring to the defense. If he can rely on them to keep the game under 25 points consistently than it would go a long way in extending his career.