Tom Brady says he's done "for good"

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

Just FYI, a ton of people on ESPN and everywhere are downgrading Brady and the Patriots.

Been listening to talk radio the last day.

I learned that:

ONE, the Patriots filmed the Rams walkthrough before the 2001 SB [This was alleged by Tomase's friend but he didn't have the tapes he claimed he had; the Rams are on record as saying the only plays they went over during the walk through were red zone plays & the Rams scored a TD every time they were in the red zone so if the Patriots had tape, it didn't help them at all].

TWO, the deflated balls aided the Patriots in preventing them from fumbling because players could hold onto the ball easier [It was shown that the great +/- fumble differential relative to the rest of the NFL was created ENTIRELY on the road. I don't know the reason for this anomaly, but at home the Patriots were EVEN when it came to fumbles. On the road, the opposing team fumbled a lot more. of course, the opposing team controls the balls on the road, so those balls couldn't have been deflated].

THREE, Joe Montana, 4-0 Super Bowls blah blah blah [Yes, let's give credit to Montana for losing a lot in the 1st round of the playoffs].

FOUR, only reason Brady has more wins and top stats than Montana is because of longevity [If you look at first Brady's 15 years and match them against Montana's 15, Brady has 7 Super Bowl appearances and 5 wins, and he did it in the salary cap era where he wasn't throwing to Jerry Rice and the assortment of HOFers that SF kept together for a decade.]

FIVE, the best way to measure the quality of a player is not Super Bowl wins, but 1st team ALL-PROs. Brady made only 3 ALL-PRO teams, as many as Mike Alstott. Manning was 1st team in 7 of them!!!! [I'll address this below.]

There are 3 main arguments I make when it comes to gauging Brady relative to Manning or others based on All-Pro and season stats.

ONE, the ALL-PRO teams are voted on prior to the playoffs. Playoff performance is not taken into account. So you're ignoring playoff performance entirely if you're looking at that. I'd say Super Bowl MVPs are a good stand-in for ALL-PRO teams.

TWO, the voters don't seem very good at gauging the relative play of QBs. They go for gaudy stats. When Aaron Rodgers got the MVP in 2012 over Brady, they were looking at passer rating, TDs to INTs, and Rodgers had a great season. Brady meanwhile lead one of the most potent Patriot offenses ever, top 10 Offense in NFL history, and one secret inside his stats, they had 26 rushing TDs. Brady himself had 4 rushing TDs. And they did this WITHOUT a top running game or top running backs (it was Ridley's best year). The Packers and Aaron Rodgers? 7 rushing TDs the entire year. It boggles my mind that these stats are not taken into account. How much % of the offense is passing, total yards, running the ball in from the 1, the QB scoring, etc. All these stats should be accounted for.

THREE, Peyton Manning has a higher career passing rating than Brady. But Brady has a higher passer rating than Manning in games OUTDOORS and INDOORS in domes. A strange stat, but when you realize the differential for Brady is 10 points passer rating higher in domes, you understand that there is huge stat inflation for dome QBs. This stat alone tells me everything I need to know abut All-Pro teams and how they are measured.

The weird thing about the ALL-PRO argument and regular season stats is that it was being made by Buffalo talking heads. Guess what, Buffalo, your QB who plays in bad weather, your QB who runs the ball a lot, he's not going to get credit for what he does like, say, J. Herbert in Los Angeles. His passer rating will have 10 points shaved off just based on weather and running the ball. So you're making an argument AGAINST Josh Allen.

Brady was all-pro six times when you include second team. We’re into the real hair splitting when your argument is he was #2 and not #1, and it’s often argumentative at that point about who was better. Meanwhile, he has been #1 on NFL Top 100 (voted by players) 4 times in the 12 years it’s been on. No one else has finished #1 multiple times. Anyway, it’s sheer silliness to pick apart his standing the way these idiots are doing, citing the volume of awards and honors when he’s been regarded as the very best playing, or arguably the very best, for almost a quarter of a century.

 

[TB12TheGoat]

Brady was all-pro six times when you include second team. We’re into the real hair splitting when your argument is he was #2 and not #1, and it’s often argumentative at that point about who was better. Meanwhile, he has been #1 on NFL Top 100 (voted by players) 4 times in the 12 years it’s been on. No one else has finished #1 multiple times. Anyway, it’s sheer silliness to pick apart his standing the way these idiots are doing, citing the volume of awards and honors when he’s been regarded as the very best playing, or arguably the very best, for almost a quarter of a century.

yep. never understood the big deal with 1st vs 2nd all pro. and we all know Brady should have 5 MVPs. 2016 was his 2nd or 3rd best season ever and he was robbed with the BS suspension. 2021 is one of the biggest MVP robberies ever

he was robbed of all pro in 2012 and arguably 2015 also

 

[maust]

how do we feel about this?

I feel like the WR's could all be in the tub at the half watchin' clock killin' Dillon finish off what they started.
(since Edelman would be getting his catches I'd sub Troy Brown for Welker though)

 

[RobertWeathers]

Neal 100%, 100% of the time.
Gotta disagree on Brown vs Light though

Neal was a badass of badasses.

Yea i'm waffling on the Brown/Light one. Light was better in pass protection. Brown better on the run but Light was more than adequete.

 

[TBR]

how do we feel about this?

Antonio Brown, despite being a scumbag, has to be on there.

 

[venecol]

Bill's on his third OC in three season because the first took a head coaching job and the second was likely not his first choice. Either way, there's some context about that situation that you're obviously leaving out. He didn't put that sequence of events in motion, and it didn't help that Josh raided the staff to the point it was in the situation it was in this past season.

Are you saying that the person that controls every single aspect of the Patriots football operations as both GM and HC was caught off guard? The person that plays 3D chess while everyone else is playing checkers was caught with his pants down? That the football genius was pressured into making decisions because he lacked foresight? Maybe Bill is getting too old and is starting to slip.

 

[venecol]

No...he got the player he wanted. That's what I meant....sorry for the confusion.

Or he got the player that was left.

 

[venecol]

Thank you Tom.

Can we elaborate or comment on anything else?

Stop derailing the thread dude. If you have nothing positive to say about Brady or the team then just turn in your season tickets to a true homer. Ugh

 

[venecol]

I'd love to know why this photo even exists.

His wife wanted a portrait for their living room.

 

[venecol]

Cost of Brady ($25) was the same cost of Devin McCourty and Joe Thuney (on franchise tag.) They had enough to pay those two veterans and had enough to pay Brady obviously. There was also an additional $12.5M (6.25M twice at different stages of the timeline) hit they took in NOT extending Brady, so there was even more incentive with cap savings. Seems that Team Stidham / Team Cam has a selective memory of the actual events in 2020 when most of you claimed there was no reason to REBUILD because the team simply needed a younger and more invested leader at QB to continue contending.

The Patriots didn't trade championship veteran players for draft picks or let them walk for younger options for a rebuild. They had a chance to trade Gilmore when his value was high in the 2020 offseason and chose not to. They did absolutely nothing that a team in rebuilding mode would actually do. Instead, they re-signed all of their core veteran players in 2020 with the savings from not signing Brady. They could have also structured a Brady deal for a huge delayed hit in 2021, but instead they chose to spend that insane amount of extra cash of free agents, many of whom were horrible deals, but Team Bill scoffed at any criticism and continues to defend signings like Jonnu Smith.

This goes well beyond 2020...you people act like they got themselves into cap hell during the mid-late 2010s in order to keep a championship team in tact. Ridiculous and untrue on so many levels. Their contracts were never backloaded like the Saints, Rams, or other teams truly doing what you claim the Patriots did. This is why the Patriots parted ways with a handful of players like Amendola, Cooks, Jones, Blount, etc. They could have been creative and pushed those cap hits into later years but chose not to, even though, again, they had a massive gap year in 2021 where they could have done this. Everything they did regarding the cap was for year-to-year contention and not sacrificing the future for the present, and it was particularly baffling because of all the empty drafts during that time, so you had a championship roster of veterans without the up and coming rookie contracts to replace them. And yet, you claim the opposite, that the Patriots went "all-in" and sacrificed their cap in order to contend...reading Team Bill is like living in world where everything is upside down.

It's so aggravating that this board is filled with revisionist history and you guys can't just acknowledge the Patriots vastly overestimated their ability to replace Brady. Everyone outside of the Bill cult in New England realizes this. Whether Brady would have returned to New England had they played their cards differently...argumentative...different sources and fake news galore....I don't care to go down that path. In the end, the Patriots had the greatest QB of all-time with more left in the tank and he left an organization that's supposedly the smartest think tank in the world. They could have afforded him and were not rebuilding; they were not in cap hell even if their cap situation in 2020 wasn't ideal. The consensus from this board, the media, and sources close to the team at the time were all in unison that this had to do with the Patriots feeling they were okay with their system, coaches, roster, and financial discipline to part ways with a player who was no longer happy, could no longer perform at the same level, and was likely going to embarass himself by continuing to play at his advanced age.

100%
The people saying Bill went all in for more rings and ran out of cap to re-sign Tom, are the same ones that claim the '21 cap would've gone from $62M to $12M had we signed him. IOW, they have no idea how the cap actually works.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

100%
The people saying Bill went all in for more rings and ran out of cap to re-sign Tom, are the same ones that claim the '21 cap would've gone from $62M to $12M had we signed him. IOW, they have no idea how the cap actually works.

They know how it works...they're just dishonest and many of them likely suffer from full blown personality disorders whereby acknowledging they're wrong is equivalent to a fiery, shameful death.

 

[Bruins29]

Sweet Feet for KFaulk but thats a toss up.

No fing way. Not even considerable. A team like that would need a great steady-head leader and Faulk was the GOAT when it came to that. Also, while you technically dont need KF's elite special teams (which has has in spades over White) with all the dropbacks TB would be doing you need the best 3rd down back blocker you can find and IMO (and maybe even BB's) there were not many blockers better than Faulk.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

100%
The people saying Bill went all in for more rings and ran out of cap to re-sign Tom, are the same ones that claim the '21 cap would've gone from $62M to $12M had we signed him. IOW, they have no idea how the cap actually works.

It would have been an easy extension at the time for 2 years/ 50M. They would have avoided the $12.5M hit in 2020 and been able to sign both Brady and Thuney or McCourty and probably could have signed all three with a little creativity. Reminder, they had a zillion dollars for the 2021 cap (and could have backloaded contracts to account for that) but it's okay...we didnt' get Brady but we wouldn't have signed Henry, Smith, Bourne and Agholor for $50M annually and probably would have gone 0-17 because we didn't have them.

 

[RobertWeathers]

No fing way. Not even considerable. A team like that would need a great steady-head leader and Faulk was the GOAT when it came to that. Also, while you technically dont need KF's elite special teams (which has has in spades over White) with all the dropbacks TB would be doing you need the best 3rd down back blocker you can find and IMO (and maybe even BB's) there were not many blockers better than Faulk.

The gap between KFaulk and White isn't nearly what you are making it out to be.

White was a better receiver and just as good of a pass blocker/blitz pickup.

 

[Bruins29]

The gap between KFaulk and White isn't nearly what you are making it out to be.

For special teams it was. But lets eliminate that since the team would technically have WW and JE

Faulk was a leaders leader according to BB. And Faulk was an elite blocker. Whatever the gap is between him and white there is a gap.

And as much as I love white and great as he was as a receiver with that receiving crew I dont think there would be a need for that skill.

 

[Ian]

Are you saying that the person that controls every single aspect of the Patriots football operations as both GM and HC was caught off guard? The person that plays 3D chess while everyone else is playing checkers was caught with his pants down? That the football genius was pressured into making decisions because he lacked foresight? Maybe Bill is getting too old and is starting to slip.

I'm saying it's impossible to have a staff deep enough to deal with the number of guys Josh took, can't plan for that. As for the decision to have Patricia as the OC, that's a different story.

 

[Ian]

Antonio Brown, despite being a scumbag, has to be on there.

You say that, but who do you swap for him?

 

[venecol]

4
That’s the number of teams who have thrown for fewer net passing yards in their franchise history (regular season and postseason combined) than Brady did in his 23 seasons. The Jaguars (founded in 1995), the Panthers (founded in 1995), the Ravens (founded in 1996) and the Texans (founded in 2002) have all seen fewer net passing yards from every quarterback that’s ever worn their jerseys than Brady produced.

Now we know why this dude was crying.

 

[RobertWeathers]

For special teams it was. But lets eliminate that since the team would technically have WW and JE

You still need a 3rd down back regardless if you have slot receivers.

Faulk was a leaders leader according to BB. And Faulk was an elite blocker. Whatever the gap is between him and white there is a gap.

White was a team captain and also an elite blocker. That doesn't mean Faulk wasn't.

And as much as I love white and great as he was as a receiver with that receiving crew I dont think there would be a need for that skill.

Not a need for what skill? Receiving and blitz pickup?

 

[Bruins29]

You still need a 3rd down back regardless if you have slot receivers.

White was a team captain and also an elite blocker. That doesn't mean Faulk wasn't.

Not a need for what skill? Receiving and blitz pickup?

I just feel Faulk would be a better fit for a team with a bunch of egos would have the GOAT receiving crew off all time throwing the ball 40 times a game. Thats it. White was great. We can disagree on who would fit better.