I thought the story always was that what makes Brady great is that he is not depend on having "extremely talented" skill players. Or was that the story people tried to conjure up to marginalise Manning ?
Fair point. Edelman > Caldwell. Throws a tighter spiral too.
Last year he had a top 5 OL in the league, a great running game, three good-to-great options on the inside with Edelman, White and Gronk and pretty much nothing outside. That is not a bad situation.
Once again, true. To me, his mood is a non-story. You lose Gronk and you're 42, and you might be in a mood too. Dude's human. Now if he comes to a podium and says "Hear ye hear ye, they've put me out here without enough weapons and/or protection for the last time," and yeah, then I'm worried.
So A) yes, he's lost a lot in terms of weapons, B) yes, he was in a great position last year in terms of inside weapons (as you point out), and C) TFB is human and has emotions.
If you want to be critical you can call it an above average (i.e. still top 12) situation that he then elevated to a top 5 unit with his ability to read and anticipate plays.
Nontroversial stance, either way.
This year the situation on offense is still a mess but guess what ? He has an elite defense to fall back on while they are trying to figure themselves out on offense while getting talented players back from IR.
True, and to an extent, true by design. I think the Pats have been emphasizing D and attempting to emphasize the ground game. It's in preparation for being non-dominant through the air. That's protecting against a growing downside risk. You can't not do it.
And BB probably has been champing at the bit to do it for many years.
Make note, this does not mean he's not taking his shots to scoop up some weapons on the cheap. So far he's succeeded in picking up my 2012 fantasy team off the waiver wire receiver by receiver. But hey, they are trying to give him something.
This is no different than all those years where he was on the other side of it with the defense underperforming while the offense was humming along.
True
Finally, Brady is not taking any heat at all. This is laughable. He is essentially football Jesus here.
He is being treated horribly for a guy with 6 rings who's been to 4 out of the last 5 Super Bowls. But he hasn't been to this year's yet, or to any subsequent year's. So, it's paradoxical to attempt to judge fan treatment.
For my part, I still think it's too early to sell Brady stock and bemoan that Jimmy G is going to win the ring this year, and this is 2 rings after the first time the Pats said that
More to the point, there's a far greater than zero chance that we go again with TFB. In fact, I would dare say that it's more likely we go and win with TFB than any other QB presently available -- in fact, any other QB presently playing.
Now, that's given very imperfect knowledge. But that still gets you football Jesus status. So... not that it's correct to give him that much slack, but it's logically defensible.
