Wickersham Strikes: Belichick talked to Giants/Dolphins/Washington about coaching there in Brady standoff

[upstater1]

Yeah I don’t know about that.

Patriots fallout: Taking stock of the damage left by Antonio Brown

Antonio Brown is gone but we are still sifting through the rubble left behind from his 11-day stay. He was more cyclone than hurricane. He didn’t cause full devastation, just a narrow swath of damage. Over the course of six days since Brown’s release, a lot’s been said. A lot’s been written...

www.nbcsports.com

It wasn't a football decision by Kraft.

He runs the organization. Not the football side.

He had an employee who got his goons to threaten children on social media with physical harm.

 

[upstater1]

I remember when everyone on here slammed this guy for reporting their was dysfunction between Brady and Belichick......

This guy has written pure nonsense articles on the Patriots for his entire life.

I mean, he's a blind squirrel!

First I heard of any disharmony was when Brady put his house up for sale, and that happened before the Super Bowl year. So it didn't take a genius.

 

[Ian]

It's old news anyway - this entire thread is more or less all of us sort of rehashing an old topic. Although don't be surprise if some reporter who forgot about it thinks this is somehow breaking news and treats it like a new revelation and it starts up all over again

And...here we go:

https://www.audacy.com/weei/sports/patriots/nfl-rumors-belichick-spoke-to-teams-following-jimmy-g-trade

Patriots rumors: Bill Belichick nearly powered his way out of New England

The New England Patriots dynasty is really the headline of the power struggle between three men. The owner, Robert Kraft, the coach, Bill Belichick and t...

chowderandchampions.com

Apparently, no one paid attention the first time and they're treating this like it's new

 

[ctpatsfan77]

Same guy was going to trade Gronk until Gronk threatened retirement.

As good as GRONK is, he is not Brady. They won SB51 without him. And he was making noise behind the scenes about retiring even back then.

 

[Deus Irae]

Cap debt, it wasn't needless... math doesn't lie.

It was needless, and I don't know how many times the "cap" myth has to be killed before people stop insisting it's some insurmountable obstacle rather than the mere accounting number it almost always is.

 

[Deus Irae]

I doubt it was an easily avoidable problem. This was a long time coming and I think there wee a lot of mistakes and issues over the years by all sides that led to this.

• Let Brady have his trainer
• Give Brady a legit long term deal instead of insulting him with the crap being offered

Problem solved

 

[Deus Irae]

As good as GRONK is, he is not Brady. They won SB51 without him. And he was making noise behind the scenes about retiring even back then.

Really not the point but, yet, point enough for me to point out that guys like Troy Brown were able to finish out their careers in N.E. despite being shells of themselves while BB chose being a douchenozzle to Gronk over letting the guy handle his physical issues in a way that worked for him.

 

[Wozzy]

It was needless, and I don't know how many times the "cap" myth has to be killed before people stop insisting it's some insurmountable obstacle rather than the mere accounting number it almost always is.

Suggesting the cap doesn’t exist exhibits an extraordinary level of ignorance about how the league works. 25% of the Pat’s cap in 2020 was dedicated to one player (Gilmore) and 70+ players dead cap.

The Pats won three rings in a five year span, the last team to do that was the Pats back in the early 2000’s. If it was easy as spending whatever you wanted Jerry Jones or Daniel Snyder would buy a Super Bowl winner every year.

As of yet nobody here has “killed the cap myth” because it’s not a myth... ask the Broncos that time they tried to circumvent and cheat the cap and got stung for it.

Cap debt doesn’t disappear until it’s paid, there’s no tax haven in the Bahamas for cap debt. If one doesn’t understand the basics of the salary cap, then team building will continue to elude them.

 

[patsfanincleveland]

Suggesting the cap doesn’t exist exhibits an extraordinary level of ignorance about how the league works. 25% of the Pat’s cap in 2020 was dedicated to one player (Gilmore) and 70+ players dead cap.

The Pats won three rings in a five year span, the last team to do that was the Pats back in the early 2000’s. If it was easy as spending whatever you wanted Jerry Jones or Daniel Snyder would buy a Super Bowl winner every year.

As of yet nobody here has “killed the cap myth” because it’s not a myth... ask the Broncos that time they tried to circumvent and cheat the cap and got stung for it.

Cap debt doesn’t disappear until it’s paid, there’s no tax haven in the Bahamas for cap debt. If one doesn’t understand the basics of the salary cap, then team building will continue to elude them.

Nice post

Unfortunately, that will go completely over his head and you'll get some Dummy Squad response.

 

[Rob0729]

• Let Brady have his trainer
• Give Brady a legit long term deal instead of insulting him with the crap being offered

Problem solved

The second one was a problem because at Brady's age even four years ago, it is year to year concern whether he would hit the age wall. He has defied the odds, but odds were Brady would be done with his career by now. The Bucs didn't give him a long term deal either.

And Brady's trainer was reportedly undermining the Patriots' training staff with other players and Belichick thought it hindered their production. I say that one was a little bit of both sides. If Guerrero was only training Brady and not Gronk and several other players, I don't think there would have been a problem. The guy was allowed on the sidelines for years.

 

[ralmat55]

Suggesting the cap doesn’t exist exhibits an extraordinary level of ignorance about how the league works. 25% of the Pat’s cap in 2020 was dedicated to one player (Gilmore) and 70+ players dead cap.

The Pats won three rings in a five year span, the last team to do that was the Pats back in the early 2000’s. If it was easy as spending whatever you wanted Jerry Jones or Daniel Snyder would buy a Super Bowl winner every year.

As of yet nobody here has “killed the cap myth” because it’s not a myth... ask the Broncos that time they tried to circumvent and cheat the cap and got stung for it.

Cap debt doesn’t disappear until it’s paid, there’s no tax haven in the Bahamas for cap debt. If one doesn’t understand the basics of the salary cap, then team building will continue to elude them.

There was no free agency before the salary cap, so there was nothing really to “buy”. The Patriots would not have won those 3 championships, given their draft and player development record during this time, without buying players in free agency.

As long as a player is active, on your roster and you have the cash to pay the bonuses, you can always push money into future year’s caps. The Patriots do it all the time. They’ve done it this off-season.

Blindly using the salary cap as the reason something can’t be done is as foolish as those who think the cap is crap. The Pats could have kept Brady. They could have added some pieces as well after the 19 season. The bill would have come due at some point, but it didn’t have to come due then. That was their choosing.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

Suggesting the cap doesn’t exist exhibits an extraordinary level of ignorance about how the league works. 25% of the Pat’s cap in 2020 was dedicated to one player (Gilmore) and 70+ players dead cap.

The Pats won three rings in a five year span, the last team to do that was the Pats back in the early 2000’s. If it was easy as spending whatever you wanted Jerry Jones or Daniel Snyder would buy a Super Bowl winner every year.

As of yet nobody here has “killed the cap myth” because it’s not a myth... ask the Broncos that time they tried to circumvent and cheat the cap and got stung for it.

Cap debt doesn’t disappear until it’s paid, there’s no tax haven in the Bahamas for cap debt. If one doesn’t understand the basics of the salary cap, then team building will continue to elude them.

McCourty and Thuney were signed for roughly $25M, the same cost as Brady. Brady signing before the March deadline would have also reduced his cap hit by something like $7.5M in 2020. There were also many other ways to restructure deals and backload them into 2021 where they had so much cap space, which we just saw them fill with all these free agents.

None of this is complicated...it's just you foolishly rationalizing that the Patriots couldn't have made the contract/cap financials work out, despite overwhelming, obvious, glaring evidence directly in your face. It's laughable that you'd even try this argument. The team had enough money to sign Brady for 2021 and could have also maneuvered to sign other players, but all the rumblings were that they thought they'd be okay without Brady, it was time to move on, and Stidham was looking ready. My guess is you also bought those arguments at the time and are now desperately trying to save face. Stop trying to revise history with this stuff...smoke and mirrors doesn't work.

You don't understand the basics of the salary cap if you believe that the 2020 cap situation precluded the Patriots from making Brady a highly competitive offer. It always comes down to this: the Patriots severely underappreciated, undervalued and underestimated Brady, and that's why he's gone.

 

[Ring 6]

Same guy was going to trade Gronk until Gronk threatened retirement.

Correction AFTER Gronk threatened retirement and wouldn’t make a decision. The “trade” was a sham to force gronk to make a decision. A child could see through that.

 

[Ring 6]

When all is said and done, as difficult as it was to accept, letting Brady walk was the best thing for this football team.
Had he stayed there was no cap room to improve the 2019 team, so 2020 would not have been a team able to compete for a championship. This year he would be taking up 25 mill and last years 25 mill would have reduced the carry forward so our 60 mill in cap room would have been 10 mill and we would be patching and plugging an insufficient roster with few resources to do so while rebuilding with a 43 year old qb.
It was time to pay the overdue bills and start fresh because keeping Brady would have resulted in him leading further degraded teams from 2019 forward
We would not have won a championship in his career span.
Him moving on ultimately will be looked at as the best thing for all parties.
Now we need to move up and draft a damn QB

 

[Wozzy]

There was no free agency before the salary cap, so there was nothing really to “buy”. The Patriots would not have won those 3 championships, given their draft and player development record during this time, without buying players in free agency.

As long as a player is active, on your roster and you have the cash to pay the bonuses, you can always push money into future year’s caps. The Patriots do it all the time. They’ve done it this off-season.

Blindly using the salary cap as the reason something can’t be done is as foolish as those who think the cap is crap. The Pats could have kept Brady. They could have added some pieces as well after the 19 season. The bill would have come due at some point, but it didn’t have to come due then. That was their choosing.

The first sentence is kind of a meandering mess, don't really understand what you're trying to say there. There's no team in the NFL that doesn't buy free agents, from 2014 on the Pats traded out, traded picks for players and went after vets vs rookies, they were trying to "win now" and vet players lend themselves to that much better than rookies do.

In regards to kicking salary cap down the road as in the Patriots "do it all the time" is wrong, the Patriots predominantly did it from 2014-2019. Prior to that it was frowned upon, they did it to extend themselves to win rings. Listen to the Peter King podcast from March 24th with Scott Pioli, he specifically says BB and he hated borrowing from future cap and wouldn't do it. So the Patriots definitely stepped outside of normal business practices to win three rings... again, something no other team had done since the Patriots last did it when Tom was being paid like a 6th round rookie.

"This is kind of the year that we've taken to adjust our cap from the spending that we've had in accumulation of prior years. We just haven't been able to have the kind of depth on our roster that we've had in some other years." - Bill Belichick to Sirius XM NFL Radio, Oct 31, 2020

This has nothing to do with blindly accepting what BB is saying, especially since Bill said this in late October and I was speaking about the cap hell the team was in months prior in the offseason when Tom was deciding what he was going to do.

Yeah the Pats could have bent over backwards to sign Tom. Tom with a worse team than last year around him is not a Super Bowl winning team. Tom with Tampa's contract as a benchmark is a 63.5 million dollar cap hit over the next two years of his deal if they signed him in 2020, even if they spread it out and kicked cap down the road his cap hit would have been massive and the team around him would have been made up of rookies and jags. Tom didn't want to play on that team and BB knew the only way to become championship relevant again anytime soon was to hit the reset button. They made the best decision for the team and for the player.

 

[Rob0729]

When all is said and done, as difficult as it was to accept, letting Brady walk was the best thing for this football team.
Had he stayed there was no cap room to improve the 2019 team, so 2020 would not have been a team able to compete for a championship. This year he would be taking up 25 mill and last years 25 mill would have reduced the carry forward so our 60 mill in cap room would have been 10 mill and we would be patching and plugging an insufficient roster with few resources to do so while rebuilding with a 43 year old qb.
It was time to pay the overdue bills and start fresh because keeping Brady would have resulted in him leading further degraded teams from 2019 forward
We would not have won a championship in his career span.
Him moving on ultimately will be looked at as the best thing for all parties.
Now we need to move up and draft a damn QB

If Brady shows significant decline this year, I would agree. It is definitely possible at his age and him coming off of knee surgery which was classified somewhere between significant and just a routine clean up (although not major). Last year was a lost year with or without Brady.

If the Pats pick up his replacement in the draft this year and that QB turns into a franchise QB that wins at least a Super Bowl or two, I would agree.

The Pats fail to get a new QB to build this team around and Brady wins another Super Bowl or two, then I wouldn't agree. Hell, if he gets deep into the playoffs under that scenario, I wouldn't agree.After 2019

I still think ultimately, last year may have been as good of a year as any to part ways with Brady. But time will tell.

 

[Wozzy]

McCourty and Thuney were signed for roughly $25M, the same cost as Brady. Brady signing before the March deadline would have also reduced his cap hit by something like $7.5M in 2020. There were also many other ways to restructure deals and backload them into 2021 where they had so much cap space, which we just saw them fill with all these free agents.

None of this is complicated...it's just you foolishly rationalizing that the Patriots couldn't have made the contract/cap financials work out, despite overwhelming, obvious, glaring evidence directly in your face. It's laughable that you'd even try this argument. The team had enough money to sign Brady for 2021 and could have also maneuvered to sign other players, but all the rumblings were that they thought they'd be okay without Brady, it was time to move on, and Stidham was looking ready. My guess is you also bought those arguments at the time and are now desperately trying to save face. Stop trying to revise history with this stuff...smoke and mirrors doesn't work.

You don't understand the basics of the salary cap if you believe that the 2020 cap situation precluded the Patriots from making Brady a highly competitive offer. It always comes down to this: the Patriots severely underappreciated, undervalued and underestimated Brady, and that's why he's gone.

Thuney was franchise tagged, he costs the Patriots zero dollars in 2021... his signing is irrelevant considering they needed a starting guard in 2020 and they hoped to keep him. DMC is an important player on the defense and one they wanted to retain going forward to QB the defense. Brady cost 50 million guaranteed, not 25.

And signing Brady before the deadline would not "reduce" his cap hit, it would have allowed them to spread it out over the remainder of a new contract. It doesn't mean new money added to his existing cap hit wouldn't accumulate further.

Consider last year's 15th round pick Jerry Jeudy signed a 4 year, $15,192,974 contract with the Broncos, including a $8,609,436 signing bonus = $15,192,974 guaranteed.

Now pretend for a moment BB drafts Mac Jones or Trey Lance at fifteen...

Year one: $9.2 million - 2.76 million cap hit
Year two: $1.3 million - 3.45 million cap hit
Year three:$2.0 million - 4.14 million cap hit
Year four: $2.7 million - 4.83 million cap hit

Vs Tom Brady's Tampa contract, plus the cap we already owed for him... a 63.5 million dollar cap hit spread out over two years:

Year one: $25 million - 31.75 million cap hit
Year two: $25 million - 31.75 million cap hit

Even if you spread it out and add a phantom third year:

Year one: $25 million - 21.2 million cap hit
Year two: $25 million - 21.2 million cap hit
Year three:$0.0 million - 21.2 million dead cap hit

Now tell me where all the veteran weapons that Tom wanted are coming from, especially in 2020 when they were flat broke? Once they let DMC and Thuney walk imagine that team with all the free agent vets they did sign also gone. Tom would retire in another year or so with zero rings to show for it and the Patriots would be saddled with more cap debt than they had in 2020. The point is to win rings... not make it so Tom can retire a Patriot.

 

[Ring 6]

Really not the point but, yet, point enough for me to point out that guys like Troy Brown were able to finish out their careers in N.E. despite being shells of themselves while BB chose being a douchenozzle to Gronk over letting the guy handle his physical issues in a way that worked for him.

How easily they forget. Gronk, with a 9 mill cap number was playing games by making a joke out of whether he was retiring or not. Belichick wanted a decision either way so he could address his roster and gronk clowned around implying maybe yes maybe no to draw attention to himself.
Belichick drew the line by saying if you won’t make a decision we will trade you.
Gronk suddenly ended the game playing.

 

[patsfanincleveland]

When all is said and done, as difficult as it was to accept, letting Brady walk was the best thing for this football team.
Had he stayed there was no cap room to improve the 2019 team, so 2020 would not have been a team able to compete for a championship. This year he would be taking up 25 mill and last years 25 mill would have reduced the carry forward so our 60 mill in cap room would have been 10 mill and we would be patching and plugging an insufficient roster with few resources to do so while rebuilding with a 43 year old qb.
It was time to pay the overdue bills and start fresh because keeping Brady would have resulted in him leading further degraded teams from 2019 forward
We would not have won a championship in his career span.
Him moving on ultimately will be looked at as the best thing for all parties.
Now we need to move up and draft a damn QB

This should be read carefully and fully.

People have to accept the fact that a team is either competing for a Lombardi or they are not. "Keeping Brady" is useless.

 

[sean10mm]

Keeping Brady was probably useless in 2020 only because of the general roster rot due to several years of bad draft/FA/trade moves that couldn't be cleared from the books until 2021. But at 43 it would have been dumb for Brady to hang around for a rebuilding year in NE when he could just get a real shot at another ring in TB.

Paying Brady a real salary while fielding a strong roster clearly wasn't a problem for Tampa Bay.