I have to say I'm finding this thread to be fun and interesting. I'm one of the guilty BBTB members who posted much more from 2008-2018 and have been less visible in recent years, but I have been looking to this forum to help process some of what's happening.
I wonder if this thread has taken off because it turned into a catchall -- instead of evaluating Belichick individually, or Mac individually, or whatever, it's easier to sort of talk about everything in this one space.
A few quick additional thoughts:
Putting aside the specifics of the Garoppolo situation (which continues to be shrouded in some amount of mystery to me) this final point I have thought about from time to time -- the entire post-Brady era feels like an indictment of Belichick's "next man up," "no player bigger than the team" philosophy (to the extent that that is indeed his philosophy?).
Ultimately, it's an indictment of the front office & coaching staff to go into the 2023 season with a QB room led by Mac & Zappe with nothing behind them. Further evidence of your point: after Brady left after 2019, Belichick seemed to have no concrete plan in place and waited until almost the start of training camp to bring in Cam Newton on a short money deal -- perhaps relatedly, Cam himself has claimed he
was still learning the playbook halfway through the 2020 season.
That said...
You could make another case looking at Belichick's career, couldn't you? In 2000, he famously kept 4 QBs on the roster so as not to risk losing Brady. In early 2001, he signed Bledsoe to what was then considered "
the biggest contract in NFL history." Throughout even Brady's ageless prime years, he continued to spend high draft picks on backup QBs (Garoppolo most notably in the 2nd round in '14, but also O'Connell in the 3rd round in '08, and Jacoby Brissett in the 3rd in '16) to the consternation of many fans ("Why waste a pick on a backup QB when the season will be over if Brady's hurt anyway?"). Even Mac himself was obviously a 1st round draft pick.
So like many of the failures of the 2023, even this one I struggle to analyze beyond basically repeating this: