Agreed on all fronts. I was a huge proponent of starting Mac over Cam. But I’m speaking strictly from RKK’s perspective regarding what to do about Bill. If RKK stepped in and pushed Bill to draft Mac, and now Mac is at the center of almost every loss this team endures, how critical can RKK really be of Bill?
Backup QB is not a position. QB is the position. They had Mac as the QB this season, and Zappe(and Malik Cunningham to a much lesser extent) was the "competition" for the job.
Sure. But obviously they’ll need to learn the O and all that stuff. At this point for this team, who cares. But if we were playing well and competing for a playoff spot, that’d be an issue.
This was the offseason where all reporting was, the Patriots brought Ziegler back and promised him he would have say on who they drafted, that Belichick was willing to cede some control.
Millen had like four last minute GW drives here…which is three more than Mac has had.
small nitpick but Belichick was talking about having a backup for Manning and having a backup for Brady - two of the best QBs of all time.
With Cunningham, it could be Cam-style QB ball all over again, with a better arm and worse RB skills. I don't remember that as especially fun football to watch, but at least it brings hope. They also don't really have the right guys for it, with no FB (maybe Pharaoh is given a shot there).
Show your work.
I always remember the game against the Broncos where we had a chance to win late in the game down in the red zone. Time was an issue and Millen scrambled and then tried to run it into the end zone. He burned too much time off the clock, got tackled short, and the game was over. The next day herald headline was "A Hugh-miliating defeat."
The concept that coaches with defensive backgrounds cannot coach a good offense has been debunked numerous times in the NFL.
I'm fully on board that Mac needs to go and cannot be considered the future QB of this team. But this take is completely ridiculous.
Of course they can. And BB is the embodiment of that for the last 23 years.
In his Patriots career (12 games), Tommy Hodson had a QB rating of 64.1; Mac Jones this awful season is at 80.2, his career worst (QBR wasn't calculated back in Hodson's day and cannot be used for year-to-year comparisons anyway). Scott Zolak is also up there in the list of all time bad Patriots QB's. But, to be fair, none of them were first round picks, but were instead drafted to be developmental/backup players (Hodson in the 3rd round, Zolak in the 4th).
Right. Mac may be more disappointing than Hodson, say, but he's a far, far better NFL QB.
Tom Hodson's passer rating+ by year: 89, 60, 90.
Makes sense. I just worry that people are taking for granted the value of a good NFL coach, even one who is currently sucking. For years we all marveled at the stupidity of other teams' coaches while being glad that BB was the Pats' and it might be impulsive to just toss him out while there's still value there. The idea that the NFL has moved on without him and that is era has passed is certainly possible, but I do wonder if resurrecting the franchise in 2024 - without a Tom Brady - might be something he's capable of. It's easy to forget just how innovative BB was once upon a time, and that every other coach was just playing catch-up. I remember how crazy people thought it was when he had the first SB team in 2001 come out together, rather than announcing starts one at a time. That BB might still be in there somewhere. Or maybe not.
I think I've written this before, but I don't get how Zolak was ever even drafted. He started one year at Maryland. He completed 53.8% of his passes with a 6.2 YPA, 10 TD, and 19 INT.
It feels like we are seeing less and less of this by the week. And in fact, it is going in the opposite direction. Not having a punt returner out there yesterday?
Lol, how could they have played hard ball with him? What, they would franchise him for 35 million when they weren't willing to extend him at 25 AAV?
Yes, this might also be true - that he's genuinely lost his fastball and these are the hanging curves he's trying to substitute in there.
This is an important point that I'm sure helps explain a lot of the current anti-BB sentiment. I agree that Bill seemed obsessive about trying to spot the cliff that Brady was assuredly approaching. And I do understand that focus from the perspective of Bill the GM. Short deals, limit the money, don't crush the cap, all that stuff..
Yeah, I'm not buying the "Tom Brady was miserable in his last few years in New England" narrative. However, there was certainly a lot of smoke around there being friction between Brady and Belichick in that final season. At the same time, the Pats (aka, Belichick) also went all in for both 2018 and 2019, insuring that the team would have a cap reset year in 2020, which also coincided with Brady's free agency. The alternative was probably to find a way to ink Brady to an extension to cover the 2020-22 seasons.
And neither Millen nor Hodson nor Secules nor anyone else you want to name was a first round pick that was supposed to be the next franchise QB for the team.
I also got the sense that Brady had FOMO about what it would be like to play elsewhere. His marriage in retrospect was collapsing and he was getting older and admittedly sick of the winters in New England.
The franchise tag was about $26M at the time and there's a big difference between a single year and multiyear extension. So your made up example doesn't really make any sense. Lol.
I think he had FOMO of not passing Jordan because the Pats roster aged out. If that team had the same talent level of, say 2014-17, I am confident both he and Gronk stay.
If by "calling for BB's head now" you mean a midseason coaching change, then I agree. He has earned the right to finish out the year even if the team is going to go in a different direction - and I don't think making the move early helps anything, unless you think BB will rip off a 6 game win streak and wreck the team's draft chances.
This is mostly a good post in that it honestly calls out the main grounds for complaint against Belichick, which I have bolded.
I have it on very good authority (i.e., Matthew Slater) that BB *has* adjusted his coaching style, especially with respect to his players. He definitely treated Brady differently when Brady was older compared to when he was younger. Still coached him hard, but absolutely gave him the respect Brady had earned. We don't see it from the outside, but according to Slater, Belichick has not only adjusted with individual players, he's adapted to a changing overall culture.
The bolded is axiomatic - of course we are making judgments based on imperfect information. As in, let's be perfectly honest - most of us have really no idea at all what goes on behind closed doors at 1 Patriot Place.
I disagree with this. I think it's watching this trend unfold over the last 4 years. Being pissed at BB is kind of the icing on the cake. Like my thought process is generally, the team (and especially offense) seems to be getting worse... they're further away from contending than March 2020... they're boring... AND BB semi ushered TB12 out of town only to see him win a ring. I don't want BB to leave because I'm pissed at him. I want him to leave because I no longer think he is capable of building a championship team. Being pissed is just window dressing. For me personally.
They weren't allowed to franchise him because of a clause that was added to his contract, which (IMO) made it obvious that he wanted out.
That was why I complimented JimD for being so honest about how his feelings factor in. In my post I said that there's an argument to be made that the team needs a studs rebuild and maybe BFB isn't the guy. You are making the case that 1. The team is worse than they were three years ago (no argument) but also implying that this means that the head must be lopped off (which needs more support IMO), and 2. one (key) personnel decision made three years ago clearly means that Belichick isn't the guy. It's a light case.
The bolded may have been difficult. The Pats were going to be tight against the cap even without Brady's contract restructure that added the void years (along with the agreement to not use the tag). The Pats could not apply the franchise tag unless they had the free cap space to do so, and they would be tying up that space for a decent amount of time while they worked out a trade. I don't recall the exact cap situation at the time of the Brady restructure, but IIRC they did use some of the space freed up in 2019 to sign Antonio Brown and to bring in Sanu via trade.
No, that's not what I am saying on 2. I was on board with the decision. I'm just pissed how it all played out. Like... we ushered out Brady, only to end up with this? I understood the cap issues at the time and that the Pats weren't in position to truly compete. So, I was ok with ripping the bandaid off. But we're no better off now, and most would argue we are worse off. The Brady situation would actually be very very low on the list of transactional type activity that I would hold against BB.
Lot of truth in both of these posts, though the trouble for me is that taking the 8slim route is obvious in hindsight and was less clear 4 years ago. Prior to the last two years, I had near infinite trust that with Bill steering the ship and the Krafts writing the checks that the best path to not only continuing the long term success but potentially even ring #7 was to get younger including at QB. (Even as bad as the current trajectory is, I'm still not 100% convinced that I wouldn't believe it if Mac had even turned out to be healthy JG-level good, but this isn't really meant to be a save Bill post so I digress.)
They gave him a bonus to spread out his cap hit, not as a gesture of good will towards Tom. Come on.
Uh...Manning and Rodgers immediately come to mind. Favre as well.
