Heres my conspiracy theory and I hope its right (but its not because in a close game like that you use what you can to win).
I won’t speak for the poster, but in my view his is the cannier way to look at it. Over the latter half of his career, up to and including this year, Brady has been stubborn about going to players who are less experienced (which, yes, means they’re often less down-to-the-inch precise) in the offense.
This is lazy and BS. Cite examples. Did Brady not trust Malcolm Mitchell in 2016?
The "Brady doesn't throw to rookies" is a meme that needs to die a slow and excruciating death. Brady had no problems throwing to Malcolm Mitchell, Gronk, Aaron Hernandez, and even Aaron Dobson and Kembrell Thompkins when they were rookies. The latter two did nothing after leaving New England, which has been the case of most young players that don't work out here.
You hear this quite often these days but is it valid? Are there stats that back it up?
Kevin Faulk?
Faulk is the guy most people refer to as the best at this, but I think White surpasses even him.
So as the original poster you are closer to what I was saying. I didn’t realize this would open a huge discussion. Brady, especially this year, doesn’t have time to go through 4 progressions when he’s going to throw the ball. I also believe he doesn’t trust the younger guys at all unless he needs to, which is normal. My point originally was that this would force him to use the guys who were previously 4th and 5th reads and maybe look to them more often when the primary was covered instead of forcing it to Edelman or Gordon (which he seemed to do a lot last year)
Others have addressed the main point here, so I'm not going to pile on, but
This makes a lot of sense. I couldn't imagine they'd be lessening his role on purpose
Good point on the not fumbling emphasis. I remember one play in particular where Sony was in the secondary and two guys converged on him. He put his head down and covered up, and ended up going down even though neither guy got a good hit on him. That seemed like one instance where the more cautious approach might have cost a big run.
I bet this is equal parts not dumping on guy that just had good game and an acknowledgment that the OL has caused a lot of issues. If they thought the issue was Sony they'd have given others more carries, given Harris a shot, etc.
I’d love to see the “Brady’s circle of trust” stuff go away for good myself. But a small correction re: the M&Ms myth: the band was Van Halen, and the reason for this clause in their rider was the same sort of attention to detail that you rightly ascribe to the Patriots.
Mitchell was not exactly Terry Glenn as a rookie. He had 32 catches on 48 targets with a 12.5ypc average.
Every time I see one of these clips I think of guys like Reggie Wayne who didn’t fit in with the Pats because “they work too hard.” Those guys in the locker room sure seem miserable with all that winning.
Yet Reggie Wayne somehow had a lot of success, team and personal, for someone who apparently didn’t like to work very hard. It’s almost like there are multiple ways to do things.
That's better phrased as “the story that David Lee Roth told decades after the fact in his autobiography attempted to explain that clause in their rider as being out of an attention to detail”. Personally, I don't buy it at all; he'd taken abuse over the M&M clause for nearly 2 decades before suddenly coming up with that story, and there's no corroborating evidence. And the rest of the chapter is full of attempts at explaining why destroying his green room in a fit of rage was really a pre-planned action taken for safety reasons and such.
