Alternative-history debate I was having with another Pats-fan friend today. Why not pose it here, what the hell else are we doing right now.
Suppose Brady rips the still-beating hearts out of Atlanta fans in SB51, eats it on live TV like he did... and then promptly retires after the game, considering his job to be done. And who would have blamed him? Jimmy G, the heir apparent, actually inherits.
Garoppolo starts 16 games in 2017 and 2018, on a cap hit comparable to Brady. The rest of the core team stays the same - and why wouldn't it. We successfully convince him not to make as many stupid runs, and so he avoids tearing his ACL. We more or less saw what he was across his 24 starts to-date for SFO: good accuracy, fast read of a play, great mobility, but enough overconfidence that he makes more than his share of ill-advised throws and thus INTs.
I don't think JG leads that comeback against Jacksonville, but maybe he does. He probably doesn't get within sniffing distance of the SB against the Eagles like Brady did, but either way my friend and I agree that nobody was beating KC in that 2018 AFCCG except Brady.
But what about the super bowl? Put him on that team, with that defense, and with the huge coaching mismatch of Belichick vs McVay. Can Jimmy convert a few extra third downs with his legs? Can he avoid the mistakes that Brady did, allowing the defense to gradually put LA to the sword? If he needed to break their back with a perfect seam throw to Gronk, could he have made it happen? That game was such a defensive face-crush by Gilmore, McCourty, Van Noy et al, so much more of a blowout than the final score ever indicated, that I think an average NFL QB would still win that game 7-8 times out of 10. He thinks most QBs fuck it up somehow, and that JG was put in a similar situation with a similarly dominant defense this year, and when he needed to (A) salt away a 10-point 4Q lead, and then (B) lead a comeback to salvage the game after fucking it up, he failed on both counts. But then again, that wasn't with Belichick on his sideline.
Counterfactuals by definition can't be proven, but I'm curious what most people think here.
Suppose Brady rips the still-beating hearts out of Atlanta fans in SB51, eats it on live TV like he did... and then promptly retires after the game, considering his job to be done. And who would have blamed him? Jimmy G, the heir apparent, actually inherits.
Garoppolo starts 16 games in 2017 and 2018, on a cap hit comparable to Brady. The rest of the core team stays the same - and why wouldn't it. We successfully convince him not to make as many stupid runs, and so he avoids tearing his ACL. We more or less saw what he was across his 24 starts to-date for SFO: good accuracy, fast read of a play, great mobility, but enough overconfidence that he makes more than his share of ill-advised throws and thus INTs.
I don't think JG leads that comeback against Jacksonville, but maybe he does. He probably doesn't get within sniffing distance of the SB against the Eagles like Brady did, but either way my friend and I agree that nobody was beating KC in that 2018 AFCCG except Brady.
But what about the super bowl? Put him on that team, with that defense, and with the huge coaching mismatch of Belichick vs McVay. Can Jimmy convert a few extra third downs with his legs? Can he avoid the mistakes that Brady did, allowing the defense to gradually put LA to the sword? If he needed to break their back with a perfect seam throw to Gronk, could he have made it happen? That game was such a defensive face-crush by Gilmore, McCourty, Van Noy et al, so much more of a blowout than the final score ever indicated, that I think an average NFL QB would still win that game 7-8 times out of 10. He thinks most QBs fuck it up somehow, and that JG was put in a similar situation with a similarly dominant defense this year, and when he needed to (A) salt away a 10-point 4Q lead, and then (B) lead a comeback to salvage the game after fucking it up, he failed on both counts. But then again, that wasn't with Belichick on his sideline.
Counterfactuals by definition can't be proven, but I'm curious what most people think here.