2018 TB Off-Season Thread
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What can the team say? Neither Kraft nor Belichick are going to discuss what Brady is thinking right now, especially in reaction to baseless speculation by a second tier news organization (yes, that is what ESPN has become). A retirement would be Brady's decision, and so there is nothing the team can publicly say that would end the speculation. If there are contract negotiations going on, it's in the team's best interest to say nothing about those negotiations; the team has never publicly commented on contract discussions until they are done, and they are not going to change that now. Far more to lose than to gain by saying anything.
Meanwhile, Brady is a bit busy on other matters right now, and really doesn't owe ESPN or Tom Curran a response.
And the story also broke when Brady is on the other side of the friggin' world and like 12 time zones away and it would be an enormous pain in the ass for him to call in somewhere and refute things. One inclined to think the worst of people might suspect ESPN sat on this "story" until they knew Brady wouldn't be able to address it for a few days and it might have a chance to grow legs.
Brady cares what some ESPN head says about as much as he cares what I'm typing right now.
Or now.
Or now.
It isn't that simple. Jimmy G was traded, because they decided on Tom. His trainer's ideas seem dubious at best, and there is no dispute Belicek wanted to curtail his influence. It is just as sound to say the conventional thinking on this board, that reporters, and news organizations conspire to paint absolute falsehoods about Tom Brady, seems at least as foolish. It is silly to stae we can only discuss that which we have first hand knowledge of, on this board. I even said "if" Tom wanted Jimmy G traded.
If Tom does retire, it will be annoying, because Jimmy looks to be pretty good.
I don't think he will. There is little to make me doubt his desire to play longer. He had a TV series about his ability to fight time. It would surprise me if anything but injury or another championship will get him to retire.
My point is that how he ends career could alter our view of him, and we are not obligated to feel 100% positively toward him no matter what.
If Tom Brady did retire, would he go down as the greatest Boston(ish) (team sport) athlete ever? His regular season accomplishments might not quite match Ted Williams but they're close, and Brady dominates in championships. Orr might have been better in his prime but Brady has way more longevity. It's a toss up between Brady and Bill Russell IMO. Russell has better accomplishments on paper (5-time MVP, 11-time champion) and also has the coaching / social consciousness angle; Brady dominated in a more competitive league than the '60's NBA.
Has to be Brady. He is the GOAT at the most demanding position in all of the major sports and is arguably the best football player of all-time. He has multiple MVPs, all the counting stats, and 5 rings (should be 6 grrrr). He has the greatest comeback in SB history and tons of other postseason heroics. He also damn near led them to a perfect season. When you factor in everything he accomplished, he’s in the pantheon with greats like MJ, Ruth, Gretzky, etc.
Bill Russell was the greatest winner the NBA has ever seen but he played at a time when there were 8-14 teams in the league. The talent level was not nearly as deep as it is today. I’m not trying to knock him but merely offering a caveat when comparing to Brady.
The NFL over the past decade plus was basically designed to remove dominant teams and Brady basically said eff that and dominated anyways. I think the 7 straight conference championship game appearances is an accomplishment that will never come close to being approached given how the league is set up and how difficult it is to win from year to year.
I find it remarkable that anyone can hold anything against this guy given what he accomplished and how he has handled himself during two decades of grueling physical wear and tear and media scrutiny.
Agree and think it has coincided with his nightly BST gig...he's creating content because he needs something to talk about for 6 hours (or how every long that terrible show is). It's sad.
This is why I want him to get another title. I think he ends up as the GOAT of GOATs with one more title.
Despite a certain level of uncertainty within the New England Patriots' organization, Tom Brady's agent, Don Yee, said he expects his client Tom Brady to return for the 2018 season.
"Tom's intentions have not changed," Yee said Monday. "He's consistently said he'll play beyond this contract and into his mid 40s, or until he feels he isn't playing at a championship level. I understand the constant speculation, but this is one point he's been firm about."
Just last week, multiple sources said they believed Brady would return for the 2018 season, but didn't know he would return for it. One source even estimated that there was a "75 percent" chance that Brady would be back -- meaning there was a 25 percent chance he wouldn't be. It is why it has become a question within the Patriots' organization in recent weeks whether Brady would walk away from the game. But Yee tried to dispel this idea Monday.
To that point, Brady is training every day. "He customizes his preparation to each season in order to maximize his performance," Yee said. "His training methods are always evolving and getting better. The year he missed the first four games -- that month of training on his own was particularly efficient."
Asked how Brady feels about his contract, which will pay him well less than what his former understudy Jimmy Garoppolo will make in San Francisco, Yee said: "His objective every year is to outperform his contract and his own goals. And like every player, yes, he thinks about his contract -- it's a pretty natural thing to do. Every team's management knows this."
http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/23295447/agent-expects-tom-brady-play-new-england-patriots-2018
"Tom's intentions have not changed," Yee said Monday. "He's consistently said he'll play beyond this contract and into his mid 40s, or until he feels he isn't playing at a championship level. I understand the constant speculation, but this is one point he's been firm about."
Just last week, multiple sources said they believed Brady would return for the 2018 season, but didn't know he would return for it. One source even estimated that there was a "75 percent" chance that Brady would be back -- meaning there was a 25 percent chance he wouldn't be. It is why it has become a question within the Patriots' organization in recent weeks whether Brady would walk away from the game. But Yee tried to dispel this idea Monday.
To that point, Brady is training every day. "He customizes his preparation to each season in order to maximize his performance," Yee said. "His training methods are always evolving and getting better. The year he missed the first four games -- that month of training on his own was particularly efficient."
Asked how Brady feels about his contract, which will pay him well less than what his former understudy Jimmy Garoppolo will make in San Francisco, Yee said: "His objective every year is to outperform his contract and his own goals. And like every player, yes, he thinks about his contract -- it's a pretty natural thing to do. Every team's management knows this."
http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/23295447/agent-expects-tom-brady-play-new-england-patriots-2018
There's a certain level of uncertainty as to whether the Patriots will play half their home games at Fenway Park next season. I see ESPN is now running inception-style articles to try to legitimize the fabricated content they churn out down in Bristol.
EDIT: I'd wager that even the unnamed source with unnamed credentials only estimated that 75% figure after being asked to assign a likelihood Brady's return, and given a choice of 100%, 75%, 50%, 25% or 0%.
Schefter on ESPN just now:
"Don Yee also said that Tom Brady has thought about his contact, which pays him considerably less than Jimmy Garropolo, his former understudy."
And
"This is an issue that doesn't seem like it's going away anytime soon."
"Don Yee also said that Tom Brady has thought about his contact, which pays him considerably less than Jimmy Garropolo, his former understudy."
And
"This is an issue that doesn't seem like it's going away anytime soon."
What issue? His contract? Or “certainty regarding uncertainty in the Patriots locker room”?
Edit: I missed that that had already been said more snarkily upthread.
Edit: I missed that that had already been said more snarkily upthread.
I thought that the Patriots were paying him on the side for TB12? That's how they've been getting around the cap for years and cheating the process.
Schefter allowed himself to get played by a network forever iso clicks. He does not like it. It’s beneath him most of the time. He is lashing out in wake of Yee statement. The wiser course would have been to say nothing. This issue gets swamped by Thursday night.
He just keeps doubling down, while at the same time trying to leave himself an escape hatch by carefully choosing his words so as to give the appearance that he's saying something while not technically actually saying anything (that there's a "certain" level of uncertainty- inclusive of 0- about Brady's return or that Brady has "thought" about his contract are both undeniably true statements).
I wonder which one of his two solariums Shefter was sitting in when he churned out this latest gem (yes, TWO solariums).
“The draft is over. This station will now return to regularly scheduled programming.”
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2018/04/30/does-tom-brady-feel-appreciated-i-plead-the-fifth/
Passive/aggressive crap is getting old.
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2018/04/30/does-tom-brady-feel-appreciated-i-plead-the-fifth/
Passive/aggressive crap is getting old.
Better article on that here:
https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/tom-brady-on-whether-he-feels-appreciated-by-the-patriots-i-plead-the-fifth/
The cbssports article sheds much more light and gives much more context to the quotes than the PFT article does. In that same interview, Brady was very complimentary towards Belichick. So it wasn't nearly as bad as it sounds.
Pffft, even Tom Curran will tell you the rest of the comments are meaningless and how big a deal this really is. He's grown pretty tiresome through this ordeal. As has everybody else. Wake me up in September.
i dont envy mr kraft in this spot
bill wanted jimmy to replace him and kraft said no
because bill knows there will be a drop off but kraft did not want to get manning ie have brady win a SB with someone else
if i was kraft i would traded both brady and gronk
fegler and mazz are right about 1 thing this did speed up the ending a littie while without brady bill wouild had coached 8-10 more years or with jimmy now i think its 5 years max as bill and brady are going to try to outlive the other
saying all that what u do now is A let brady gronk deals go up in 2 years and do not re-sign him because Deep Down bill wants to win 1 Without brady or B trady Brady Gronk in the 2019 off season Brady to Dal Gronk to LARams where u could have 3 ones 3 twos and 3 three and a 2020 first as brady gives J Jones a 3y comment and jones signed brady to 3y 90 mil fully gut
bill wanted jimmy to replace him and kraft said no
because bill knows there will be a drop off but kraft did not want to get manning ie have brady win a SB with someone else
if i was kraft i would traded both brady and gronk
fegler and mazz are right about 1 thing this did speed up the ending a littie while without brady bill wouild had coached 8-10 more years or with jimmy now i think its 5 years max as bill and brady are going to try to outlive the other
saying all that what u do now is A let brady gronk deals go up in 2 years and do not re-sign him because Deep Down bill wants to win 1 Without brady or B trady Brady Gronk in the 2019 off season Brady to Dal Gronk to LARams where u could have 3 ones 3 twos and 3 three and a 2020 first as brady gives J Jones a 3y comment and jones signed brady to 3y 90 mil fully gut
Bill wanted Jimmy to replace Brady and Kraft said no?
So you buy the Wickersham story hook line and sinker, despite 17 years of pretty congruent storylines to the contrary? Despite that with everything we know about each of them, the described behavior would be not in their nature?
So you buy the Wickersham story hook line and sinker, despite 17 years of pretty congruent storylines to the contrary? Despite that with everything we know about each of them, the described behavior would be not in their nature?
Love QB baby drama. NFL’s Lebron, Baby Ben Hamlet, butt hurt by the draft. Retirement talk no more; now, 3 to 5 years.
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2018/05/01/ben-roethlisberger-if-mason-rudolphs-the-guy-it-wont-be-for-a-while/
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2018/05/01/ben-roethlisberger-if-mason-rudolphs-the-guy-it-wont-be-for-a-while/
I realize that you're a fan of a competing team, so you may not realize the cap implications of trading Brady to keep Garropolo. Depending upon who you believe, the Pats would have absorbed a dead money charge of either $14M or $28M (I've heard both figures reported). There is no way to reduce or eliminate or somehow "work around" this cap hit, no matter what Felger claims about the "cap being crap".
Then the team would have needed to find room to sign Jimmy G, who was unlikely to sign for a below-market contract. Or the Pats could have franchised him, absorbing a $23M cap hit, which is still less than the $37M of cap space that he takes up on the 49'ers roster. Either way, you'd be looking at dedicating somewhere between $37M and $51M in cap space for one roster position. Trading Gronk would have saved $6M, but that would still leave the team over the cap with no way to bring in the players they did bring in this offseason.
Did Bill leave a meeting with the Krafts upset and angry? May have happened. Why? One theory is that one of the Krafts had gotten off the phone with Don Yee (agent for both QB's), and Yee had made it clear in no uncertain terms that there was no way Jimmy G was going to take any "home town discount" to stay with Pats.
I believe it when I hear Bill say they would have loved to have kept both QB's in 2018. But there was simply no way to make it happen without gutting the rest of the roster. And that has nothing to do with Kraft, Bill, Volin, or Felger; it's just simple math.
Trading JG was not the problem...the return was the problem. As reported, BB called only one team (what GM does such a thing with your most valuable asset) and asked for a 2nd round pick and Hoyer (if there are facts to the contrary no one has heard them). That was ridiculous at the time and only looks worse in hindsight. People who reflexively defend BB will say, "what do you expect for a guy who only started 2 games", which is ludicrous given what JG showed when he played (including pre season) and the reputation and respect the Pats coaches garner (BB, JM). The Niners got "only" a half season of JG, but the invaluable right to franchise / sign him, which essentially resulted in them getting a franchise QB for pick 43.
Like the post. Who was it directed to?
The cap implications of trading Brady have not been sufficiently explored before this.
And people can say what they want, but multiple firsts was a pipe dream. For a 40 year old, nope. TB probably worth more to SF than most other teams, so maybe you get a first plus, but that’s it.
The sad fact is the succession plans were ruined by TB playing at a very high level and having no interest in retiring. And once you decided to keep JG as a form of health insurance — a move I understood and endorsed — you were putting a cap on his return in a trade.
Had they franchised him, they would have tied up cap space and their bluff eventually would have been called. They could not carry both.
The bolded is a pretty big caveat given the opacity of the whole situation. As you state, it makes no sense whatsoever that BB or any other GM would call "only one team," so unless Jim Irsay spiked the entire front office's drinks with something that didn't happen. Do you really think Belichick, Caserio, et al. would have said "Wow, we could get a better offer from Team X maybe, but screw it, we're not going to call them." If so, why do you think they made that decision?
Keep in mind the Browns and every other team that might have had interest in JG has a very strong motive to tell reporters "they didn't call us" or even "we had previously made a better offer and they turned us down." If a GM came out and said "yeah we were in on the JG talks, but only offered a lower second rounder" or something like that, the fans would be pissed and they'd have to deal with nonstop questions about why they didn't try harder to get him. Taking everything into consideration, there just simply is no plausible way that SF's offer wasn't the best at that time (it may not have been better than some of the offers prior to or at last year's draft, but the timing of the trade is a separate debate).
Even this aspect needs to be explored a bit beyond what's being reported.
Once the Pats decided to trade JG, they were at that point on the hook for finding a replacement at backup QB. We can scoff at their getting Hoyer, but the fact remains that Brady was still 40 once that trade went down, and chances were non-zero that Brady would have to miss a game or two. Small as they were, it would be GM malpractice to not be prepared for that possibility. And of all the options that were available to them at backup QB in October, Hoyer was probably by far the least bad. Would Hoyer had been able to lead the Pats to the Super Bowl? Probably not. But would he had been able to win a game or two down the stretch had Brady to miss a game with a concussion? Absolutely. And that 1 or 2 games could mean the difference between earning a bye for the wild card round, or a bye for the entire playoffs. And there was no way to get Hoyer without making a trade with the 49'ers.
If there was a mistake, it was probably trading Jacoby Brissett for minimal return in September. With Brissett on the roster, the Pats may have had the flexibility to explore different options and may have been able to boost the return. But, without Brissett, that flexibility was gone, and like it or not Bill valued the insurance policy more than most fans or media types do.
And Hoyer. I know it won’t be a popular point of view, but I think getting Hoyer also factored into the decision as well. Let’s not overlook that he’s a very serviceable back-up QB that is familiar with the BB/Josh system.
Edit: Lex beat me to the punch and adds some additional clarity.
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Yup. They carried QB insurance throughout 2017, paid a heavy premium, and that is far from crazy.
Agree on Brissett. Bill choked on sacrificing another roster spot when he probably shouldn’t have. Or, he was way over his skis on the likelihood of persuading JG to stick around.
Or he thought that Brissett really wasn't very good and had next to no value to the Patriots.
“good enough” — for what?
For a backup and spot starting duty? Then Bill was wrong. With a far less talented squad, JB played 16 games last year and did well enough.
As Brady successor? Fine. But lex’s point was that the failure to have capable backup on the roster perhaps dictated the JG trade to SF, diminishing their leverage. With JG and JB both gone, they needed Hoyer.
I'm not sure what about Brissett's season says "well enough" other than a failure to calibrate for the rise in modern passing statistics and the lowered expectations of playing on a bad, go-nowhere team. Indy finished 30th in points, 31st in yards. Brissett was 30th in completion %, 29th in TD %, 29th in QBR. He did finish 24th in Y/A, 24th in ANY/A, and 22nd in passer rating, and he did a nice job avoiding INT, and certainly not all of Indy's passing game futility should be laid at his feet. But NFL1000 ranked him the 34th-best QB in the NFL last year. So far, he's proven he's better than Scott Tolzein, who is so bad that I fear I spelled his name wrong and I'm still not even going to look it up to see if it's "ie" or "ei." I don't think Belichick is losing any sleep over trading Brissett away.
Also, Dorsett wasn't good, but they did need a fourth WR at the time. Slater was hurt to begin the year, as was Mitchell, and Edelman had just torn his ACL.
EDIT: also, I've pulling for Jimmy G, but if him succeeding means we're going to relitigate the trade every couple months for years on end, I hope he fails hard. Nothing new has happened, no one is saying anything new but for some reason people feel the need to opine about it.
Well enough to back up a few games if Brady went down, to salvage a season until Brady returned. JB played 16.
Check Hoyer’s stats when he played 13 games for Cleveland then 16 for Houston then try to make the case he was appreciably better than Brissett was for Indy last season.
Check Hoyer’s stats when he played 13 games for Cleveland then 16 for Houston then try to make the case he was appreciably better than Brissett was for Indy last season.
In a nutshell Hoyer has thrown at a similar completion % with both more TDs and more picks.
He did somehow have a winning record as a starter before last year. In fact he was 10-6 as a starter for Cleveland which is crazy considering they are 1-31 the last two years. He was also 5-4 for Houston.