10000% yes, to that question.
Nobody on this board has been more critical of BB and his moves on the offensive side of the ball over the past 5 years than I have. You can go into the 2023 draft thread, or any offseason thread, or any thread involving the offense and you'll find me predicting a bottom 5 offense this season, and saying after the draft, "great, now they'll lose games 28-7 instead of 38-7." I've argued for years that Brady didn't leave because Bill pushed him out, or he wasn't paid enough or their relationship soured. Tom Brady left because he wants to play for Super Bowls, and he knew after that 2019 season, the 2020 Pats were not going to be talented enough to compete, and to me, that's all on Bill.
So yes, if folks want to say that Bill hasn't won since Tom Brady left because of mistakes Bill has made, you'll get no pushback from me. But to say Bill couldn't have won without Tom Brady is a bridge so far it may as well burn up in the sun..
This seems like the sanest take possible.
The real pushback has to come to the fiction that BB was an all-knowing football god who could made the impossible possible. He was simply a great football coach with a near-savant level knowledge of football tactics and history who helped his players succeed at a level hitherto impossible over a span of decades. It allows anyone to say Walsh was as great, or Gibbs, or Lombardi (it’s a small list), with the caveat that no one did it as long as BB did.
And being the executive of a football team means handling hundreds of moving pieces, hundreds of steps of delegation and execution. At the very least, he allowed the greatest qb of all time to be his greatest self.
But he was more than that. He coached, he strategize, he encouraged, he made tough decisions, he made mistakes (some terrible ones). He enabled and pushed and blocked the noise and prodded Brady to be himself, even when things looked bleak for TB (let’s not forget those moments).
DotB and others have already detailed his long ongoing blind spots, and his more recent failures. It may be that aging, the wear and grind of the years, the loss of so many core guys from coaching and staff and team have left him shaken and conflicted and unable to right the team. Maybe this is all over, and he is in large part to blame for these recent years and their poor and depressing play. And a change is not the worst thing to happen.
But really, the guy has been successful beyond measure. He and Tom were lucky to have each other, and it’s been magical. I love the memories. Let’s not believe it was based on fraud and malpractice overcome by a cleft-chinned superman.