Its more like "We've had an amazing run together, we'll always be in your debt, and you'll always be the greatest player in franchise history but you're going to be 42 in 2019 and we owe it to the rest of the players and the coaches to do what is best for the team."
Teams move on from aging star QBs. It happened with Joe Montana, Peyton Manning, Brett Favre, Johnny Unitas, and many more. You can do it respectfully and maintain a great player-franchise relationship afterward. Handled well, the team moving on from Brady in advance of his age 42 season - truly ancient in football terms - would be far from disrespectful. The cold harsh reality is that Tom Brady is highly highly likely to either hang them on his own accord or just not be nearly the same player by age 42. I know people don't want to hear that and would prefer to believe in the fantasy of an avocado fueled cyborg QB playing at an MVP level several years past the point when anybody has ever played the position at a very high level. But the people running the team need to look at the struggle against Father Time a bit more objectively. Choosing to hurt the team's competitiveness to ensure that Tom Brady goes out on his own terms no matter what would be a slap in the face to the rest of the players and the coaching staff. A team has to be bigger than one person and I think Tom Brady would be the first guy to agree.
I certainly 'get' that Brady is getting old. I don't really need the 'avocado' reference.
The Niners had a HoF QB on the bench and Montana had injury issues. They also didn't have a salary cap to deal with to keep Young there in the wings.
The Colts had the #1 pick in a year when there was a stud sitting there while their old franchise QB had spinal fusion.
The Packers had an injury prone and old Favre when what *should have been the #1 pick fall into their laps.
I have no idea what Unitas has to do with this discussion because he was awful long before the Colts let him go, but sure.
Of course teams move on from aging QBs. But to suggest that they would move on regardless of his performance, based purely on his age seems to me to be kind of foolhardy. And no, I'm sorry, if he plays like he did last season this year, they're not having that conversation, that he has one more year and then bye bye. Once again, they have talked about extending him from what we have heard. Wtf makes people think they are gonna toss him to the curb?
It sucks that the timing don't work out better, but TB is an anomaly in every sense of the word. I have no earthly idea why people are so quick to wish him away as soon as possible. Accuse me of straw men all you like, but it's insane to me to think that JG steps in and we have anywhere near the run we've had. Just fucking cherish it.
This is literally part of why the rest of the country and fanbases hate us. We're so consumed by our spoilage that we want to throw TB to the curb, even if he's sustaining his level of play, because we think we can dominate forever.
But it's "respectful", so it's all good.