2023 Pats: Offseason
- Thread starter BaseballJones
- Start date
My guess is this is because top of the roster talent -- via the draft, trade, or free agency -- is relatively easy to identify but difficult to acquire. It's unlikely any individual or organization would develop a method for landing these players that outperforms the group. On the other hand, filling out the middle and bottom of the roster is the true strategic advantage, and it's what BB has been pretty good at.
Surprised no one posted this last night
View: https://twitter.com/mikereiss/status/1641252935823765511?s=46&t=gQzTWfA6ExwxICXs8hA8pA
View: https://twitter.com/mikereiss/status/1641252935823765511?s=46&t=gQzTWfA6ExwxICXs8hA8pA
Sure, the Niners have had some high picks that panned out that we didn't have, but Bill has had a shit ton of picks in recent years that could have been packaged, moved around, moved up and everything he did with respect to the offense was pretty much awful.
Since 2017, the Niners have made 6 1st round picks, 4 second round picks, and 9 third round picks. 2 of those 1st rounders have turned into Bosa (#2) and McGlinchey (#9). Kinlaw at #14 has played only 10 games in the last 2 seasons. Lance has been useless at #3, Aiuyuk has been ok to good at #25, Soloman Thomas was a whiff at #3 and isn't with the team anymore and Reuben Thomas at #31 was out of football after 2 seasons.
But in rounds 2 and 3, they've gotten Fred Warner at #70 and Deebo at #36.
They've also gone out and made trades, packaged picks like crazy, brought in guys like CMC with them, etc.
BB has basically stood pat when he isn't trading down. Since 2017, the Pats have had 5 1st round picks, 6 2nd rounders and 9 third rounders. The only offensive starters on the team at this point taken in the first 3 rounds since 2017 are Cole Strange and Mac Jones. We don't need to rehash all of the guys that were available that they didn't take or that they used picks #91 and #101 in the same draft on Tight Ends that have a combined 7 NFL catches, we don't need to try to figure out if Bill had packaged say the Wynn/Michel picks, they could have gone up and gotten a stud defensive player, or just kept their pick and took DJ Moore, and/or Lamar and/or Chubb.
They took Harry in front of Deebo, AJ Brown and Metcalf. That's not a miss, that's malpractice in scouting.
If Uche/Dugger don't work out in 2020, that draft is worse than 2019, which was worse than 2018, IMO. And it's not even just the drafts. His free agent acquisitions on offense have been borderline terrible too, IMO, Jonnu, Henry, Agholor, Parker, Bourne. A bunch of guys that if you squint real hard, you might find a few ok players, but damn, none of those guys move any needles and he spent a small fortune aquiring them.
There have been opportunities everywhere, and Bill hasn't taken them or missed them for whatever reasons. That's why I keep saying we need to take the grocery shopping away from him on offense (of course, I've been on this box since before Brady left) and let someone else handle that, and Bill can focus on the defense and game plans, which IMO, he's still the best in the NFL at.
You can't just pick and choose with these kinds of things. With Bill, he either gets full control or he's out. From my view, Belichick's seat should be getting pretty warm. On the field, he's under .500 since 2020, the only big win he's had since Brady left was at Buffalo in a once-in-a-blue-moon type of weather, and then got completely embarrassed in the only playoff appearance in this timeframe. If you want to throw in the collapse down the stretch in 2019, you can do that too. Off the field, the drafting record has been poor, he mishandled a huge spending spree after 2020, and he completely botched the coaching staff last year to the point there was a ton of internal dysfunction and a complete lack of confidence in the staff. If this was any other coach, would they survive what has gone on the past 4 years? It's Bill so he gets more rope but how much more can this go on? He needs to win now or the whispers about a change will for the first time be warranted.
I agree with the FA misses part. I disagree with your draft takes.
What we know from The Drafting Stage as well as other analytical studies on the draft is that without writing 10 pages of context here trading back = good. Trading up = bad. You want to trade back not up. Keep getting more cracks. The draft is a volume game.
Calling Harry a scouting malpractice is revisionist history. DK Metcalf never topped 650 yards in college. He played 2 games, got injured, then 12, then 7 games and had a fracture in his cervical spine that needed surgery. DK fell because of injury concerns. He had two season ending injuries and one of them was a cervical spine fracture. Typically if guys are injury prone in college they are injury prone in the NFL - another thing analytics has taught us. We know this from GM interviews too. Former GMs talk about why guys like DK fell. It's the medicals.
Now back to Harry. Harry put up a ton of production early in his career. Arif Hasan compiles draft boards and puts together a consensus big board which does better on average than all but the NFL draft order itself! Harry was 32nd on the board. AJ Brown was 27th. Deebo was 40th. Deebo projected as a slot only and had an injury history himself. Harry projected as a versatile WR who could play in the slot or outside. Bill had it narrowed down to those three and picked the wrong guy. Saying it is scouting malpractice is overconfidence in your evals. Sometimes players develop. Other times they don't. It's that simple and you can't just easily predict this stuff. The draft is much more random than most people are comfortable with which is why having more picks and trading down is a good strategy. Harry was a fine pick.
Drafts are inherently small sample sizes with large fluctuations from year to year. The Saints crushed the 2017 draft and then struck out multiple years in a row. It's going to happen. Play the game long enough and teams will go through a 2-4 year stretch where they have bad results.
2020 you have a near pro-bowl safety in Dugger, a starting near pro-bowl caliber OG in Onwenu, a nice DPR in Uche, and Jennings who was a reliable run stuffing rotational edge last year after a poor/injured/out-of-position first two seasons. 2020 was a solid to good draft. I don't understand why you'd say if X player didn't hit it wouldn't have been. Sure, but on the other hand if want to play that game what if Harry hit and Wynn didn't get injured? It cuts both ways.
And you're ignoring the UDFAs. Why? Does JCJ not count? Does Meyers not count? Adam Butler? Brendan Schooler? Myles Bryant is a nice backup that unfortunately has had to start too much. I think you have to consider these guys too.
Hakeem Butler was 37th on this list, 3 above Deebo - this isn't nearly as black and white as you think it is.
I can't believe I am defending the Harry pick given I didn't even like Harry but... don't ever be too over-confident in your evals. That arrogance gets you in trouble.
What we know from The Drafting Stage as well as other analytical studies on the draft is that without writing 10 pages of context here trading back = good. Trading up = bad. You want to trade back not up. Keep getting more cracks. The draft is a volume game.
Calling Harry a scouting malpractice is revisionist history. DK Metcalf never topped 650 yards in college. He played 2 games, got injured, then 12, then 7 games and had a fracture in his cervical spine that needed surgery. DK fell because of injury concerns. He had two season ending injuries and one of them was a cervical spine fracture. Typically if guys are injury prone in college they are injury prone in the NFL - another thing analytics has taught us. We know this from GM interviews too. Former GMs talk about why guys like DK fell. It's the medicals.
Now back to Harry. Harry put up a ton of production early in his career. Arif Hasan compiles draft boards and puts together a consensus big board which does better on average than all but the NFL draft order itself! Harry was 32nd on the board. AJ Brown was 27th. Deebo was 40th. Deebo projected as a slot only and had an injury history himself. Harry projected as a versatile WR who could play in the slot or outside. Bill had it narrowed down to those three and picked the wrong guy. Saying it is scouting malpractice is overconfidence in your evals. Sometimes players develop. Other times they don't. It's that simple and you can't just easily predict this stuff. The draft is much more random than most people are comfortable with which is why having more picks and trading down is a good strategy. Harry was a fine pick.
Drafts are inherently small sample sizes with large fluctuations from year to year. The Saints crushed the 2017 draft and then struck out multiple years in a row. It's going to happen. Play the game long enough and teams will go through a 2-4 year stretch where they have bad results.
2020 you have a near pro-bowl safety in Dugger, a starting near pro-bowl caliber OG in Onwenu, a nice DPR in Uche, and Jennings who was a reliable run stuffing rotational edge last year after a poor/injured/out-of-position first two seasons. 2020 was a solid to good draft. I don't understand why you'd say if X player didn't hit it wouldn't have been. Sure, but on the other hand if want to play that game what if Harry hit and Wynn didn't get injured? It cuts both ways.
And you're ignoring the UDFAs. Why? Does JCJ not count? Does Meyers not count? Adam Butler? Brendan Schooler? Myles Bryant is a nice backup that unfortunately has had to start too much. I think you have to consider these guys too.
Hakeem Butler was 37th on this list, 3 above Deebo - this isn't nearly as black and white as you think it is.
I can't believe I am defending the Harry pick given I didn't even like Harry but... don't ever be too over-confident in your evals. That arrogance gets you in trouble.
Huh? Welker was a great find as was Edelman. Moss was obviously great. But the rest of these guys were not gems, they were serviceable guys who Brady made look better. If prime Brady were throwing to Meyers / Bourne / Agholor / Henry they'd look a lot better. And as you note his recent drafting hasn't been good.
The team has needed him to find another Welker and he hasn't, and that was a long time ago. As deathofthebambino points out, he hasn't traded up either, making his path that much harder. I think it's more than fair to say he hasn't really shown much above-average aptitude at finding offensive players.
It can go on at least 3 more seasons, as long as the Pats are hanging around 8-9 wins for most of that.
I would just say this. What the Pats did was unprecedented. 20 years of dominance under BB. Each year chance for a title. The league is not designed to work that way - in fact it is designed to work the oppsosite. He rarely robbed Peter to pay Paul, he was always focused on the next contract rather than the last. He basically (with Brady help) beat the system/the house however you want to call it in a way no other team did. You did not see teams led by Brees, Rogers, Favre, and on and on and on have that kind of success. Even with Brady, it was BB that kept the TEAM pointed in the right direction as coach and the big guy.
I fear many people in Pats fandom are going to get pistol whipped by reality when BB leaves. It is never likely to be like it was before, but it can get a lot, and I mean a lot, worse.
I fear many people in Pats fandom are going to get pistol whipped by reality when BB leaves. It is never likely to be like it was before, but it can get a lot, and I mean a lot, worse.
I wasn't ignoring defense or the UDFA's, it just wasn't the discussion. I've said repeatedly that I trust Bill implicitly both as the defensive coach, and as the guy buying the groceries on defense. Dugger, Uche, etc. were all good to great draft picks, IMO, but I know enough to trust Bill on that side of the ball. The discussion was about using a model that San Fran and Philly have used to get the Pats back to a title contender, because in reality, the only other hope you have is to land a guy like Mahomes or Allen or Burrow, and well, that's a lottery ticket. The Pats already have that with Bill handling the defense. It's the offense, through the draft, free agency and trades, that those teams built up around their young QB's that Bill isn't doing.
Cellar had talked about how San Fran built their team up through the draft with high picks and trades and made the argument Bill hasn't had that opportunity because we don't draft high enough. I'm arguing that Bill has had more than enough assets in the first three rounds since 2017 to come away with at least one impact stud on offense. He's missed, on all of them. Arguably, one could easily say that Bill's best offensive draft pick since 2017 has been Mac Jones, and most folks around here seem to think he sucks. Ownenu is a good player, we're not sure on Strange, and then what? Sony MIchel over Chubb, Harry (I hated the pick then, I hate it now and a big part of the reason is I put more faith in competition faced in practice and in games in college than most do, so I'm always going to lean SEC when there is a question between guys), Wynn, Asiasi, Keene...And then we get into the free agent signings. There's just missed opportunity after missed opportunity, and I don't have faith in BB to figure out what he's doing with the offense. I'm hoping BoB does, but if Bill keeps grocery shopping as if he has Tom Brady under center, we're going to keep getting the same results.
Stevenson was a good pick as well.
If you don't have faith in Bill to build the offense, he shouldn't be the coach/GM anymore. There's no way he's giving up full control at this stage of his career. It's either status quo or a new regime. At some point they have to take a risk and give up draft capital plus money for a top flight WR if they want to really give Mac Jones a chance to reach his ceiling.
@Deathofthebambino I am just responding to things you posted about Harry “scouting malpractice”, DK Metcalf, and trading up. I agree with you on his FA signings not working out. I also agree that he had some bad draft years from 2016/2017 or so until 2020. I think the CMC trade was a bad one because they gave up a lot of draft capital. However because they’ve had one or two minority coaching hires they’ve been able to recoup that. Bill hasn’t had that. They hit on Deebo and Aiyuk. Their stud TE was a 5th rounder. They kept taking shots at WR while Bill hasn’t spent as much draft capital there. I’d argue he should spend more and have suggested the guys I think for best this year.
I just don’t think some of what you said was either fair (Harry and malpractice) or empirically correct (trading up). I wonder if Bill has issues drafting WRs but he’s hit on TEs before. I don’t see that as an issue and he’s damn good drafting RBs but he’s missed on some too sure. He’s also drafted a ton of good OL. So saying you don’t trust him to draft offense seems bizarre when he’s really just had issues with one position, WR.
I just don’t think some of what you said was either fair (Harry and malpractice) or empirically correct (trading up). I wonder if Bill has issues drafting WRs but he’s hit on TEs before. I don’t see that as an issue and he’s damn good drafting RBs but he’s missed on some too sure. He’s also drafted a ton of good OL. So saying you don’t trust him to draft offense seems bizarre when he’s really just had issues with one position, WR.
Preemptive: Tight ends drafted in the 90s to 100s are lottery tickets. Tight ends are one of the hardest positions to draft and develop and as @Super Nomario has noted before you need to take a lot of cracks at it more often than not to find a good one.
Edit: your post had strong wording and takes. I think there is a middle ground.
Edit: your post had strong wording and takes. I think there is a middle ground.
I was an AJ Brown guy all along, but when Metcalf showed up and ran a 4.33 and look like a guy chiseled from granite, passing on him seemed insane to me too. I just never, ever saw the Harry thing, and of course, I'm not paid 8 figures a year to do that job either. The Wynn/Michel draft was just brutal. I've never worried too much about Bill drafting Offensive lineman when he had Dante here to coach them up. Watching Wynn, and Trent Brown and the rest of the line turn into pumpkins last year has soured me on that, but who knows, I've got some faith BoB can do something with the group that's there.
But at the skill positions, particularly wide receiver, nope. I mean, he hit on Gronk which was obviously massive. Hernandez probably would have been good, but he was a serial killer and there's obviously arguments out there that the Pats should have known he was a bad seed. Aside from that, it's Ben Watson and a lot of shit. I didn't even have a problem taking a shot at a tight end when they did, but two shots, to get a combined 7 catches total? The tight ends in that same draft in 2020, taken after them, have what, 250 combined receptions? They could have thrown darts at a board and hit more production. Or they could have taken one of them and grabbed a guy like Duvernay, or Gabe Davis or Darnell Mooney or KJ Osborne or Peoples-Jones....
And no, those guys aren't world beaters, but damn, any production at all is way more than what they got from Asiasi and Keene. Instead they took nobody and rolled into the season with an undrafted free agent in Meyers, Damere Byrd and 34 year old Julian Edelman trying to catch balls from a decrepit Cam Newton. I mean, I don't care how deep the draft is at a position, how do you enter an offseason with that group, and not take a single WR with all of your picks? I mean, they took 3% Justin Rohrwasser 153rd overall, before most of those middling, but productive WR's I just mentioned.
And in today's NFL, passing is paramount. Skill position, stud WR's are almost impossible to win without. This isn't just a blind spot, it's a blind spot that can wreck a team's offense, and it has, IMO. If it weren't for Tom Brady, this issue would have been way, way more noticeable.
I'm ok with it, short of him doing something really really stupid like charged with domestic abuse or something like that. I think he's looked somewhat bad in the past as well (at times) with roster construction and/or drafting but whatever players end up on the field, the man can flat out coach them up. That combined with what he's given us for 2 decades and he has a lifetime pass as far as I'm concerned.
I feel like HBR needs to do a case study on the Steelers to understand how they have been so good in the WR drafting area. We grouse but the Pats are much closer to the norm. PIT is the real outlier.
I mean, the draft is a crapshoot and more picks are better, sure, but is that true in the top ten or fifteen picks? Honest question. BB has pretty much nailed his picks whenever he's had one at #20 or above and done well in the first round in general, so I think it's fair to wonder if he should trade up more often, especially in years when he might have multiple 3rd and 4th rounders where he can grab "his guys" late. Instead of literally always trading down and looking for value.
Obviously that deal has to be there, but other teams do it. Especially when you consider the value he finds in UDFAs, I'd be fine with BB trading up to get a top ten pick he really wants.
Obviously that deal has to be there, but other teams do it. Especially when you consider the value he finds in UDFAs, I'd be fine with BB trading up to get a top ten pick he really wants.
Agree with this. Top half of the first round is different from the rest of the draft, to an extent.
The other thing I'd add is if you trade for a FUTURE first rounder, you might get lucky and have that team suck. For a team that doesn't expect to suck themselves, that might be your only path to a Sauce Gardner or some other likely franchise cornerstone, other than the one in a million chance you get them with the 199th pick.
The risk is you miss on the pick and don't get a star, but again, I feel like BB has a good track record there.
The risk is you miss on the pick and don't get a star, but again, I feel like BB has a good track record there.
This really has not been happening since the salary slotting of 1st-rounders was put into effect, but the likes of Felger & Mazz keep it going. Your point is reasonable, though, that maybe BB should move up into the top half of the 1st more often.
He traded out of the first round in the 2020 draft and traded down last year to add multiple picks, not sure what you're saying here.
I think both were defensible since he didn't have top 15 picks (maybe that's your point) but in the abstract I will be annoyed he he trades out of 14 this year especially if it's more than ten or so slots down.
Yeah he's done ridiculously well in the top half of the first round, although the jury is still out (or it's not looking so hot) on Mac. Not that there has been a huge sample:
2001 - Seymour (6)
2003 - Warren (13)
2008 - Mayo (10)
2011 - Solder (17, right around the halfway point)
Plus Chandler in 2012 and Wilfork in 2004 at 21. Maroney was also at 21. Hightower 25. Dan Graham at 21. More of a mixed bag in that range. Wynn at 23.
Side note, while researching this, went back through the McCourty trade from 2010:
- Pats had #22, traded it to Denver for #24 + #113
- Then traded #24 and #119 to Dallas for #27 and #90
- Took McCourty at #27, Taylor Price at #90 (bust unfortunately), and AHerb at #113.
Geez frigging Hernandez. That had a chance to be an all-time great draft:
1st round - Devin McCourty - 2x pro bowl, 3x SB champ, Patriots HOFer
2nd round - Rob Gronkowski - 4x all pro, 5x pro bowl, 4x SB champ, Patriots HOFer, NFL HOFer (well, he will be anyway)
4th round - Brandon Spikes - 6 seasons, mainstay in the starting lineup, solid career
4th round - Aaron Hernandez - could have been one of the all-time greats at TE, but, well.....
6th round - Ted Larsen - WHO? Yeah, the guy went on to have an 11-year NFL career, mostly as a starter (started 88 of 137 games), got a SB ring with Tampa in his last season
Any draft that nets you an all-time great, absolute lock Hall of Famer, another guy who is a franchise Hall of Famer, another guy who WOULD have been a franchise and NFL Hall of Famer, a guy who played 11 years, mainly as a starter, and then another guy who played 6 years, mainly as a starter....that's an unbelievable draft.
1st round - Devin McCourty - 2x pro bowl, 3x SB champ, Patriots HOFer
2nd round - Rob Gronkowski - 4x all pro, 5x pro bowl, 4x SB champ, Patriots HOFer, NFL HOFer (well, he will be anyway)
4th round - Brandon Spikes - 6 seasons, mainstay in the starting lineup, solid career
4th round - Aaron Hernandez - could have been one of the all-time greats at TE, but, well.....
6th round - Ted Larsen - WHO? Yeah, the guy went on to have an 11-year NFL career, mostly as a starter (started 88 of 137 games), got a SB ring with Tampa in his last season
Any draft that nets you an all-time great, absolute lock Hall of Famer, another guy who is a franchise Hall of Famer, another guy who WOULD have been a franchise and NFL Hall of Famer, a guy who played 11 years, mainly as a starter, and then another guy who played 6 years, mainly as a starter....that's an unbelievable draft.
COaching staff add....
View: https://twitter.com/MikeReiss/status/1641435623939612672
Keith Jones, was part of Camp last year through the Bill Walsh Diversity Fellowship, gets a full staff position as an assistant.
View: https://twitter.com/MikeReiss/status/1641435623939612672
Keith Jones, was part of Camp last year through the Bill Walsh Diversity Fellowship, gets a full staff position as an assistant.
To me the larger issue is ignoring the position for basically a decade beforehand. Missing on two fringe-top-100 picks is unsurprising. But they had all their eggs in that basket because they'd only used a handful of late-rounders in recent years.
The same is true of WR. Their record isn't good, but the larger issue is they just don't draft many WR. Conversely, teams like SF and PIT that we cite for being good at drafting WR, a lot of their formula is that they just keep drafting 'em.
But where don’t they draft then? (SF and Pit) can’t draft a ton at one spot without drafting rarely somewhere else.
Trent Brown was sick for a few games middle of the season. He actually looked a lot better (and graded out better analytically) the last 3-4 games of the season. Wynn was terrible, but I put that 100% on the player.
Bill has not drafted that many tight ends very high; most were late round picks that he took a flyer on:
2000: Dave Stachelski: 5th rounder.
2001: Jabari Holloway (late 4th) and Arther Love (6th)
2002: Daniel Graham, who was a solid pick at 21 overall.
2004: Ben Watson, another solid pick at 32.
2005: Andy Stokes was the Mr. Irrelevant pick that year.
2006: David Thomas (3rd round) had his best years after he left for the Saints. Part of the problem is that he was hurt one of his 3 seasons in New England.
2010: The Gronk/Hernandez draft. But I dispute that there were "obviously arguments" about him being a bad seed. Players slip to the 4th round all the time due to character concerns, but many of them either simply flame out early or get beyond their past demons. I don't blame Belichick at all for how this pick turned out; sometimes it truly is 100% on the individual.
2011: Lee Smith (late 5th for a relief pitcher is OK)
2015: AJ Derby (6th)
2018: Ryan Izzo was a late 7th.
2020: The Asiasi/Keene fiasco
But even the 2020 draft comes with a key disclaimer, and that is that 3rd round picks do bust out at a fairly high rate. Just sucks that BB drafted 2 busts in a position of need in that round. But posters here were pretty pumped with those picks when they happened, so I don't think they were obvious busts either.
But when it comes to tight ends, generally, when Bill has had a higher pick, he's drafted well at that position, 2020 notwithstanding.
He did invest some capital in the position last year, and that player got hurt in training camp and honestly needs a redo this season to see if he'll be any good or not. He also traded a 2023 3rd to get Parker, which was a reasonable use of 3rd rounder. I agree that he missed out on some good ones, and deserves criticism for that. But I don't believe it means he cannot be trusted to improve the WR corps going forward.
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I'm not really advocating going full PIT / SF (it's worked for SF but probably hurt PIT in other areas). I think there's a happy middle ground here; the Pats are outliers in their lack of draft investment at WR (and TE in the last decade) and it's hurt them for the past 5 years or so. They've had to spend a lot of money getting those groups up to snuff lately (they were #1 in cap spending on WR/TE in 2022) and it still hasn't worked very well. Historically they've avoided pricey X receivers but still built effective pass-catching units via slot WR and TE; as those positions have gotten more expensive, they haven't figured out how to build good pass-catching units on the cheap.
This flies under the radar too much in this discussion. BB does not come a la carte. If you want his defensive prowess, you get his questionable decisions about offensive playcallers and draft decisions.
I get roasted on here for my opinions on BB where I worry about the talent decisions and the coaching on the field.
I don't want to lose BB, but I see where the team is on his hands, and if Rodgers joins the Jets, this team is looking further up than it has ever done in the last 20+ years.
If BB and Mac can produce, I'm all in. If this season goes the other way, everything is on the table, and Kraft is right as a successful NFL owner and businessman to think the same. He's already said it.
The answer, as unsatisfying as it may be, will lie between these 2 extremes.
Barring something unforseen, Kraft is unlikely to fire Bill because Mac falls short again and they stumble to a 8- or 9-win season again (although I think the coach's seat gets very warm if that happens). But Kraft is not going to saddle son Jonathan with a team struggling to be relevant after a string of 4-win seasons just so that Bill can break Shula's record.
The venn diagram of people who are seriously talking about a wins record and the people who consume sports talk radio is a circle.
Obviously he won't, but if Mac fails to progress, leaving us hapless at the QB position, and the rest of the division performs (can we not pretend Rodgers isn't joining our division?), I can see an amicable parting of ways.
The other side of this is far more interesting - where would BB want to go? Would he want to? Only Nike (the dog) knows what BB is really thinking right now. I'm sure he's pondering his longevity, the conference, the division, and most importantly, the love for the game.
Brady became the all time leader in TDs with the Bucs, and I'd argue that's a way more prestigious record than most wins by an HC. I feel like this is the most overrated and over discussed storyline surrounding this team by a mile. Who cares about this? How do the Patriots benefit in any way from Bill reaching that landmark in NE? Bill should remain as HC because he's still at worse a top 5 coach in football. If he slips and ownership loses trust, why should they hang on for Bill's sake? They didn't do it for Brady. I just don't see how this factors so heavily in an argument I'm not even sure why we're having at this point. Now if they suck in 2023, sure, let's speculate over Bill's future. I just don't think that's likely and if the decision on him hinges on this record it'll be monumentally stupid either way.
I don't think I agree. To me that's not even Brady's most prestigious record. Brees won one SB, Manning two, Brady seven.
I don't see Bill reaching this record if he doesn't get the team turned around.
They are mid round picks-there was a roughly one in four chance either of them were going to make it. It’s not a productive exercise to look at the draft and say wow they blew a fourth round pick; everyone blew fourth round picks. The problem is they didn’t really nail their first round picks and they blew a lot-most-of mid round picks.
The only way BB doesn’t break Shula’s record is if he doesn’t want to coach anymore before breaking it. Because if somehow he leaves NE or is fired, he absolutely would get snapped up by someone else in a nanosecond. Then it would simply be up to Bill if he wants to keep going or not.
In terms of individual stats, most TD passes is absolutely the one record most fans know and care about. Do you believe the average fan knows the history of the all time HC wins record better than they do the most all time passing TDs record? How often have you even heard the Shula stuff mentioned outside of NE talk radio?
Football records are weird. Very few people really know the numbers off the top of their heads. Most basketball fans know that Wilt scored 100 points in a game, and almost every baseball fan above the age of 10 knows that Babe Ruth hit 60 homers, that Ted Williams hit .406, that Joe DiMaggio hit in 56 straight games, and that Bob Gibson had a 1.12 era.
But what's the record for most rushing yards in a season? Hell if I know, and I am a very big NFL fan. What's the record for most career passing TDs? Honestly, even though my favorite player ever holds the record, I don't know off the top of my head.
What I *do* know is: 7 rings for Brady. 6 rings for New England. But individual records and achievements for pro football? Most fans are like me - just don't know the numbers like we do in other sports (baseball in particular).
But what's the record for most rushing yards in a season? Hell if I know, and I am a very big NFL fan. What's the record for most career passing TDs? Honestly, even though my favorite player ever holds the record, I don't know off the top of my head.
What I *do* know is: 7 rings for Brady. 6 rings for New England. But individual records and achievements for pro football? Most fans are like me - just don't know the numbers like we do in other sports (baseball in particular).