You mean the Pats have home field locked up and the back-up comes in and accounts for 11 TDs in his two career games? I pass on that scenario. I'm passed ready for the Pats to come back to Earth. Brady's deep ball may not be great, (I remember a few wobblers to Moss) but it doesn't need to be. Belicheck has successfully rejuvenated the offense for the forseeable futue and until the line gets screwed or Brady gets hurt, he will be a top 5 QB and the Pats a Superbowl contender.
No news since the speculation at the beginning of the week saying he was "expected to retire". But it's not certain yet.. Hopefully he calls it quits.
no, I mean he is a back-up to an elite QB that is a UFA next year and is going to be over rated by a number of QB hungry teams.
They're thinking of bringing in a wildcat specialist for 20 plays a game so they can take the pressure off of him.
Umm, I think it has everything to do with the players around him. The problem with the 2006 vs 2007 argument is that the author focuses on the fact that our % of deeps passes didn't increase with the addition of Randy Moss, yet ignores the fact that Wes Welker, a short yardage specialist, came along at the same time. Sure, Brady wasn't throwing a greater percentage of deep passes... a big part of the reason is that he suddenly had a new favorite target who only ran short routes. Wes Welker didn't lead the league with 112 receptions because TB was struggling to throw deep. He led the league because TB wanted to throw short. This article does a very good job of demonstrating the Patriots' dependence on the short passing game, but does nothing at all to prove that the lack of a vertical offense is a result of Brady's ability, and not situational adversities or even a result of the coaches decisions. It also does not in any way correlate deep passing ability to actual success... it shows Brady at the bottom of a list in deep pass rankings, but doesn't show that the other QBs have benefited in any way by being more successful deep passers. I have noticed that Brady hasn't been very accurate throwing deep the past couple years. But many of those passes were going to guys like Matthew Slater, Brandon Tate, Sam Aiken, Joey Galloway, Tiquan Underwood... guys who Brady hasn't thrown thousands of passes to in practice. How can you expect him to put those passes on the money on the rare occasion that they are even on the field running routes?
More proof that you can make any dumbass argument given enough time on your hands People would rather stare at a stat sheet all day instead of watching actual football
I feel like we're not having the same discussion here, but the idea of this isn't to say "Brady is teh sux" but rather is to point out a very significant weakness in his game. The Patriots won and lost those Super Bowls as a team. Their team now doesn't suit his strengths like it did then. I'm not really sure why you're talking about Eli & Tyree.
Are you mad because you don't like the article or because the Dolphins made your avatar obsolete a month after you joined? And I think the fact that Brady has played in 5 Super Bowls but hasn't thrown a TD pass longer than 11 yards (which came mostly on YAC from Hernandez) is interesting at least and telling at most.
They have an amazing offense, but it has its limitations. They haven't been able to hit on the big play in the Super Bowl or recent playoff games. Does it mean Brady isn't a great QB, no. It means that maybe wide receivers are more important than people think and QB's can't turn wide receivers from okay to great. The lack of explosiveness came back to hurt them. Like I said, Brady has been inaccurate on deep passes. Look at Welker, and Branch x2 in the Super Bowl. Twice he had Branch going across the field with a lot of room and the defender behind Branch. Twice he threw behind Branch straight into the defender. When Brady usually makes a mistake, you don't see him make it again all game. Here he messed up twice.
When you have a solid offense that can move the ball, and good enough pass rushers that can get pressure without blitzing, you can beat Brady. The Giants are the epitome of a bad matchup for them. They dont generate pressure via blitzing, which means Brady cant diagnose the blitz pre snap and thus throw to the open spot. (How much of this is the result of years of illegal footage, who knows). The Giants also have an offense that can score on every possession, which forces Brady to have to throw more, and allows the Giants already great 4 pass rushers to rush the passer all game. The Jets, OTOH, are a great matchup for him: they MUST use trickery and blitzes to generate pressure, which he diagnoses and protects himself from. The Jets also are not a team that scores easily, so it allows Brady to run the ball more, which they did at will against our nickel and dime packages (an adjustment they made after their 2010 embarassment to us in the playoffs). The Jets will struggle to beat the Pats until A) we can generate an offense that is above the bottom half in the NFL and B) we have enough men on the front 7 who can lay 3 downs of pass rushing without having to blitz.
I must have missed where there was a length requirement for touchdowns to matter Let us know the magical number so that it is simple for people to look at box scores and tell if a QB is worthy of praise or not I will be sitting here seething until then
Nobody is taking away praise from Brady. He is clearly a top 10 if not top 5 quarterback of all time. But it is still interesting to see how an offense that efficient can still run into problems.
The Pats became a dynasty b/c of Brady, the Pats lost the last 2 SBs b/c their D couldn't get a stop when it mattered most. Tom Brady is by far the best QB of his generation, you can poke holes in any player if you dig deep enough.
