Listen, i’m not saying his time isn’t coming to an end at the elite level. But one poor season in 23 years does not call for some of the revisionism occurring here lately. Arguably, the defences he’s still producing (2022, 2021, 2020) have kept the Patriots from rebuilding properly. It isn’t easy in this league to escape from 8-8 hell without a franchise QB.
“Brady made him”. You can use whatever stat you want here, but let’s use the most basic one. Points allowed per game. Of course there are influences here. Time of possession, special teams, ability to generate turnovers. But at its most basic level this is what determines the result of a game.
Brady had 20 seasons as a Patriot. He had a top 10 defence in 17 of them. In 3 super bowl victories, the Patriots played 3 of the top 15 offences in NFL history. 01 Rams, 16 Falcons and 18 Rams. 17 points, 22 points(pick six), 3 points. Even throw the record breaking 04 Colts in there, 3 pts. If we change to PTS per drive, he still has 15 top 10 defences!
Manning had 4, Rodgers had 3, Brees had 2. All three had great ball security and time of possession.
Is Brady the GOAT, yes. His consistency in clutch moments puts him ahead of the likes of Peyton and Rodgers. Did he make Bill the greatest defensive mind in history, no!
Brady record when scoring 20+in the playoffs: 32-4. Rodgers is 12-9 in this statistic for a direct comparison.
Average finish in points per drive among notable QBs
Brady: 9th
Rivers: 15th
Peyton: 18th
Rodgers: 18th
Brees: 20th
Mahomes: 20th
And we are trying to pretend Bill didn’t give Brady a significant advantage over his peers? Another 2 super bowls as a DC.
This flip is so funny to see. The whole idiotic "Brady or Belichick" stuff began almost exclusively to handwave away Brady's success by fans of other QBs. For years and years, it was used to disparage Brady's accomplishments as a QB and, ya know, iF mAnNiNg hAd bELicHicK he woulda won it 10!
I adamantly defended Brady at the time because players play. You can be the best coach in the world, but if your player doesn't jibe with what you're doing, you're not going to win an insane amount of championships and compete for two decades straight.
I'm going to adamantly defend Belichick's role in the dynasty because writing him off now is as stupid as writing off Tom Brady then. There's valid criticism of how he's running the team now but you can't take away the program he built around Brady. I do think there are elements that are essentially tall tales (the Pats defenses are largely overrated around here outside or 2004 and 2019 and a few others) but you don't win with those not-amazing defenses without the discipline, situational football, and adjustments that you can't attribute to anyone else but Belichick. In fact, the OP is using the extremely flawed metric of defensive scoring to rank defenses.
They were amazing complements to each other -- criticize Bill's current moves and intransigence and fruitless nepotism now if you want, that's fair, but let's not revise history.