mannc

Funny, NO and GB have had QBs as good as Brady the past 15 years, and yet they’ve been far less dominant than the Pats...there goes theory.

If you think that’s all Belichick is, then you’ve been napping for past 18 years.

Not quite. The league’s right to discipline the players is limited by the collective bargaining agreement. The CBA prescribes the extent of the commissioner’s authority and gives the players due process rights.

Yeah, sure...just like EVERYONE knew it would take McDermott at least four years to turn around a team that was .500 under Rex Ryan...

I don't want to get too sidetracked, but those are not Hall of Fame stats. Stafford is basically Eli Manning without the Super Bowl rings. Significantly less impressive stats than guys like Roethlisberger, Russ Wilson and even Philip Rivers. I'm talking about things like YPA and TD/Int. ratio. And of course, Stafford just doesn't win games, or at least, not very many.

Great point, although I strongly disagree about Matt Stafford.

How many brain cells do you have?

JG is the only guy you could legitimately say was drafted as a potential Brady replacement and he’s turned out very well, so far, especially for a second round pick.

Well, Garappolo, for one, which is one more than the Bills drafted in that time (leaving Josh Allen out of it, for now). But it's not really a fair question because the Pats have had the best QB in NFL history for the past 18 years, so drafting or otherwise acquiring another QB hasn't exactly been at the top of their to-do list.

If Brady had never come along, it's ridiculous to think that Belichick would not have done far better at obtaining a franchise QB than the pathetic succession of Bills GMs and coaches since 2000. Just as I'm confident the Pats will find themselves with a more than adequate QB when Brady decides to hang 'em up.

Then your reading comprehension isn't very good.

Where did I suggest that?

In looking up Belichick's statistics, I saw that the Pats went 9-7 and failed to make the playoffs in 2002, the year after their first Super Bowl win. I had completely forgotten about that.

How does anyone become "qualified" for a job as a college football analyst? What does the fact that Leaf failed as an NFL quarterback have to do with it?

Yep, Marrone is a typical, unimaginative dinosaur head coach who inexplicably keeps getting hired by NFL teams. Coaches like him and Mularkey are why the NFL has the Rooney Rule (although it doesn't seem to be working).

I agree that it's complete speculation to predict what one would have done without the other. Brady's never won a playoff game without Belichick. I think this is Brady's last year and then we'll find out for sure which one was more important. I'm betting on Belichick. He's already re-molding the Pats into a team that is less dependent on great quarterbacking and I don't think they'll miss a beat when Brady retires. Please, Carroll got fired twice before he succeeded with Seattle. His early NFL record is not appreciably better than Belichick's. Like Belichick, he became a better coach as he got older. It also didn't hurt that he got Russ Wilson.

Belichick took the Browns to the playoffs. He got fired when the entire organization cratered in the wake of the move to Baltimore. As to the second part, that’s pure speculation. And at any rate, other coaches have succeeded after failing in the first (and even second) gigs (Pete Carroll, for example). I think it’s safe to say that Belichick became a better head coach over the past 20 years. As to the Pats record without Brady, I think it’s too small of a sample size to conclude much.

At this point, it’s not provable, one way or the other. Perhaps after Brady retires and the Pats keep winning, we’ll have our answer. As great as Brady is, if he had not come along, I don’t think there’s much doubt that Belichick would have found another franchise QB somewhere, somehow. Maybe he doesn’t win six Super Bowls, but still...

Zerovoltz might be a Chiefs fan, but he’s contributed far more actual football content to this board than you and “Winslow Joe” combined.

You may be right about what the team says about why they took the action they did, but this seems really weak. An NFL team cut a player because he lied to them? Really? Seems like a made up justification when in fact they are just trying to deflect some bad publicity. Do the Chiefs have an honor code that the players agree to abide by?

I was a great documentary. There is of course no doubt that Simpson is the killer, but the documentary showed the context in which the jury did what it did. The great irony is that Simpson, who most believe had turned his back on the black community, was the beneficiary of this racial blowback.

This is a laughable and demonstrably false statement given the fact that Goodwin actually competed in the Olympics.

Ironically, that's more money than he could ever hope to win in his whole career as a long-jumper.

It’s one of the best threads of the offseason...lotta good football discussion. Look at some of the other nonsense threads on the board right now...

I know it was a different era, but go look at the Bills’ QB stats the year OJ rams for 2003 yards. There was a Monday night game against Pittsburgh where he ran for almost 300 yards and they completed TWO passes for about 20 yards. 2-16 passing, I believe. And until Knox got hired, the coaching was even worse. They essentially refused to play OJ his first three years in the league.