First I will say preface this by saying I am a die hard patriot fan and not a hater. I think most people that were following the game thread today could tell how devestated I was. That being said, I can't help but really disagree with a sentiment I am hearing from a lot of Pats fans. Perhaps people are just trying to rationalize the loss to make it which painful, which is fair, but still. How many fans and analysts are going to say that this was just a "transition year" because Brady was coming back from injury. Some people even take it a step further and say we gave up on the year by trading Vrabel and Seymour.
Does everyone on here realize how old Tom Brady will be at the beginning of next season? 33. I'm not trying to be overly negative but he is definitely past his physical prime and has played wht amounts to an extra season because of all the post season games. Troy Aikman was around 33 when he retired, I think steve young was 36 (and barely played in his final season). Jim Kelly was 36 and also had a lousy last season. Steve McNair (rest in peace) was 35 and was pretty decimated for the last couple seasons. Sure there are exceptions like Warner and Favre (and to a lesser extent elway who was really more handing off and game managing as an older qb). However, to think your gonna give up what could be oe of Brady's final seasons as an elite qb to rebuild seems ridiculous to me. This team needs to have some urgency and needs to make big moves. We also unfortunately do need to start thinking about a future qb.
I'd rather sacrifice one season of a player's early "late prime" to really reload than go by the conventional logic that you have to do your best every year, so you make short term moves, then are stuck continuously playing catchup for the next 5 years.
McNair depended on movement, and was always injury prone. Young and Aikmen had major concussion problems. Brady is closer to Warner, Favre, Marino, Manning, etc.
Think about how the Sixers with Iverson and Cleveland with Lebron played their superstar card vs. Lakers with kobe.
Sixers and Cleveland both bought into the "go all out with your guy as long as he's there" thing, and sacrificed patience and future options to try to maximize wins as soon as they could. They ended up with no titles, and very underwhelming supporting casts for their stars.
Then look at the Lakers. They trade Shaq, then "waste" a year of Kobe's prime drafting a 17 year old center, biding their time to make the right move. This upset their star so much that he made trade overtures. However, the 17 year old develops into a prime talent, and they save their assets to pounce on a Gasol trade when it becomes available, and win a title.
By the above logic, LA probably would have taken the rumored "Kwame and Bynum for Kidd" trade that Kobe supposedly wanted and was on the table. I don't know about you, but I think Kobe's happy with the realism and patience.
Think of it this way:
With a young roster and a recovering Brady, we had, what, a 10% chance at the superbowl? So we could have gone for it. Then we would have lost either Wilfork or Seymour anyway, or multiple other assets if we try to keep both. So we have a 10% chance the following year. And so on. Instead, we trade Seymour, which dropped our chances probably to 8% or so, but with our assets so acquired, we probably have a 10% chance next year, then 12%, then 15%, etc. as the assets grow.
I think as a GM, you can't say "what gives us the most wins this year," you have to say "what gives us the best chance of winning a title in the next 5 years?" So that if you have clearly the best team in year 1 of your 5 year window, you go for it, because that's your best chance in the next 5 years. however, if there are major question marks like for the Pats, you maximize your chance a year or two later.
Topic: Tom Brady is no Spring Chicken (Read 5773 times)