Tom Brady Wont duplicate last season

[crowner]

Im my eyes Brady will just end up being a Ken O'Brien for the rest of his career

[Dozerdog]

Welcome aboard, crowner!

Ken O'Brien had some big -game talent

Brady is a game manager. I doubt he wil duplicate his luck again this year. God forbid he gets hurt. Rohan Davey is all they got. The "Fat"Dante Culpepper

[#1 Bills Fan]

Originally posted by The Undertaker #59
what about Brady's performance on the game winning drive?

One drive does not deserve an MVP selection.

[Cntrygal]

Originally posted by #1 Bills Fan

One drive does not deserve an MVP selection.

I agree.

[The Undertaker #59]

Originally posted by #1 Bills Fan

One drive does not deserve an MVP selection.

That is not why I made that statement about the final dirve. I do not think he should have been MVP either.....I was replying to this:

MVP! The Defense and Special Teams won that game, not Brady! We all know that!

Did not Brady "win" the game in that final drive? At the very least, he showed remarkable poise to put the team in position to win, and made some nice plays with only 1:20 on the clock...

[mybills]

Not to defend Brady but, they showed him on the local news last night, making quite a few long passes AND connections at Bryant's training field in Smithfield, RI. Don't be too quick to make accusations if you haven't seen him. He looked pretty good to me which means we WILL have GOOD competition this year.

Also, and just going by what I saw, something tells me they won't be using that dump off theme as much as they did last year.

[Dozerdog]

I remember him playing a lot in the last half of the final preseason game last year. He realy did look impressive.

But the gloves are off, everyone is gunning for him, and without the Pats committing to a new contract yet, It will be very interesting to see what he can do.

BTW, sportsradio in Boston continue to pump Donald Hayes as some great FA pickup.

They are in for a rude awakening.

[WG]

"One drive does not deserve an MVP selection."

Funny how half a drive in the Pittsburgh game speaks the world about Drew though, eh?!

LOL

[The_Philster]

Drew has a long career that people are going off mostly, wys. lol

[WG]

Brady's fundamentals are solid. One thing he didn't do was make huge errors like Drew does. He also doesn't have the cannon sitting under his right shoulder either. But if you go thru the games last year, Brady really only 4 good games or so. RJ played more great games than Brady did.

As a matter of fact, if you look at Brady's year last year, it actually resembles Drew's last season played. Hardly a difference at all if you're looking just at the numbers. Drew might have had more yards, but Brady's other numbers were comparable.

Here is the comparison:

Bledsoe's '00 season vs. Brady's '01:

They both had one game in which they tossed 4 TDs. DB 1 INT, TB none.

TB had 2 games of 3 TDs and 2 more of 2 TDs, and 4 INTs all in one of the 2 TD games.

DB had no games of 3 TDs and 4 games of 2 TDs w/ 2 INTs both in one game.

DB had 5 games w/ only 1 TD to Brady's 4.

Both had 6 games in which they didn't toss a single TD. DB had 8 INTs in those games, TB had 3.

So as I see it, they were very comparable seasons which tells me that there's a bias towards analyzing DB positively, which is to be expected, and a negative bias towards analyzing TB, which is also to be expected. But stripping that off, I see little differences in DB's recent performances in his past few years vs. TB's.

Actually, if all I had was data since '97, I'd take TB in a second. 17/13 as much as that wasn't really great, certainly was DB's best year. 19/21 wasn't good although 20/14 is about the same as 17/13 and not much better if at all than TB's 18/12 in 14 games as a first-time starter.

[WG]

Hey Phil,

Indeed. But it really only contains 2 very good years. None exceptional, 2 good, and 4 below average. All the best one year's ago.

The first half of the season is gonna tell us everything. We won't even have to wait until year's end.

[The_Philster]

uh-oh I unleashed Wys' long posts

Seriously, I don't go by stats but on-field production. And it's unfair to judge a QB in terms of production if he's not surrounded by the same talent. Bledsoe hadn't had a consistent running game since Robert Edwards was hurt and Brady started getting that right off when Antowain Smith started getting the ball more often a few games into the season.

[The_Philster]

I think you're right about us getting a good indication by mid-season, wys.
If we can provide a solid running game, it will be up to Bledsoe to do his stuff. Going off of what things were like for him when he DID have consistent running game, I think we'll be just fine.
As far as Brady, I really can't judge him because he only has played in one season in the NFL.....way too early, IMO. He had a few games in which he impressed me but a few in which he looked about mediocre.

[WG]

"Seriously, I don't go by stats but on-field production."

I couldn't agree w/ you more Phil. But how do you measure production? Lack of sacks? I measure it using TDs scored and secondarily points scored by the O. Interesting you say that however, b/c the teams that Drew was on didn't score many points either if you track them. Martin was largely responsible for moving the ball "for production" but as soon as he wasn't around, Pat scoring began to drop off trendily something fierce.

I wasn't commenting on the talent at all, but merely the notion that offensive scoring production for the Pats had been paltry in all but 2 or 3 of the seasons that Drew was on the team. He certainly didn't personally contribute to a lot of scoring. Even in the games in which he tossed bookoo yards.

I guess that's been my point all along is that who cares about yardage thrown for which everyone raves about unless those yards actually contribute to offensive production. Which, at least in my book, means points scored. In fact, it did not.

When you consider that TB did just as much as Drew, more depending upon which year you look at it, on significantly fewer yards, I think that speaks volumes.

I think the formula for success for this team is gonna be the traditional combo of strong D and a solid running game. That's why I think we should have addressed our DT need instead of a few other moves we made. As it stands, instead of giving ourselves the best chance to control games via strong rushing defense, we're having to rely on the arm and game of Bledsoe likely as I doubt many games will be as close as we'd like assuming our rushing D isn't that improved over last year.

Think about it. If we can't control opponents rushing games, then our D will be on the field longer even worsening the situation while our O has to sit. Under those circumstances, it stands to reason that we'll be outscored during those times since many of our opponents are not weak defensively. We face some of last year's best Ds in Miami (2), Jets (2), N.E. (2), Chicago, and G.B. who all had top 12 scoring Ds. Chicago was #1 and G.B. #4.

If it's late, and we're down, we're necessarily gonna find ourselves in a position to have to throw the ball just to win. Those are circumstances that Drew has not fared well under throughout his career. Sure, he's got 17 or so CFB wins, but if you look at the talent of those teams, you'll see that most of them were teams that N.E. had absolutely no business being down to to begin with.

I'm not knocking Drew, but I am simply stating what I consider to be the obvious. If we're gonna be a successful team, we're gonna need to have a strong rushing O, which I really think we'll have this year. That will help us establish a strong "ball-control" game. The only problem is that to do that, you necessarily need a D that is fully capable of stopping the run, even vs. the best teams. We don't have that now. Maybe next year. I don't care what anyone tells me in preseason, the best we can hope for barring the signing of another FA DT, is to be average in rush D. Then again, only if a couple of guys step up. If they don't, then against the teams we face this year, I think we're looking at another 26th ranked rush D or so. That will allow us to be "out bal-controlled" if you will. Not good to complement a strong rushing game.

As with my expectations from Drew, I sure hope I'm wrong about our rushing D as well. Because right now I simply don't see us improving all that much from our 26th ranking last year in rush D. W/o another F/A addition, I see us at 18th or so max. Quite possibly in the 20s again. That wouldn't be good for us given the teams we face and the strength of their associated rushing Os.

[WG]

"uh-oh I unleashed Wys' long posts"

LOL

Nahhh, it's just football season...!

WooHoo!