Tom Brady Who?

There is tons of evidence of Belicheck supporting rookies he likes(Dillon was pushed aside for Maroney) and it’s complete fabrication to postulate Belichick didn’t any any inkling how good Brady would be.

Seau has been pushed aside for Mayo and Crable as another example. Bill has stood by Meriweather also, training him to be Harrison’s successor.

Bledsoe could just have easily been cut the next offseason…it’s not like he was a top 10 QB. Belichick has no mercy when it comes to players’s feelings young or old, he picks the talent he sees as best for the team. Why would you suffer with an inferior player just to prove your draft pick was correct? That is egoistic and not part of the Pats system. That fact that he kept Cassel shows that there’s a lot there we can’t see from the outside.

So thanks for the completely random and nonsensical post where you create a strawman for us to get angry about.

Belichick and company weren’t blind. Brady had already been tagged as a player who had the “mental and emotional capabilities to succeed in the NFL,” according to Christopher Price in The Blueprint, and was red-shirted on the practice squad his first year to improve his physique while learning the system. He attended every single practice early and stayed late. He ran the scout team, learning the opposing teams quarterbacking strategies to simulate them. He engaged with all the players in the locker room and thought it important to be with the guys he was going to play with, sweating the practices together . More importantly, Brady bought into Belichick’s system whole-heartedly.

Bledsoe wanted out of Dodge in the offseason, and had a veterans entitlement that never sat well with Belichick. Brady was going to be his guy eventually. The injury to Bledsoe just hastened up the decision process.

I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume that you’re actually interested in this question, rather than just riling up the natives.

Belichick places a premium on football IQ. Usually that means old guys over new guys, but not always.

Chad Jackson is a bad example for your argument. He wasn’t a rookie let go in favor of veteran talent. He was system-dumb his first year, and hurt most of his second. Here, in year three, he demonstrated little improvement in his system-knowledge and almost no improvement in his route-running. Given his draft rank, he was expensive relative to his production. Cutting him was probably a pretty easy decision.

Contrast Jackson with Damien Woody. He was a perennial all-pro at center before youngster Dan Koppen came in and kicked him out. Now he’s a guard with the Lions (roar!). Mainiac mentioned Mayo. That’s a prime example and also an especially good one for this conversation, because nowhere on defense does BB value system knowledge more than inside linebacker. His willingness to put Mayo in there as a rookie has surprised me. He didn’t have to do that—even with Seau out—because Thomas already had the knowledge. Nevertheless, here’s Mayo (and he’s looking pretty good).

Further evidence of jettisoning older players in favor of younger talent has to include formerly all-world Ty Law in favor of young, untested DBs, a willingness to deal sharply with Deion Branch and Asante Samuel and, incredibly, to keep Stephen Gostkowski over tried-and-true Adam Vinatieri.

And yes, I think Mo Lewis hastened the process in that case and that we would not have won the ‘Bowl that year with Bledsoe at QB. It was bittersweet for me, ’cause Drew — a class act in every sense — brought the team up from the dead, and I’ll never forget it.

At the time, though, if Belichick had started Brady from the beginning of the season it would have been seen as a foolish move. Brady matured very rapidly over the course of that year, we had some good luck, Bledsoe played a super playoff game against Pittsburgh—in short, we bottled lightening.

But even that year is a bad example for you to use: Bledsoe got healthy. If Belichick really valued the veteran over the young guy as you say, he would have put Drew back in as the starter rather than keeping the kid at the helm.

In fact, the decision to keep Brady as starter is ultimately what drove Bledsoe out of town and, as Pats watchers will recall, it was a messy divorce.

So basically, you’re dead wrong.