1a. The game in which the Patriots play the Buccaneers will be fun! How will Bill Belichick defend a quarterback who—unlike the ex-Patriot QB also-rans he’s picked on in matchups past—he worked with for 20 seasons? Will Brady feel the urge to play hero ball in what could be his only chance to beat Belichick head-to-head? During the post-game handshake, will it be a cold, half-hearted exchange of pleasantries? Or, regardless of outcome, will they pull each other close, forehead-to-forehead, and whisper to one another: “Eat fresh.”
But as far as the importance of this game? It’s inter-conference, so the chances of it affecting a tiebreaker scenario is miniscule. And with the 17th game added to the schedule, every regular-season game this season is .37% less important than any played during the 16-game era. Mathematically, this is one of the least important games of each man’s NFL career.
But, legacy. The legacacity is through the roof right now. This is going to be a positively legacasitc affair in Foxboro. You know the rules by now: The winner gets to seize all assets and is granted power of attorney in perpetuity over the other. The loser, meanwhile, will have to scale Mount Nyiragongo and drop his six Patriots Super Bowl rings into the molten lava below, then be air-lifted to the surface of Mars where he’ll live out a Dr. Manhattan-like existence pondering the complexities and consequences of human conflict, but instead will immediately perish because you need a spacesuit, at least, on Mars. And that’s the kind of thing the competition committee is talking about when they say “unintended consequences.”
1b. The point is this: Going into this game, Brady is the greatest player in football history and Belichick is the greatest coach in football history. It’s quite obvious that Brady wouldn’t be Brady without Belichick and Belichick wouldn’t be Belichick without Brady. All those things will hold true when we wake up Monday morning. The “most important regular-season game ever” narrative is just so a bunch of dorks have something to yell about on Monday morning. So subscribe to our podcast and I’ll tell you which one of these NFL legends is a fraud from the comfort of my finished basement.
1c. On the mid-week episode of The MMQB Podcast, we already traveled the multiverse to lay out, indisputably, how things would have played out had Tom Brady re-signed with the Patriots in the winter of 2020. But, in light of people yelling at me through various mediums that—to borrow a term that my father used during his Little League coaching days—Belichick pulled a real boner when he let Brady walk, let's unfurl some other near-possibilities that didn't quite come to be. (We won’t get bogged down in semantics, but Belichick only wanted Brady back on his terms, which is a close relative of “let him walk.”)
The Patriots would undoubtedly be better off right now with Brady as their quarterback, but if you go back and watch what went on in the second half of 2019, you would have seen a limited quarterback running a broken offense. Josh McDaniels had been frequently resorting to gadget plays, always a tell that he doesn’t trust his offense to execute. Had Brady returned last year, New England (considering all the opt outs on the defensive side of the ball) was a borderline playoff team at best, and certainly would not have been able to hold off the Bills for the division crown. Were Brady still there in 2021, they probably would have built differently last winter and an optimist could argue they’d be 1A to Buffalo’s 1 in the AFC East.
Brady getting away is only part of the story. It only feels like an enormous mistake because there happened to be a perfect landing spot in Tampa, a team that: (a) Already had elite talent in place offensively, both in terms of weapons and in terms of offensive line—as much as game charters piled the demerits onto Donovan Smith during the Jameis years, a big part of it was that he was tasked with pass-protecting for five seconds on every snap due to that goofy offense they ran; (b) Had a need for a schematic upgrade that Brady would be able to provide; and (c) Had an elite defensive mind to steer the other side of the ball and ensure Brady wouldn’t have to carry the team on his back.
Forget New England. Imagine if Brady had settled on one of his other suitors, either by his choice or because Jameis Winston had actually improved under the current Bucs coaching staff. If Brady is in Chicago right now, playing behind that offensive line with his limited mobility and increasing skittishness when pressured, the Bears would still be trying to eek out 20–17 wins to keep pace with the Packers. Had he signed with the Raiders, he’d have the same issue he had with the roster in New England—limited outside weapons—and last season would have been tasked with outscoring opponents across from a defense that couldn’t get off the field. If he had signed with the 49ers, they'd be contenders this season but would not have won 10 games with their rash of injuries to both sides of the ball a year ago. Tampa was a only spot that offered any kind of upgrade for Brady, and if they were already spoken for in regards to a quarterback the shouty people would have a lot less to shout about.
