Contrary to popular opinion, the Tom Brady vs. Bill Belichick debate isn’t one that can be easily settled by the two splitting this offseason.
Sure, it would be interesting to see what would happen if Brady left the Patriots in free agency. Even the quarterback’s predecessor, Drew Bledsoe, acknowledged such this week while discussing New England’s unprecedented predicament. But how much would we really learn at this point?
After all, we’re talking about Brady entering his age-43 season. He’s no longer in his prime. If he flopped with a new team, it’d be hard to view that as an indictment against the six-time Super Bowl champion. Just like it’d be equally difficult to minimize Brady’s accomplishments if the Patriots returned to prominence next season with a new quarterback surrounded by better offensive weapons.
“To be fair to Brady, it’s an unfair fight,” Nick Wright explained on Wednesday’s episode of “First Things First” on FS1. “Because as a coach, you just get better every year, you learn more every year. … Your skills don’t deteriorate (as a coach). You get better, as long as your mind is still sharp. As a player, after usually the age of about 33 — for Brady, it appears to have been after the age of about 39 — you start to tail off. So at this point in his career, obviously Brady needs more help. To me, that’s not a fair comparison when we’re doing the Brady-Belichick tale of the tape.
“If they do split up, one would of course anticipate that Belichick would continue to have more success, because Belichick is not the oldest coach of all time, while Brady is trying to become the oldest quarterback of all time. So to be fair to Tom, he is gonna be 43 years old, so of course he does need some help.”
"It's an unfair fight for Brady. As a coach, you get better every year…. As a player, after usually 33, for Brady it appears to be 39, you start to tail off. If they split up, Belichick will continue to have more success bc he's not the oldest coach of all-time."—@getnickwright pic.twitter.com/gnyjDteyAP
— First Things First (@FTFonFS1) January 8, 2020
In other words, this exercise — Brady and Belichick going their separate ways to see who’s more responsible for the Patriots’ dynasty — would have been far more fascinating — and perhaps effective — several years ago, when the former still was at the peak of his powers.
Belichick will be 68 when the Patriots open the 2020 campaign. So yeah, he’s no spring chicken. But that’s not that crazy for a head coach, whereas Brady is in the midst of a slugfest with Father Time, looking to overcome clearly diminished physical tools in pursuit of on-field accomplishments never before seen in the NFL.
