Belichick vs. Brady: Shall We Get On With It?

Anyone else ready to move on?

The multiple-week hype for Tom Brady‘s return to Foxboro this Sunday has been worse than enduring the regular two-week wait between conference championships and the Super Bowl.

Way worse.

Even the past two weeks leading up to the game, it feels as if the slow, pounding drumbeat of anticipation isn’t getting any faster – only louder.

Enough already.  If we’ve ever talked-out, thought-out, argued-out and reasoned-out a topic, this would be one.

Tom’s gone 

He got more money to play someplace else…in Tampa.  Feel free to blame Bill Belichick, or Robert Kraft, or Pat Patriot or anyone else you see fit to pin a tail on the donkey who let him get away.

If you must, blame the system set up now for players in the NFL.  Because that’s really what happened here, if you’re not satisfied with the dozens of reasons and theories floating around in the mediasphere.  I believe Bill when he says they wanted to keep him.  I believe Tom when he says things were handled the best way they could have been handled.

What I don’t believe:  there wasn’t much of a stomach to go against ‘The Patriot Way.’  In other words, why change – from an organizational perspective – the way we’ve done business and football for the previous 20 years?

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Bill isn’t perfect

No – but he did help bring six Vince Lombardi trophies to New England.

You can list the names of players let go by the organization ‘a little too early.’  Richard Seymour, Asante Samuel, Lawyer Milloy, Logan Mankins…and you would be right.  But football is very much a subjective business, and while you may miss on a few, you also hope to hit on a lot more.

Bill Belichick and the Patriots have done that.  But they’ve got a greater task ahead, in trying to return a roster to championship form.  You can certainly make the argument that even if TB12 were still in New England right now, this team would still be struggling to find itself.

That seems to be one of the reasons Tom decided to leave, no?  So, good for him.  The Patriots also determined that, while they’d love to have kept him, they had (and still have) many areas in which they need to improve.  No one said break-ups make any logical sense or are easy to deal with.

So, we have our memories and they are glorious.

But for this team, this organization, it’s past time to move on.  Thanks, Tom.  But let’s get going, Bill.  And it starts Sunday night, if it hasn’t already.

Aren’t you ready for that?