I’ve felt that Brady had growing frustrations with our coaching throughout his 2nd season with the team. Not only with our offensive philosophy but also with our defensive scheme. He respects Arians, Leftwich, and the staff too much to put it out there, but the frustrations were enough to push him to hang up his cleats… for now.., with the Bucs at least.
Our offense relies so much on our receivers to win one-on-one battles vs. scheming route combinations to get receivers open against different defenses. We also rely too much on the pass and alternatively do not utilize play action enough. Our hard-headedness to keep you out scheme keeps us from making things easier for the offense. Belicheck was all about common sense coaching. Take what a defense gives you even if it isn’t necessarily what the team does well. To that affect, he didn’t have a specific schemer… he could run a little bit of everything.
What was going to change next year if Brady stayed around? Nothing. Teams like the Saints and Rams… will dominate our offense. And other teams will start to play us similarly. If Brady doesn’t make fabulous throws to pull us out of games then we won’t beat the better teams. It is ridiculous that Arians has been dominated by the Saints and Sean Payton the way he has the last 3 years.
On defense, Brady never had a season in New England where his defense gave up so many points and made it easy for opposing offenses. We took Brady for granted. Well now we will see how things will look without Brady as our savior and the same philosophies, including a horrible special teams in all phases (why didn’t we make a play for Rich Bisachia)?
We’ll see how much we miss Brady next year and we’ll see that it’s time for Bowles and Leftwich to grow outside of their comfort zones. And most sadly, we may see Brady taking another team to the promise land. A team that he doesn’t have to completely put on his shoulders.
