Tom Brady played in his 14th conference championship game Sunday, and two weeks from now he'll play in his 10th Super Bowl. Bill Belichick, still stuck on 13 and 9, was watching from home Sunday and won't be coaching in Super Bowl LV. If you're among those inclined to take the Brady side in the Brady vs. Belichick debate, this qualifies as significant supporting evidence.
If you're inclined toward common sense, you realize it's not.
The debate, such as it is, seeks to determine which actor was most important in the staggering two-decade run of success the New England Patriots had while Brady was Belichick's quarterback. It's a silly question because the two of them together were the most successful coach/quarterback tandem in the Super Bowl era, it's almost certain that neither would have been as successful without the other, and there's no point in an attempt to downgrade the achievements of either one.
But it's a question that will endure long after Brady has thrown his last pass and Belichick his last challenge flag, so let's address it here. Even if it's only to tell you why this season really didn't provide an answer.
Yes, it is true that Brady's teams have reached the playoffs in 19 of the past 20 seasons, with the only exception being the 2008 season in which he suffered a season-ending left knee injury in Week 1. And yes, it's true that Belichick's teams have missed the playoffs twice in the past 20 seasons -- that aforementioned 2008 season and this season, which was the first since 2000 without Brady as the starter. There are those who'd look at that and say it proves Belichick can't win without Brady.
The truth, though, is that we don't have enough evidence to prove that. The 2008 team went 11-5, which was a five-game drop off from the previous year but also a record that has only failed to put a team in the playoffs twice ever -- the Pats in '08 and the Broncos in 1985. And this year's Patriots team was simply not very good, which was one of the reasons Brady bailed in the first place.
Remember, after an 8-0 start last season led by a dominant defense, the Patriots limped through the second half at 4-4 and lost in the wild-card round of the playoffs. The offense was stagnant, and the offseason brought no obvious improvement at wide receiver or tight end. Then eight players opted out due to the COVID-19 pandemic -- including linebacker and team captain Dont'a Hightower, safety Patrick Chung and right tackle Marcus Cannon -- three more than opted out from any other team. The 2020 Patriots had just six first-round picks on the roster. Only two teams had fewer.
The Buccaneers had nine first-rounders on their roster, which put them in the top 10 in the league in that category. ESPN Stats & Information has a statistic called total efficiency, which blends a team's offense, defense and special teams and grades the whole thing on a scale of 1-to-100. This 2020 Bucs had a total efficiency score of 66.1, which was fifth-best in the league. This Pats had a 43.8 this season, which ranked 22nd.
This does not, please understand, detract from anything Brady did in 2020. Third in passing yards and second in passing touchdowns at age 43 is unheard of. There are plenty of younger quarterbacks on good teams who didn't perform at Brady's level this season. He is the unquestioned best quarterback in NFL history, based on what he has accomplished, and the fact that he's still doing it at his age is something we'll all struggle to explain to our grandchildren. Even the great Drew Brees looked totally shot in a postseason game played two days after his 42nd birthday. Brady isn't just playing and winning at 43 -- he's thriving. He's signed for his age 44 season, and who among us is ready to say he won't keep going after that?
But to judge Belichick's 2020 success as a coach vs. Brady's 2020 success as a quarterback requires a slew of false equivalencies. The Bucs had a ready-made, just-add-quarterback roster that was on the verge of winning. It was part of their pitch to Brady, and the pitch obviously worked. Belichick has explained publicly that he always viewed 2020 as the year the bill was coming due for some of the salary-cap decisions the team had made over the previous half-decade, in which they played in three Super Bowls and won two of them. Signing Cam Newton on the cheap, pairing him with a young wide receiver group that lost Julian Edelman early in the season and trying to patch together a defense amid the opt-outs was never a recipe for a decent season, and the Patriots' coaching staff did the best it could to get to 7-9.
If you want to judge Belichick on 2020, judge him as the roster-builder, not the coach. The Patriots haven't drafted a non-specialist Pro Bowl player since 2013. Belichick's roster decisions since that year have delivered three Super Bowl titles, but the failure to develop stars at key positions showed up in a big way this season. Heck, you can make the argument that they showed up last year, but that Brady and that 8-0 start helped cover up the flaws.
Belichick's greatest achievement over the past 20 years has been that he has defeated the salary cap. The NFL's economic system is set up to prevent exactly what he and the Patriots have done this century, and his ability to build and maintain a roster with relative-bargain contracts will be studied by front offices for years to come. Brady himself was a bargain -- a sixth-round pick who became the greatest quarterback in NFL history and never insisted on setting records for salary at the position. Keeping Brady on board with the program was one of the program's great successes, and it underlines the point that the combination of Brady and Belichick, not one or the other, was the reason they won so much.
If you want to tell me Belichick is nothing without Brady, wait a couple of years and see how Belichick pulls the Patriots out of this. They are in a stellar salary cap situation for 2021, and as a result should have more options available to them at quarterback and other key positions if they want to rebuild quickly. Brady's success shouldn't go anywhere -- the Bucs' roster looks to be in good shape for 2021, and something closer to a real offseason on top of this season's experience there should only help him be better next year. But if Belichick can build a title contender again out of the ashes from which Brady escaped, it'll burnish his legacy even further, and 2020 will be a blip on the radar of this unanswerable who-deserves-more-credit question.
Neither one of these guys' legacies needs any help. Brady got some this season, and Belichick did not. But that doesn't take away from anything they did together in the previous 19 years, and it certainly doesn't prove that it was all because of the quarterback. Brady had the chance to jump ship when he saw it taking on water. Belichick, whose ship it actually is, didn't have that choice. Let's see if he can get it back in shape before passing any judgments.