Tom Brady haters aren’t going to like the true story
Tom Brady haters have always been a prevalent group and it seems many were added to that number when he jumped ship to join the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this season.
While Tom Brady has won six Super Bowls and has a large following, many Buccaneers fans who wanted the franchise to re-sign Jameis Winston were fuming when the Bucs made the decision to move on from their former No. 1 overall draft pick.
The result? They- and the vast amount of Brady haters who were already around- have joined together in blaming the quarterback for the Bucs’ troubles through the first 12 games of the season.
Unfortunately, that’s just not really the case.
Jon Ledyard went back and compared stats to quarterbacks in previous years running Bruce Arians’ offense for the first time and the truth is that Tom Brady has been just as good as anybody and much better than Jameis Winston last season.
QBs cannot be evaluated solely off of stats, period.
— Jon Ledyard (@LedyardNFLDraft) December 1, 2020
But bc nobody is going back and watching all these guys, here is Tom Brady’s stats compared to all other QBs in their first year in Bruce Arians’ offense. 👀🤔#Bucs pic.twitter.com/P8gnNmGzJp
Tom Brady isn’t the problem for the Buccaneers, sorry not sorry.
We’ve already dived into what the issues are for the Buccaneers and, yes, Tom Brady has had his fair share of miscues over the course of the 2020 season.
But if you look at the season as a whole, you’ll see that there’s a much deeper problem than blaming the quarterback.
Brady is having a better season than any other quarterback in the history of Arians’ system in the first year, as far as stats are concerned. He is still throwing accurate passes and he has refrained from turning the ball over droves (minus about three games) this season.
The problem is that Arians has always lived and died by the deep ball and it’s not working. As has been pointed out by tons of analysts starting with Tony Romo during the Chiefs broadcast, the Bucs aren’t using play-action (though Brady is second in the league in accuracy when it’s used) and they aren’t even trying to establish the run.
If you want to see a successful offense, Brady is more than capable of running it. It simply comes back to Bruce Arians making changes, which is something he has to show the propensity to do.