But the thing is....Brady was a magical presence from the very start. Might not be as good in 2001 as he would later become, but from the team record standpoint to his own stats, he was already near the top of the NFL. His impact on the team was immediate.
The Pats were 5-13 under Belichick prior to his first start, 0-2 in 2001, and went 14-3 the rest of the season.
Brady had the 6th highest QB rating in 2001 & 5 game winning drives (including one in the Super Bowl). The Pats were 6th in points scored in 2001, they were 25th the year before. Who, in 2001, could have done better than Brady with this offense ? Would you rather have had Manning and his 23 picks in 2001, or Warner and his 22 picks instead ?
Anyone who takes a 1-year sample, 2002, over a 23-year career to make a point is disingenuous at best. Even then, Brady led the league in TDs, and the Pats were a tiebraker away from winning the division.
For Pats fans who have witnessed this entire period, from the Carroll years through now, I find it hard to understand why anyone would undervalue the value of Brady to the 6 Championships. These are usually things we see from Pats haters...and most of them coming from the fact that Brady was a 6th round pick, thus not a premium pick player, and expecting that at some point he would turn back into a pumpkin.
And worst of all, the biggest offender on this forum is the one who constantly states that football is a team sport and the impact of QBs are overvalued...and yet laid all the issues the Pats had in 2023 at the feet of 1 player, the QB. Which pretty much shows what everybody else know : you can't win without a great QB. And great QBs are few and far between. Someone will again put up the Trent Dilfers and Brad Johnsons, but take a look at their team stats : these were among the greatest defenses of all time (Dilfer's Ravens even went 4 games without scoring a TD), these are historical abnormalities, not a trend.