[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by egri

The season before, with the same receivers and playing a tougher schedule, Tom Brady put up 50 TDs and 4,800 yards. That is a major drop off, especially as all 5 of the 2008 Patriots losses were to playoff bound teams. In 2007, Randy Moss alone caught 23 TDs from Brady, 2 more than Cassel put up the entire following year. You can’t look at the stats and not see how losing Brady hurt them in a big way, especially on a team that missed the playoffs on tiebreakers.

As for the Patriots defense bailing him out all the time, he dragged the 31st ranked defense to Super Bowl 46, where Bill Belichick had so little faith in them he gave up a score to the Giants to get the offense back on the field sooner. Then two years ago, he lead the #1 offense even though all his favorite targets missed significant time that year. Gronkowski and Edelman missed several games as did Amendola, and defense captain Jerod Mayo was banged up so badly he retired after the season. In spite of this, in Denver, against the #1 defense with his center, Bryan Stork, tipping the snaps, they were a pair of missed PATs away from going to SB 50.

From memory that was a weak 11-5 team that everyone knew had no chance of going deep into the playoffs. It's just pointless to try to minimize Brady's role in the Patriot's dominance.