I know their o-line sucks and their receiver core is thin after Gronk and Edelman, but he's looked so average since last year. All of those Houdini acts last year masked it. I haven't seen him throw it deep once and complete it. He's 37 after all
Age is catching up to him. The crappy O-line and lack of a running game doesn't help at this point in his career either. His skills aren't what they were, but don't underestimate him this year if they get the O-Line figured out....BIG IF.
He hasn't been able to consistently for a few years now. Super accurate within 5-10 yards of the LOS so it was never a huge glaring problem
His arm is the weakest it's ever been; he's never been known to have an incredible arm at long distances, but right now it's one of the worst in the league.
I didn't watch the game but I am going to guess that up 41-7 with 10 minutes left they had a bunch of starters on the bench and weren't putting too much pressure on him. Looks like he was throwing a lot of 1,2 and 3 yard passes with most of the yardage coming after the catch. I liked Garoppolo before the draft but thought he was a late 3rd talent, still think so and until he is in there against starters and showing something I wouldn't worry about him being the second coming.
Thing is that Brady is definitely in the twilight of his career now, he's 37 (or 38?) years old and in even QB terms that's old. That said He'll probably be around for 3-4 or 5 more years, but most QB's who reach that point have finished their careers as backups with their skill sets having diminished, one of the few exceptions to that was Favre.
It would be foolish to write him in just because he's Brady as well. He's 37 and he's in that time period where the skills diminish. It doesn't diminish at the same rate for people at the same times but he's well in to that bracket where the tools are going down hill for him just because of age. In Brady's case he was never a big arm man so any loss of arm strength is a problem. As we age our reflexes get slower, and even if we keep 20/20 vision the vision band still gets more narrow and you tend to lose the wider field of vision. Some players the drop off from 35-40+ is a slope, others it's a cliff where one day they can do it, the next they find the can't (figuratively speaking of course, it's not literally 1 day, unless of course there's a stroke or accident of some sort). Brady is now in that time frame where you know the skills are diminishing, you just have to try to gauge how fast they are diminishing. Last year Brady led almost the same offense to a 12-4 record, this year through the easy part of their schedule they're 2-2. The Patriots have always been able to fall back on Brady's talent to overcome any shortcomings the offense had, but I think that time has caught up with Brady and he can no longer shoulder the full load. This isn't to say that Brady isn't still a good QB, or that he's not even an above average QB...but it may be indicative that he is no longer an elite QB who's able to overcome a weak compliment of players on offense and rise them up to the next level. In other words I still think Brady is better than probably 2/3's of the QB's out there, but he's no longer a top 5 QB either. Getting old sucks.
I would imagine Brady has dropped off as much as Peyton. The difference is one GM is trying to win and surround their QB with weapons, the other keeps drafting for next year and has wasted the last 10 years of Brady's career.
Peyton also had the advantage of more physical tools and a stronger arm than Brady so physically Peyton could "lose" more before becoming ineffective. But Denver's approach has definitely helped Peyton while that Patriots hoped Brady still had the magic to lift the rest of the team fully upon his shoulders.
Peyton's arm is weak too. Throwing up ducks but hey they fall where they need to go. Danny Amendola was a bust for them. He could be a #1 receiver, but they never found a way to use him, that's on Bill.
Peyton's arm is weaker now, yes. the point was that Peyton HAD the arm strength to lose some and still remain effective. Brady didn't. Peyton still throws with as much strength as Brady's had any time in the last 5 years.
