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Tom Brady can not play at a high level forever. Basically, fans of the Patriots are aware of it and fearfully await the day when its inevitable decline will begin.
In the past, many analysts have prematurely written about Brady's career obituary after a series of disappointing results. Only the biggest quarterback quickly proved the opposite. But, usually, a closer look at Brady's difficulties reveals the source of the problems he may have.
Brady is currently at the center of one of these difficulties. Remember that a bad race for the future Hall of Famer would be considered good for about 90% of the starting quarterbacks. Brady still finishes 67.5% of his passes with a pass mark of 97.6. These are definitely good numbers, but we expect more than good results from Brady.
For the first time since the 2013 season, we can not say "this version of Tom Brady is better than the one we saw last season". The 2018 Brady is clearly a step back from what we saw during its MVP campaign in 2017. I now have some statistical evidence to support it …
Only Mitch Trubisky has been less precise than Brady this season! The most accurate quarter we've ever seen is one of the least accurate in 2018. To that, it's fair to think that at age 41, Brady might have lost a few points per minute of his fastball.
But as many people have mentioned in the responses to the tweet above, these numbers lack context. Brady has not had Julian Edelman for the first four games, Rob Gronkowski does not look the same and Josh Gordon, the de facto receiver of the team, continues to learn the offensive.
In this regard, I would say that Brady has never had problems working with new receivers and that 81.3% of his attempts have been entrusted to recipients on the Patriots list before this season. Gordon is the only new player with more than 20 targets.
It should also be noted that Brady ranks 24th in the league in the "expectations achievement percentage," according to NextGen Stats, which relies, among other things, on the depth of the separation of recipients and recipients. So there is not a single measure suggesting that Brady does not complete as many passes as he should.
Let's be fair, ignore these arguments and try to add context to Brady's off target percentage. To do this, we went back and looked at each incomplete pass that he has launched since the fifth week – Edelman's first game – and we have classified them into six categories: inaccurate, intentional, miscommunication, abandonment and defense.
Before looking at the numbers, here is an example of each category …
Inaccurate
No explanation needed here. Any throwing that does not give the receiver a chance to catch him or that requires him to adjust awkwardly is marked as inaccurate.
Intentional
This includes scraps, picks and passes to protect his receiver.
miscommunication
We tried to give Brady the benefit of the doubt here. If it sounded like bad communication, that's what we call it. It's based on the assumption that Brady knows the offense better than anyone else.
Drop
We all know a drop when we see one.
Defense
This includes games where Brady was hit while throwing or a back defender playing the ball or thrown away from a tight blanket.
OK, now that we have covered, the results …
Of Brady's 43 shortcomings in the last four games, 17 are the result of a bad pitch. This represents 10.6% of this total of attempts during this period.
Although this number is not as bad as 21.3%, it is still not very good. We have done similar studies for other NFL quarters such as Andrew Luck, Josh Rosen and Tyrod Taylor, and their results have been more favorable than those of Brady. The closest to Brady was Taylor. Although Taylor may be a little underrated, it's not the company Brady should be in.
The Brady Band is actually a lot more worrying than the numbers. He has launched an unusually high number of bad throws in recent months. He misses the kind of throws he made with ease.
And its vagueness has a distinct pattern: when short, forced shots are missing, low targets, stationary or wide, are almost always missing from moving targets.
When he has missed the perimeter of the field, the ball is high and directed outwards.
This is typically the kind of misfire we see in quarterbacks with a deficit of arm strength. Brady never had the strongest arm, but that was never a problem for him. It may be starting to change as Brady approaches midlife.
It's obvious that Brady was not his typical self. But can we say that Brady is not quite as before? These are two very different statements. If Brady is in decline, then we will have to determine the extent of this decline – it is certainly not excluded that one of the most dedicated players we have ever seen finds a way to adapt. But if he does not, it will be fair to wonder if the Patriotes' attack can still be as good as it should be to play a Super Bowl without 12th place at an elite level. For years, Brady – and his elite coaching – helped breed a mishmash of players to keep the Patriots at the top of the rankings. He will eventually need help, but he does not have it now.
It is far too early to give definitive answers to these questions, but we can say this: if Brady's performance does not improve during the second half of the season, we will have to re-evaluate his elite quartet status in the offseason, and the Patriots will have to seriously begin to consider life after Brady.
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