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In those nineteen years, they had seventeen divisional titles, thirteen AFC title game appearances, nine Super Bowl appearances, six Super Bowl trophies, and only missed the playoffs twice.   That is a winning culture, not to mention a dynasty.

And that has tremendous power in shaping the attitudes and behavior of any players acquired.  You're not going to walk into that locker room during that period and have your own agenda that runs counter to that culture.  If so you'll stand out like a sore thumb and be jettisoned quickly.  That's the power of a winning culture -- it sustains itself.

And that's why I have no qualms trading DeVante Parker -- he's inconsistent with the establishment of that kind of culture in Miami.  To the degree you have players like him -- and especially to the degree that you make them higher-paid players on your roster and thereby tell the locker room "this is what we value" -- you go the wrong direction with regard to the establishment of that culture.

The other important element of that culture were Brady's regular pay cuts.  Nobody is deluding themselves into believing he was living like a pauper because of them, but when a shoo-in first-ballot Hall of Famer voluntarily takes less money than he can rightfully make as a function of his performance, it sends a powerful message through the locker room that this is a selfless team whose number-one priority is winning, not individual earnings or accomplishments.  The very best player on the team -- if not the entire league -- is taking less money from the team on purpose so that you (insert player) can be a part of this team and make it more likely to win.  All for one and one for all.  The very essence of team functioning.  There is no player on that team that will possibly take the field and give anything less than 110% under those conditions.  That's what the culture dictates to him.  It's an unspoken condition of employment -- it's "who we are" here.

That's profound and extremely powerful, and it may have never been replicated elsewhere in all of sports.  When you lose that player you lose the lynchpin of that selfless team environment -- the culture.  This is why Brady can go elsewhere and immediately create that same environment.  It's who he is, and everybody knows it.

It's been replicated (https://nba.nbcsports.com/2010/07/10/lebron-james-dwyane-wade-chris-bosh-each-leave-15-million-on-the-table/) multiple (https://www.essentiallysports.com/nba-news-when-lebron-james-and-dwyane-wade-helped-miami-heat-financially-to-retain-a-key-player-udonis-haslem-chris-bosh/) times (https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/07/why-kevin-durant-took-a-10-million-pay-cut-to-play-for-the-warriors.html) in the NBA.  Top players frequently take less than the maximum pay to facilitate contracts.

We'll just ignore the whole "TB12 LLC" thing when looking at how much Brady was paid, right?

In the end the matter is going to hinge on the perception the Patriots' players had of Brady's selflessness toward the goal of winning as opposed to individual earnings or accomplishments.  I think it's safe to say it would've been relatively easy for the Patriots' players to perceive that Brady was all about winning as a team as opposed to his own earnings or accomplishments.  And if that's the case, the kind of team culture I'm talking about here flows relatively easily from there.  He doesn't have to live like a pauper or have no additional sources of income for his teammates to perceive that he's all about winning in a selfless manner.

The best player on the team, if not the whole league, and the one who has the most power in pulling organizational strings from the player level, is all about winning as a team.  That creates the direction of the "grain" within the organization, and any player who then goes "against the grain" stands out like a sore thumb.  The influence that has on the locker room then essentially is the culture.  It's "who we are."

That's the switch the Patriots flipped innumerable times when 1) down late in games, 2) having lost the week previously, or 3) having started a season poorly.  What they did against the Falcons in the fourth quarter of the 2017 Super Bowl for example reflects this team culture -- it allowed them to flip a switch and be "who we are" at times like that.  When an entire team is on that boat and rowing that same direction, it's tremendously powerful.

I just watched a special on ESPN about the Houston-Buffalo playoff game in the early 1990s in which Frank Reich led the biggest comeback in playoff history.  The Bills' players talked about how it took every player on the field working together to mount that improbable comeback.  That was but a single game, however -- the Patriots simply did that for 20 years as a function of their organizational culture.

While I'm sure that owners everywhere would love to spread the idea that players taking less money leads to late game comeback wins, I think perhaps you're reading something that isn't there.

Brady and the Patriots have won quite a few titles over the last 20 years.
But the vast majority of Super Bowl champions over that time have NOT had their top player take a voluntary pay cut in the manner you suggest.

Not for one year.  You can totally make your play by having a rookie contract, a few guys who you are getting value from before they re-sign for big money, etc.
But the longevity of the Pats reign comes from start contract work.  ...not only in keeping Brady for value, but for getting rid of a bunch of guys at their prime payday...Vinatieri et al.

That supports the point entirely, as we're talking here about the ingredients necessary for a dynasty, not just a championship.

I don't remember Troy Aikman taking less money to sign free agents, either.
If we have to define the Patriots as the only dynasty to make this claim, we could point at literally any aspect and say this one thing was the key to their victory.

What other dynasty has there been in the NFL that's lasted 20 years?  Something accounts for that longevity.  An organizational culture that sustained itself and distinguished itself from that of organizations that merely won championships -- or experienced dynasties of far shorter durations -- is the most likely candidate.  It's endemic to the organization and withstands variation in almost every other variable associated with winning.

Maybe it's just that Tom Brady is really good at throwing a football, and Bill Belichick is good at coaching football?
Sometimes the simple explanation is the right one.

I would also suggest that the fact that Brady led the league in passing at age 44 reinforces the idea that his success has less to do with his willingness to take less money and more to do with being extraordinarily good at throwing a football.

Those variables are present on lots of teams that don’t sustain Super Bowl-level success for 20 years.

None of those teams had QBs that could lead the league in passing at age 44, regardless of their salary.

Comb through all the quarterbacks in history who had that ability for a sustained period in the NFL and you’ll find that almost none of them experienced a dynasty.

Vinatieri didn't leave for more money.  Patriots had offered him just as much money.  He wanted to play in a dome stadium rather than outside in the windy northeast.  Different players have different goals.   Some it is about the money, others it is about being on a winning team, and for some it is about individual stats.  Weather plays a greater role in the kicking game than any other aspect.  Adam choose a dome team in division where all the non-dome teams were in good weather. 

I'm interested in your take as a Patriot fan -- how would you explain how the Patriots managed to function for 20 years, despite wide variation in personnel during that period?  Certainly Brady and Belichick were mainstays, but coaches and players alike came and went, yet their dominance persisted.  And we're not just talking about "being good" for 20 years -- we're talking about a special ability to right themselves in the face of adversity in an uncanny manner -- mounting unlikely comebacks in games, rarely going on losing streaks, starting seasons poorly (for them) and then rebounding -- all of these are indications of some kind of unique resiliency that isn't explained by merely "being good" at coaching and quarterbacking in my opinion.  In my view they reflect something more deeply woven into the fabric of the organization -- the "Patriot way" as it's been called.

I have another theory. I think he wanted the challenge of helping the colts rise to the top.  His first season, he kicked eight or ten field goals in the first two playoff games.

Another theory is that he saw the Polamalu interception overturn his last year with New England. He thought maybe he would go there because the colts were clearly the nfls darling franchise.  Sure enough, the colts won his first year there because of horrid officiating.

Now, the packers are the nfls darling franchise

Spare me your bullshit rhetoric, please.  Just watch the games. 

Did they have quarterbacks that could will their opponents to turn the ball over and over again?

Part of it is due to playing in a toilet division

Miami had three playoff appearances in that span

The jets had five

The bills had two or three

The patriots were a lock to win their division every year

Yeah I won't be responding to you here, beyond this.  Take care.

Fair enough

Comb through "all the quarterbacks in history" that had the ability to lead the league in passing in their mid-40s and you'll have a very short list that excludes every dynasty but one.

This line of reasoning isn't even historically applicable, since there has only been one team* that has won more than 2 Super Bowls since the introduction of the salary cap: BB's Patriots.  So what "dynasty" can we even compare them to, when the salary cap wasn't even a factor for all the earlier dynasties?

*technically DEN has won 3, but there was no continuity between the 1998-99 championship teams and the 2015 championship team

If the distinction you're making between the Patriots' success and the success of other teams with QBs of similar ability hinges on the existence of the salary cap, that lends even more credence to the effect of Brady's pay cuts on their success.  Presumably teams unbeholden to a salary cap historically would've been free to surround elite QBs with unlimited talent, yet an extremely small percentage of those QBs enjoyed dynasties.

If you're viewing the likelihood of the Patriots' success as being diminished by the existence of the salary cap -- as anyone should -- then that suggests that salary cap management was a key ingredient of their unlikely success.  And now we're back to Brady's regular pay cuts as a key element of salary cap management.  Paying an elite QB like an elite QB would've diminished their ability to surround him with the talent necessary to function at that level for 20 years.  Present-day teams just lost the two best receivers in the league -- Davante Adams and Tyreek Hill -- for that reason.  They couldn't pay their elite QBs and their stud receivers.

And for me the salary cap issue isn't only technical -- i.e., number crunching and money management -- but also symbolic of selflessness on Brady's part and the cornerstone of an "all for one and one for all" team culture that created.  Again if the best player on the team, if not the league, is the one making the monetary sacrifice so that the team can pay other players and win, it's a short step from there to a team culture of selflessness.  The effect of that in the locker room is pervasive and powerful in my opinion.  If arguably the best player in the league is going to those lengths to help the team win, nobody on the team will feel comfortable giving less than 110% for the team.  That best player will have essentially established a team culture in and of himself.

If Patriots player X (insert the name of any player) is making more money himself by virtue of Tom Brady's monetary sacrifice, player X certainly isn't going to feel comfortable giving less effort than Tom Brady.  And if Brady's effort is stellar, well now the whole team's is.

An incredible example of leadership, and why he can go elsewhere and immediately replicate that, while the Patriots struggle to in his absence.

I would reject the idea that the Patriots had greater success than every other team in NFL history because their players were more inspired by Tom Brady out of hand.  But I ESPECIALLY reject the idea that their success was due to the inspiration from Tom Brady taking less money.  This sounds like the kind of premise that an extremely unimaginative owner would try to promote.

Again: rather than reaching for mystical reasons like "NE just wanted it more than every other team to ever play," I think "Bill Belichick is an outstanding coach and Tom Brady is an exceptional QB" are sufficient explanations.  No other QB in NFL history has played at the level Brady has for the length of time he has.

I fully subscribe to that theory, at least as being part of the reason.  Tom Brady taking less money when he could've gone on the open market and got a lot more allowed the Patriots to keep giving him help.  I don't see what's so controversial about that.

Belichick and Brady are certainly great and first-ballot Hall of Famers, but their presence alone doesn't explain "the Patriot way" -- the team's uncanny pattern of resilience in the face of adversity, most notably reflected in unlikely comebacks in games, the relative absence of losing streaks, and the ability to turn seasons around after starting them poorly.

When you watched the Patriots in the 2017 Super Bowl against the Falcons for example, you "knew" on some level they were far and away more likely than any other team in recent history to mount that comeback and win that game, and you weren't surprised when they did it -- after all, they're "the Patriots."

That knack for playing that way represents something far more than just talent at head coach and QB.  That's a team culture variable.  And they displayed that for 20 years across a vast variety of situations.

That was what was responsible for their dynasty.  You remove that and they're still a great team, make no mistake, but they don't exhibit that pattern of extreme dominance for 20 consecutive years.

Lots of variables made the Patriots great 2001-2019, most notably Belichick and Brady, but what made them "the Patriots" during that period was their team culture in my opinion.  When people look back at that team in 20 years, it's being "the Patriots" that will make them distinctive.  People will remember the way they played and how that made them dominant and distinctive, and that's a function of their culture.

Belichick is a coattail rider, Brady's back must hurt.

That's not the claim being made.

The claim being made is that Brady's decision to take less money inspired the rest of the team to play better.  And that's just mysticism; it's indistinguishable from the kind of "Brady just wanted to win more than any other QB ever" claims that sportswriters love to peddle.

And why do you say that?

Why do you believe that a head coach - one who clearly prepares his players for many different situations, to a level that is obviously better than most of his contemporaries - cannot have that kind of impact on a team through practice and training?

Why do you believe that a QB who has played at an elite level for a longer period than any other QB ever can produce these kind of results, even immediately upon joining a different team?

Why do you instead attribute their success to motivation?  Why would you think that Brady's teammates are just More Motivated than the thousands of other great players to come through the league, when there is clear and uncontroversial evidence that Belichick and Brady are objectively better at their jobs than their peers?

Steph Curry is the greatest 3-point shooter in the history of basketball.  That doesn't necessarily mean that he's more mentally tough than Ray Allen, or has better emotional support from his family than Reggie Miller, or has stronger motivation from his coaches than Larry Bird.  It can simply mean that he's naturally better at shooting threes.  No need to invent a psychological narrative when a perfectly mundane one already exists.

Let me ask you again.

If this is true, why do the Patriots have such a great record in playoff games in which Brady has underperformed?

If all of that explained the Patriots' ability to win the 2017 Super Bowl against presumably the second-best team in the league, when down 29-9 with 10:25 left in the fourth quarter and with a win probability of 0.7% (i.e., the Falcons were 99.3% likely to win at that point), the Patriots would've simply beaten them from the get-go instead, as opposed to mounting a highly unlikely comeback and winning.  If you can beat the hell out of a team for 10 and a half minutes of the fourth quarter and win in a highly improbable manner, why didn't you just beat the hell out of them the whole game and win 55-0 for example?

Now, that's a mere single game, and of course that game alone doesn't explain a dynasty, but that way of playing was displayed consistently (not in every game, but consistently) throughout their 20-year run, and it isn't explained by physical talent alone.  If it were explained by physical talent alone, they never would've lost a game.  They simply would've come out and bludgeoned every team they played from start to finish.

That way of playing is a team culture variable, not a team talent variable.

That's not how talent works, in any sport.  Setting aside the fact that the best team has lost outright to a worse team in literally every season but one, there is no reason to believe that a superior team should be in the lead from wire to wire.

I am also forced to wonder what happened to NE's "team culture" when they choked away a 21-3 lead to the Colts in the 2006 AFC Championship game.  If we are to ascribe such importance to individual games, what is your explanation for that one?

Again: this is not how talent works; you can have just superior enough talent to win a record 6 titles in 18 years without winning literally every game.  "Talent" is not some sort of on/off switch where either a) you literally do not trail in ANY game for 18 straight years or b) your wins are due to something other than talent.

For me the matter comes down to this:

1) What the Patriots did in the 2017 Super Bowl reflects an emotional variable, not a physical talent variable.  The Patriots didn't "flip a switch" on physical talent in the fourth quarter -- they flipped a switch on something emotional within them.  The Patriots didn't suddenly get "more talented" in the fourth quarter of that game -- talent doesn't vary from quarter to quarter in a football game.  Emotion does, however!

2) That wasn't a mere one-game phenomenon for them -- that was something they did routinely and consistently throughout their 20-year run.  There may have been variation in it, as there is in virtually all things, but they nonetheless displayed that at a level overall that distinguished them significantly from the rest of the league during that period.  They varied at a higher level with regard to that variable than did the rest of the league.

3) Given the consistency over 20 years in their ability in that regard, that suggests an organizational culture variable was at play -- a "who we are" in the locker room that could be drawn upon when necessary and fuel those sorts of emotional responses.

4) That culture was one of selflessness -- all for one and one for all.  The drive to give 110% of oneself in the name of winning as a team.

5) The cornerstone of that culture of selflessness was Tom Brady -- the 20-year mainstay at the most important position on the field, and the player who exhibited that selflessness poignantly by sacrificing his own income to essentially "pay" other players to help the team win.  An incredible act of team leadership that functioned as the cornerstone of the team culture.  When Brady is essentially "paying" other players to help the team win, there is no player who will feel comfortable giving less effort than Tom Brady.  And again if Brady's effort is stellar, and of course it was, well then so is the entire team's.  Leadership in a nutshell, and the effect of that on an entire team culture.  Extremely powerful.

6) The power of that variable elevated their performance as a team from the level of very good to the level of dynasty -- a team that performed consistently at an extremely high level for a very long period of time.  Rather than being a team whose performance fluctuated more widely up and down through that period, they instead functioned at a consistently very high level throughout.  The unique and powerful team culture they experienced compensated for variation in other variables related to winning during that period and made them function at a level higher than they otherwise would have.

That's about all I have to say about this.  We can keep going round and round about it, but I'm about at the agree to disagree point.

Let me ask you this...why does Belichick have such a mediocre record without Brady?

Watch as the Cardinals go south as a team this year with this going on -- essentially the opposite of the Brady dynamic I've outlined above and far more typical among players in the league:

https://www.nfl.com/news/kyler-murray-not-expected-to-play-for-cardinals-without-new-contract

And that'll be not only because the Cardinals are unable to pay other players as much, but because they'll have established none of the kind of selfless team culture that can be established when a player makes the kind of monetary sacrifice Brady did with the Patriots.

Now, imagine the effect it has on other players on a team when instead of clamoring for as much money as a QB can get, i.e., Murray in this instance and which is far and away the norm in the league, the elite QB rather is "paying" other players to help the team win i.e., Brady.  That's an entirely different locker room and team -- a very unique one, and the stuff of dynasties when coupled with sufficient physical talent.

Because he is an incompetent moron. 

But this doesn't mean he was riding Brady's coattails.

There is more to football then just the coach and the quarterback