The Ringer NFL Show - Using the 'Survivor' Index to Understand Tom Brady and Bill Belichick’s Dynamic

Episode Date: October 1, 2021

Nora and Mal take a deep look into Tom Brady and Bill Belichick’s situations through the lens of 'Survivor.' They explain each element of the index: outwit, outplay, and outlast. They talk about how Tom and Bill fit in each criteria and who is ahead in each category before deciding who they think will end up being the sole survivor (2:53). They are also joined by Justin Sayles, who describes the emotions of Pats fan trying to watch Tom Brady’s return to Foxborough, before they answer a listener mailbag question (59:35). Hosts: Nora Princiotti and Mallory Rubin Guest: Justin Sayles Production Assistant: Isaiah Blakely Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up everybody? I'm JJ John Gstromski. And I'm Jason Gough, and if you haven't heard, the ringer has gone local. I'm bringing the fire. I'm bringing the rain from the Big Apple with my show, New York, New York. And I'm reping Shy Town with my new show The Full Go on All Things Chicago. We've got episodes three nights a week with all the reaction to the local teams and guests. Plus bonus episodes around all the big games and storylines.

So whether you're uptown, downtown, downtown, in the burbs, or a transplant. Make sure you follow New York, New York, and the full go on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Hello and welcome to the Thursday edition of the Ringer NFL show. I am Nora Pintiati here as always on Thursdays with the esteemed Mallory Rubin. Mallory, what's going on? Well, I'll tell you what's going on. One of my most cherished colleagues just called me esteemed. Oh, yeah.

So I'm soaring right now. Oh, yeah. How are you? I'm doing pretty well. Because, for a number of reasons, one of them being getting to be. be here with you. But the other big one right now being that I'm going to learn something on this podcast. And that's something is a lot about the television show Survivor. Because we're here, first and foremost, to talk about Tom Brady and Bill Belichick. Ever heard of them? They will be

playing each other. I guess they won't be playing each other, but it kind of feels like it. On Sunday night of football this week, when the Bucks visit the Patriots, Tom Brady returns to Foxborough. If you didn't know that that is happening, I have a lot of questions about how you wound up on this podcast feed. But we're excited. We couldn't pass up a chance to dive into it. But Mallory had the wonderful idea of using the context of how things play out on the television show Survivor to kind of explain the dynamics between these two NFL survivors, right? like Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, they have outlasted a lot of people. There was just one problem, which is that I've never seen a single episode of Survivor.

I did, however, cover the New England Patriots games for four years. Yes. Nora, like any good alliance, we're both bringing something to the table here, you know? This is good. I think we're going to go very, very far. But so I have promised to bring my best in terms of Patriots Palace, Palis intrigue and knowledge of that franchise. But Mallory, much more importantly, is going to explain

Survivor to me. So, Mal, if I can ask you a favor that is, I think, critical to the success of this episode of our podcast, would you please give me an explanation of the premise of the Survivor Index? Okay. First of all, I'm so glad you asked. I really needed to.

Oh, this Zoom room is our own little beach on Fiji, Nora. We're diving into a new season, a new episode, a new week together. So why Survivor for today's episode? You know, this game, Bucks, Pats, was like a pencil in the game we want to talk about this week before the season kind of situation, not only for us, but basically for everybody who covers the NFL, right? Everyone's going to be talking about Tampa Bay, New England, Brady Belichick, in depth at length this week. Not only are they playing it's football, prime time, that revenge game energy, Brady's going to Foxborough. It has all of it.

And so part of our question was how do we talk about this matchup in a way that feels different? Because it's hard to say new things if we're being honest about Brady and Belichick. Now don't hit pause or stop on your podcast play. folks, stay with us. We wanted to have some fun with it. We wanted to have some fun with it. And as you alluded to in our planning chats and our pre-production meetings, notice that, you know, organically,

we all seem to be using the language of a survivor season to talk about not only this game, but more broadly, the ever-evolving Brady Belichick legacy. narrative. Who's going it alone? Who's built the best team or the best alliance? Who has adapted to new circumstances, new twists? Who has earned loyalty? Who has evolved on the field and found a way to win and outlastly competition around them? It just so happens that Survivor is about all of those things as well. And it just so happens that a new season of Survivor began last week, By the way, plug time. Plug time.

We're covering Survivor here on the Ringer podcast network. So check out The Pod has spoken with Survivor legend Tyson Apostle. If you haven't yet, follow Riley McAtee's coverage on The Ringer.com. We love Survivor here. Love it. In terms of the approach today, the Survivor Index, it's not just that there's a new Survivor season of Foot, Nora. It's that it's season 41.

It is a new era of Survivor. And this is crucial for our exercise today. This is a season that marks change, a step into a new style of play, a season that feels like a gateway into the post-split Brady Belichick dynamic. If I may quote our survivor, Sage Jeff Rompst from the season 41 premiere, when you look at your buffs, you see a four and a one. My suggestion is drop the four, keep the one. This is a new era of Survivor.

When you look at your buffs, you see a four and a one. My suggestion is drop the four, keep the one. This is a new era of Survivor. Wow. I'm hyped hearing that. I am hyped hearing that. And this is a new era of Brady Belichick, too. Obviously, this is the not the, not the first.

first season that they are apart, right? But there's so much to assess and parse. Nora, do you want to know what you're playing for? As probes would also say, tell me, we're going to be using the survivor mantra outwit, outplay, outlast to guide us through our assessment of whether Brady or Belichick is on track to be the sole survivor of this pairing of this long-intwined, really forever-intwined in terms of legacy, duo, both this season and in the end. Because their legacies are so inextricable. They're both Hall of Famers, legends, mythical figures in the game, right?

They're two figureheads of one of the most consequential dynasties in the history of sports. They're the Tony. The Sandra. I'm quoting or naming multi-champs there, multiple-time winners, but Roger. I actually have to. I got to switch it up. Boston Rob. I mean, how could I not use Boston Rob as a cop here?

Boston's in his name. Boston Rob. But the way the football world thinks about their shared success and their individual success is of course ever evolving season after season. And that has been really the through line of much of the conversation this week heading into this matchup. I mean, Brady won a Super Bowl in Tampa Bay last year without Belichick, not playing for the Pats.

Now they're going head to head. The bucks are a much better football team than the Patriots are. Still, it is a rich and ripe tax. A coconut of intrigue, if you will, making its way onto our content beach. You know, they say on Survivor that in this game, Fire represents life, but in podcasting takes represent life, Nora. So are you ready to dive into our three pillars?

Oh, Mallory, you're a coconut of intrigue, if I've ever met one. Yes, I am ready to dive in. Outwit, outplay, outlast. Hit me with outwit first. Okay. Talk to me about what that means, and then I can try to spin it into what that means for Bill and Tom Patriots books. Outwit. Let me say before I even explain Outwit that all of this can be a bit amorphous.

And of course, there is bleed across these three categories. Tyson, the aforementioned Tyson, there's a great cast video of the contestants from Winners at War, which was last season, season 40, All-Star Season, All-Winers, amazing season, saying, in response to which of the pillars is most important. Quote, outwit, outplay, outlast, but it's all essentially the same anyway. To outplay is to outwit, is to outlast. Was that deep?

That was pretty deep. Iconic Tyson quote as they all are. So why am I saying that? I am not mentioning that to undermine our premise right from the jump. It's because it's actually important to keep in mind that all of these buckets inform each other. nothing exists in a vacuum, much as in the game of football. In an effort to define each aspect for today's pod, though,

I sketched out kind of the way I think about out without playout last, just after years of watching Survivor. And then as an exercise, I shared that, Nora. I consulted Riley McAtee, our resident survivor superfan here at the Ringer, to say, hey, does this like seem right to you? And his take, and I want everyone to keep this in mind as we go through this today, was basically survivor itself has retconned this over the years from the original pillars of strategic physical social. And Jeff probes himself, as I will get to more as we go in a bit, has in fact defined things differently than I will here today.

Okay. The world is yours. But that's okay. Right. That's okay. Riley agreed that what we're going to establish as our definition here today is, broadly acceptable and that part of the fun ultimately is actually debating that you can argue this any way you want both for Survivor and for football and for this rivalry. So keep that in mind

as we go. Survivor like football is fluid. There's no one way to scheme or game plan. That said, Outwit is about strategy, savviness, the craft of outthinking your opponent, the craft of communication. What do you convey and how? This is about not only playing the game, but understanding it, studying it, absorbing it at an almost cellular level, and then applying that tutelage, that scholarship in a way that allows you to anticipate to manipulate, to navigate. Now, that can mean being cautious sometimes. It can mean being bold. It means no one thing, but in fact, it means the absence of one thing. It means the ability to adapt and evolve to know what someone else is going to try to do and then still beat them,

right? Still bests them to capitalize on idols and advantages, a matchup in a game, perhaps. You have to know how to flush out the ones others have, just as you have to know how to use the ones at your disposal. It's as much about knowing the opponent as it is about knowing yourself and your squat. You got to leave everybody watching and everybody playing against you in all of your app. That is the essence of outwit. You have to walk the line, though, because in order to later outlast, you have to outwit and dominate strategically without so fully alienating other players that they refuse to vote for you later in Final Tribal.

That is outwit. Wow. All right. Survivor's a great show. I highly recommend it. Yeah. Now I'm like, I need to watch every single episode of Survivor. I'm going to take four weeks of vacation, Mallory.

So how are you going to apply that to Pat's bucks to Brady Belichick right now, outwit? So I think one thing that's going to be instructive as we have this whole conversation is the name Survivor is sort of apt, right? Because what we are ultimately talking about here, it's more the long game. It's more the legacy stuff than it is who's going to win on Sunday, which is part of the long term way that people will see this, this design. solved partnership or rivalry, if there really is one. And we'll talk about some of the things that the Patriots might be able to do to try to stop the bucks, to try to keep up with them. But we're acknowledging here that Tampa's probably going to win this game.

And if things play out sort of as you would expect, they'll probably win it pretty handily. They're a much better football team right now. So what I hear when you tell me about the pillar that is outwit is the back and forth that's led up to this between less so Tom and Bill themselves, but team Bill and team Tom, being pretty one-sided because we've had a few people close to Tom Brady, namely his father, Tom Brady, who told the Patriots Talk podcast on NBC Sports Boston last week that, quote, Belichick wanted him out the door, or Alex Guerrero, Tom Brady's close.

Post personal friend, business partner who told the Boston Herald that they, quote, could have ridden off into the sunset together. And really all Bill's done to fight back, if you will, is just say on the radio, it wasn't a question of not wanting him. And so there's two things from this that I find interesting in terms of what both sides sort of strategies are. One, I think the fact that we're just hearing more from Brady's side, though not really Brady himself, just acknowledges that the Bucks are the aggressor here. Things are going better for Team Tom than Team Bill right now. That's right. Yep. If Belichick were to come out and say his skills were diminishing, he wasn't doing, you know, to say, we had all these young receivers in here who we were trying to develop and we've struggled with that.

but Tom didn't help because he was icing out Jacoby Myers or refused to practice with those guys, only was interested in, like, checking down to James White. If Belichick came out and said that stuff, it just makes him look worse, right? Because Tom is fresh off a Super Bowl. I don't know if anybody heard. And you kind of have to.

Has he won one of those? Yeah, just a couple. So I think Bill just has to sort of sit there and take it almost. The other piece that I think is interesting, though, is that both of them are kind of acknowledging this battle over the perception of who did the leaving. And what's fascinating to me is that they both want to be the one who got left. There's no allegation of I knew I was going to be better off somewhere else. This wasn't working.

And I believed in myself to go to Tampa or to get a new quarterback. and try it a different way and prove that I can do it. Nobody is planting their flag in that conversation. Both sides, I think because the inability to stick it out for the long term and keep fielding competitive teams in New England together, I think that's still an open wound. And you can really hear it when the only thing Bill has been willing to sort of publicly say and the tone of everything that Brady's people have said is you didn't want him anymore or you weren't willing to stay within the realistic confines of the money or the talent upgrades that were going to be

available to us. Basically, you're the one who precipitated the split up. This is fascinating because in Survivor, one of the things that you're always have to manage is how much you say and when. And to whom, right? Because you never want to share too much. You never want to reveal too much about the game you're running, how you're trying to work people. But as you're as you're noting here, if you withhold too fully, then something else fills that void, right? Maybe even the person you're going up against in some capacity. And if you're too quiet,

if you wait too long, unless you are just an absolutely top tier tactician, which, of course, Belichick is, and so maybe he's pulling the long con here and will be the sole survivor in the end, you open yourself up

to the dreaded blind side, which also fits with what you're saying about this compulsion to not tantalph, not assume the agency, right? This is on someone else. Someone else is in charge of the scheme here are responsible for what unfolded.

You want to be able in Survivor to take credit for the moves that people value without taking blame for the things that wounded people. A very difficult and delicate dance. Well, and this is where I think, look, if we have to choose who's got the edge, who's outwitting whom here, So far to me, to your point about if you don't say anything, eventually something will fill that void.

To me, the edge goes to Tom because I think he's done a really clever job of threading the needle here of not saying anything negative himself. And I think he was genuinely frustrated by some of the people close to him who came out and spoke. However, his response to those things was not how dare they. I'm so deeply hurt by this. this is completely wrong. He responded to what his dad said on the podcast that he co-hosts with Jim Gray called Let's Go. And he was very funny about it.

He prepared a fake statement where he said, this is all I really have to say on the subject. Comments made by Thomas Edward Brady, a 77-year-old insurance CEO who should know better at this point in life do not necessarily reflect the views or positions held by his son, Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr. So furthermore, should Tom Sr. continue to speak out on behalf of his son without express written consent, Tom Jr. reserves the right to eventually put him in a home against his will. Now, that to me is just brilliant. Because one, it sort of diffuses the tension of it. It's, oh, come on. I'm not going after Bill Belichick. I'm Tom Brady. I'm far too magnanimous to do that.

Totally did not condone my dad doing that. I think it's a little bit immature. I'm taking the high road. I would never do such a thing. However, let's do a little close read here. Do not necessarily reflect the views or positions held by his son. Necessarily. They very well could. Who's to say? Just that little flicker of Tom's going to be able to go to any Hall of Fame ceremony he wants. Go rap Bill Belichick up and a big hug.

And yet the seed has been planted many times. You did this. It's your fault. You screwed it up. I love that. I would have stayed. That is just incredible. I will say also just quickly that obviously like outwit and strategy you generally associate with coaches.

But I think that despite the years and years and years of strategic victories and outwitting that Belichick has amassed, one thing that we should, you could maybe put this in outplay, but I think should put on Brady's outwit ledger is knowing, like being able to recognize that New England wasn't going to give him what he needed. in terms of that, the past catcher adjustments. Like, yes, that's out playing because it's gameplay. But it's also outwitting because it's recognizing something about the state of play and adjusting to position yourself for more success. Like Kevin, our dear colleague, Kevin Clark, talked about this with both of his guests.

On his ringer NFL show this Wednesday, both Albert Brewer and Sam Monson discussed on Kevin's pod this week. Like, it's difficult to see what Brady is accomplishing in Tampa Bay and not say, well, all of that. Not only was all of that regression talk for Brady a few years ago off base, where do we reassign the blame for that, right? And how do we, in hindsight, adjust our thinking about that? Because Brady still clearly has the skill and then some and putting a different team and specifically a different pass catching core around him. Evans, Godwin, Howard, he's got grunk back, of course, Brayette, et cetera, has revealed that. So again, you could put it in outplay, but I think that the recognition there is ultimately an outwit mark in Brady's favor.

Let's go to the next one. Explain to me, outplay. Outplay is an interesting one. There are many subsets of outplay, many ways to carve out a niche inside of outplay. And they are, as is of a piece with our discussion today, ever evolving among the, in turn, ever evolving twists and approaches inside each new season of Survivor and the overall game. There are themes to certain seasons, right? You're going in and you're having to assess the rules of the moment and figure out how to exist inside of them.

Like Survivor, just like football, it's not stagnant. The fundamentals remain. They're consistent. But the best players know how to adapt to suit the needs in the moment. So inside of outplay, you have the physical. You know, the athlete, the star, the alpha, proving indispensable to your team in challenges so that they don't vote you out early. But then once there's a merge and it becomes an individual game, being capable of going on an immunity challenge run, for example, so that you can win individual immunity.

Right. You need to be able to run tree to tree, stone to stone, nook to nook until you find an immunity idol or an advantage, etc. Right. Another subcomponent of outplay, I think, is the social. game. Though let me say here that this particular aspect, the social game, reflects, I think, the relativity of this exercise.

Jeff Brobes himself has said in the past that he thinks outwit is the social aspect of the game because outwitting requires social skill. This was part of his final tribal setup in the game changer season,

which candidly I had completely forgotten about until revisiting some of this to research this. When I consulted Riley on my breakdown, he said he thought, like he made the case to put social in Outlast. Because as we will discuss when we get to Outlast, you can't win without the support of others. I'm putting Social and outplay because while it's a part of those other two and indeed inextricable from the other two, it's come to reflect a specific style of play, specific approach to a game. You are a social player. You run your game through that lens.

So you can put it anywhere, but that's where I'm putting it. And even within that, there are a few ways to look at it. Like sometimes, this will be an apt point for our discussion today. Being derided is actually helpful because people want to take you to the end. They want to sit next to you at the end where presumably no one else will vote for you. But often, flip side, of course, is that if you're hated or if you're untrustworthy or this is a big one in Survivor and football, if you're unpredictable, people, won't want to work with you at all. They won't want you around camp. They won't want to take you on rewards. It's not what you want. Conversely, of course, being well liked is a proven way to

earn trust and loyalty. Like if people want to work with you, you can build alliances. You can work the numbers in your favor. You can navigate the merge, like a change to a new team, for example, or recruiting your former teammates to join you in a new city. You can work your way back into a favorable situation if things turn against you or you decide to turn them for yourself. In an ever adapting game that's known for these twists and turns and the innovation that's ever present, you cannot really underrate being likable and being someone people want to be around.

Crucially, you need to be well-liked enough to earn the votes of the people who you most likely played a direct role in voting out. A rival-turned-teamate, right? This is hard, but it is essential. Do people want to tip their hat to you Even if you've beaten them Maybe even if you've embarrassed them We will get back to this and at last

But it connects here to outplay And I think we'll just I'll spoil my perspective here And say I think this is a clear mark in Brady's favor There's also the provider This is both a subset of physical And social gameplay approaches Like someone who can do the heavy lifting

Build shelters Find food, maintain the fire A caretaker whom people come not only to trust and like, but to rely on, to rely on so fully that they keep them around, even if they don't trust or like them, because the result matters so fully. And I just want to mention lastly here,

that in that aforementioned Winters at War video where the cast said whether they thought outwit outplay or at last was most important, almost no one picked outplay. They almost all picked outwit and outlast, which I think is pretty telling. That's fascinating. Okay. So I think the way to take this is to use outplay for a discussion of how Sunday's game fits into all of this.

Because we've sort of set up here that it's not the be all and end all of this discussion because if it were, we probably would be talking a lot less about this game because the bucks are just so heavily favored. But I think that idea of the social player in particular, which will definitely come back to, I think we'll come back to a lot of what you just talked about in Outlast. But it's interesting to me in one sense, because for me to break down this game, I look at both teams, the Bucks are the Super Bowl champions. The Patriots are a struggling team that's trying to get better after going seven and nine, Bill Belichick's worst season in New England since 2000. Right.

So it's very, very clear that the Bucks have a significant. significant edge. And then you start to factor in, okay, Bruce Ariens said today that Antonio Brown is going to be healthy enough to play or is going to be back on Sunday. The Patriots just lost James White for the season. And the bucks, of course, are struggling a little bit in the secondary. You can see Mack Jones maybe ending up having some chances without Sean Murphy Bunting and maybe Jamel Dean, who went out last game. But ultimately, the matchup heavily favors Tampa. I will say, and this is where it comes back to the idea of sort of the social element

of it, if there is a path for the Patriots to surprise people, I think it is through what Bill Belichick does defensively against Brady. Ooh. And you can take this with a grain of salt. Because it's a small sample size and because the Patriots had terrible pass catchers at this point. But according to PFF, Brady's three worst games bypassing grade were 2018 against Matt Patricia's Lions. And then 2019 against the Bills, an AFC East opponent and against Brian Flores' dolphins. So there's two things there.

All three of those defenses have a lot of familiarity with Tom Brady. and two out of three of them are defensive coaches who worked with him on the Patriots were longtime assistants there. Matt Patricia obviously is back into England now. And look, say what you will about the lion's defense. It is relatively surprising that the lone moment where they had a good deal of success came against Tom Brady. Right. So if there is a path forward for the Patriots to do well here, I think where it lies is can Belichick use his knowledge of Brady,

of what he's going to want to do, of how to, you know, stop a high-powered offense in general and find a way to shut him down. Now, I think Brady will have a little bit of that too. I would wonder if he is helping the Bucks coaches in practice this week by saying, look, their tackles are really struggling. Here are the protection schemes that they like to use. Here's how they, here's, here's how they're going to try to slow down our pass rush.

But because that line is struggling, if you do X, Y, and Z, you're probably going to be able to get to Mac Jones. And if they can't get anything going offensively, then, you know, could Belichick slow the bucks down on offense? Sure. But they still have, they've got so many horses. you just figure they'll be able to score at least a decent amount. So I think that sort of familiarity game and how you use knowledge of another player, another scheme, another coach, that's going to be really fascinating. But if there's one place where I think it has the chance to be more impactful,

it's how Belichick will design a defensive game plan to try to stop Brady. That's really fascinating. You know, in Survivor, it's not only about the information that you or the skills that you possess firsthand. And it's about how you use what other people give you or what you see filtering out across the beach in the, you know, the equivalent of the coaching tree is like the Alliance tree, right? Or players who learn from other players and the archetype of certain styles of gameplay then manifest season after season. I think that, you know, one of the reasons I'm most excited for this game is the passing record. You know, Brady is poised. I'm so glad you brought that up.

Brady is poised to break and set the career passing yardage mark in this game against the Patriots against Bill Belichick. Like this is just classic you can't script this stuff. And I think that for a lot of reasons, there's, it's basically impossible to imagine that Brady is going to want to take his foot off the gas at any point. Like if this is not close, I think it has the potential to feel like one of those college football games where it's like, okay, do you need to keep running your full offense and going for it in the fourth corner? And it's like, yeah, you do. Well, and he's always like that. Always, right? And it's going to be like height, right?

Like almost like exponentially at a elemental level going up against Belichick. And of course, Belichick, he's never going to, he's never going to say this. But the indignation of Brady setting that mark against Belichick. has to just be like completely appalling and something that will live in infamy, right, and always be cited as a key moment in Brady's career and a key bit of trivia. So I just think that that is like a delicious little nugget in all of this. I wanted to ask you quickly, even though it's not directly Brady and Belichick, it is obviously directly adjacent about the Mac Jones factor here.

Like what is going through Mac Jones's mind heading into this game? Poor kid. poor Mac. He's like their best offensive player right now. Or like he's their best highest performing offensive player right now. I actually really believe that. I've got to imagine if he is as sort of steady a guy as he seems like he is, that he's just trying to ignore it as best he can. The pressure must be immense though. Like it must. It just has to be. It really, really must. You know, I think the best case scenario. And there's a little bit of this that's,

true for Belichick, too. Because, yes, it'll hurt, especially if, I don't know if they're, I mean, when Drew Breeze broke the passing record, it was at home. So they did that whole ceremony on the field. I don't think that's happening. But that'll, that'll sting for Belichick. I think the one thing that is probably, um, that the Patriots can kind of use to diffuse a little bit of the tension, particularly if you're someone like Mack Jones who, you know, doesn't have, doesn't have a state. in this particular beef, really, is just to recognize, it's not that you have nothing to lose, right? Like, you're trying to make the playoffs.

You're trying to have a good season. You're trying to take a step forward as a team. But nobody is expecting you to win this game. So I think even, you know, there is some small, I don't think Belichick would ever say that he feels this way. But, like, there is some small degree of moral victory or avoiding embarrassment, at least. if like can he just make Brady look not like Tom Brady, right?

Like can they defensively make him look a little bit shaky? Can they slow them down? I think there are the bucks are obviously sort of the aggressor here in the favorite team, but they have to live up to that. So I think if I were Mac Jones, like I would just try to live in the world of, all right, everybody thinks we're going to lose anyway. So like let's just try to go do as much as possible and not get hit. 200 million times.

This is one of the things I love about the NFL, because that is like completely rational, completely logical, clearly right. Doesn't matter. Nope. Because as patently absurd as it feels to say things like this, and it does, I freely admit,

feel ridiculous. The question, you know, after, obviously again, Kim Newton was the QB in New England last season. Like this is Mack Jones's first year, right? He's a rookie. He's played three games.

It's really early. And as we always talk about with rookie quarterbacks, it's too early to glean anything. And there are a lot of really promising signs with Mac and how he's played. All right. Which, by the way,

stands in fairly sharp contrast to the rest of the rookie class. Absolutely. Absolutely. But because the stakes of the game despite it being unlikely to be a close contest feels so heightened and so acute, it exacerbates the propensity for these like sweeping overreactions. And sometimes those things can embed themselves into the public consciousness

in a way that is not reasonable or fair, but is real in terms of like the conversations around players and teams. So like can Belichick develop Mack Jones? is Ken McDaniels, you know, are they going to be able to rebuild and reboot this team quickly and effectively around their new franchise quarterback? That's not a question you answer in one game. It's not a question you answer in this game. But because Brady's on the other sideline, it's going to be inescapable as a talking point.

And that pressure just has to be just immense. So let's use that to jump into our last pillar, which is outlast. Because I think Mac Jones is sort of integral in that, right? Because it's like, okay, will there be another chapter of contending football in New England? So tell me about outlast, Mal please. Outlast. So the most self-explanatory in some ways, right? Really the whole point of it all.

Outlast win. Stay for as many days as possible. Be the last one standing at the end. Be the sole survivor. but it's also the pillar that rarely exists on its own. It can exist on its own. You know, sometimes a player will emerge victorious in a season without dominating one of those pillars, but it's rare.

This is like, and I say this with great love for this team and this moment in sports history, of course, this would be like, you know, the Dilfer Raven Super Bowl season, right? Where it's not really about that particular person's achievement. What does it require? while one thing for inside of survivors, like fierce loyalty, right? You need like a final three promise to pay off. And loyalty, trust in relationships, trust in teammate, coach player relationships, a front office dynamic, all of it. That's obviously been a through line of this

today, right? It also requires vulnerability. I think this is an essential element. It requires people thinking that they can beat you and taking you to the end. It's the bad kind of goat inside of a survivor season and that kind of parlance instead of the good kind of goat, the Brady kind of goat. More often, though, outlasting stems from also outwitting and out playing. Like the true survivor grates at least. The tier that we would put Belichick and Brady into for this exercise, the icons, right? The legends. They're not winning by chance. They're dominating. They are dynastic. They are figures of myth and lore. They embody all three pillars of the mantra. If they're being edged out by each other or someone else,

they still are in the top tier for each one of these equations, variables in the equation. This is about stamina. This is about durability. This is crucially, and both Brady and Belichick possess this, about sheer force of will. It is about wanting it and demanding it.

It can manifest in any number of ways flying under the radar. going on a iconic run, whatever is necessary to be there at the end. And again, there's crossover, sure, among the categories, much of this is a matter of interpretation. Take idols and advantages is just one emblematic example. Finding one or winning one is the product of outplaying. Knowing how to properly deploy one or avoid one if someone else has it is outwitting. And outlasting requires doing both of those. two. Wow. Wow. I'm excited to get a text from you in like 17 days that says you've

binged 41 seasons of Survivor. Or 40 seasons in the first couple episodes of season. It's like I want to watch it. So that is the dynamic is like I want to watch it so badly. It's terrifying to be like, yeah, I'm going to watch a show where there's like nine billion collective hours of content. There's a lot of it. There's a lot of it. But it's great. I guess I've done Gray's Anatomy. Do Survivor. But okay. Outlast, the final pillar.

Yes. The way that I see this is, it's different for Tom than it is for Bill, right? Because the difference is Brady is still playing a physical game. Now, it is one that, you know, he defies his age in increasingly spectacular ways every single year. His deep passing ability has actually improved since he left New England. I was reading on PFF the other day. So he had 55 big time throws. That's how they chart big plays in 2020.

In 2018 and 2019 combined in New England, he had 56. So it's not just that he's not getting worse. He actually might be getting better in the exact ways that you would expect his physical skills to deteriorate. And also that's, again, like heightened by the drastically different system he's in in offense that he's in. Right. Right. The, the Aryan's offense that, you know, it was a big expectation. This could be hard to adjust to. This is sort of this like deep shot offense that Brady might not be accustomed to running. Well, first of all, he's been perfectly comfortable in it. But then you also see things like he's better on play action throws in Tampa than he was in New England over the last couple of years.

And that's they don't run it a lot, but they run it some. And when they do it, he's super, super. effective and effective in different ways than he was with the Patriots and usually in more valuable ways than he was with the Patriots, primarily because they are using play action to create a lot of those deep shots. So he recently said that he's thinking about playing until 50. I will tell you that he issued that statement on the acclaimed Buccaneers web series Tommy and Gronkey. So what that Incredible stuff. I don't know. What a sentence to say out loud.

Tommy and Gronkey. I love it. My greatest accomplishment as an employee of the ringer has been that I got Kevin Clark to say, I'm a goofy goober once. So maybe Tommy and Gronky will come next. But Bill is doing something else, right? Because the never say never, but the 2021 Patriots are probably not winning the Super Bowl. game that Belichick is playing is can he reinforce his legacy as, you know, the greatest

NFL coach of all time by rebuilding a contender without Brady? And he has a promising young quarterback. They spent a lot of money in free agency. They're being aggressive. He's still, even though, you know, Robert Kraft has said some slightly more pointed things about their lack of success in the draft than he's sort of ever said in a critical way of Belichick before, over the last year. He's got, you know, the seat is not warm. I think that goes without saying. That said, one thing that's interesting to me, and particularly in light of what you just described about, you know, needing to, people need to need you or people need to sort of want to be around you so that you can stick it out. That is where I think Belichick is really, really weak right now.

Because it's funny, you were talking about the different types of players in the outplay category. Well, Belichick in some ways was a provider, right? People would come to the Patriots because they wanted to be in the warm glow. Right. The not always fun, but the protective cocoon of this team always wins. That's gone now. And where Bill, I think, is really struggling is that that was a really negative environment in a lot of ways. And a lot of people left.

It's not just Brady. And now a lot of the people who've gone other places, went other places because they got good opportunities. I'm talking about, you know, coaches like Brian Flores, Joe Judge, executives like Nick Casario. but Bill no longer has his sort of closest confidants, the people who really trusted him and knew him and who he relied on. I mean, his best friend since the 70s, Ernie Adams, who was their director of football research, he retired this offseason.

Dante Scarnacchio, who's their offensive line coach and had worked in New England for 34 years, predated Belichick, was known as one of the best offensive line coaches in football. He retired. And their offensive line is really, really, really, really struggling. I mean, he left it in the hands of two young coaches with good reputations, Carmen Brissillo and Cole Popovich.

Cole Popovich is now not coaching this year because he had some issue with the COVID protocols or vaccination requirement. And it's a tough situation. And you look at things like what happened to them against the Saints where they let Taysam Hill just sort of trot into the end zone. for the touchdown that ended up being kind of the dagger in the fourth quarter after the Patriots had made it a one score game. Rewatch the tape on that.

There's 10 men on the field that didn't use to happen. Right. And to me, when I watch that, that's not saying to me, like, Bill's lost it. He doesn't have the same mind for the game. I don't think that's possible. You know, you hear him talk. He's as sharp as ever. But it's not just Brady that's left.

It's the whole infrastructure has really been hit by attrition in a really, really, really big way. And I mean, Ernie Adams used to sit up in the booth with a direct line to the coach. You don't think that he was going to say, hey, hey, Bill, there's 10 guys on the field. Call time out. Get out of there. Figure something out. That used to happen. I mean, if not, you know, 100 times out of 100, the 99 times out of 100.

And that's where I think what the Patriots are facing. is really, really challenging because it's not just how do you stack up against Tom Brady? It's how do you not only make up for the loss of Tom Brady, including the loss of a player who could paper over a lot of holes that were revealed or put in sharper contrast once he left?

And then how do you do it with an interesting sort of young brain trust around Belichick, but a pretty unproven one. And one with way, way, way, way, less institutional experience than they had even a couple years ago. I mean, I, you know,

was just sort of jotting down numbers on the back of my planner. But when you go through Flores, Casario, Scarnacchio, Adams, Joe Judge, like all of those people, some pretty high profile scouts, assistant coaches, you're getting close to 200 years

of work experience in Foxborough that since 2018 has just left. And they're not being replaced. And nor should they be or nor could they be, right? You can't replace Dantes Garnacchio with a Dantes Garnacchio because there's only one. But they're being replaced with some people who kind of know the way it works around there

because either they were former players, you know, Gerard Mayo's on staff, Troy Brown is on staff. or Bill Belichick's kids, both of his sons are on the defensive staff, and you just kind of wonder, okay,

these people, they know the drill in some ways, but how much is the head coach shouldering, right? Like Joe, Judge, before he left for the Giants,

he was coaching special teams and wide receivers. Special teams in New England consistently pretty good. How are the wide receivers doing lately? Do they seem like they could use their own coach?

Boy, do they, Nora? Seems like it would be nice if there was just like one guy doing that. And now it's, look, Troy Brown, like, if I were an NFL receiver, I'd be really happy about playing for Troy Brown getting to learn from that guy. However, he's listed on the Patriots website as someone who has 18 years of experience. 15 of those, they're counting as being a player. And I'm just not sure that's the same job.

Just not sure that's the same thing. And if there is anybody who can do it, truly. it is Bill Belichick, but it just makes me wonder, okay, how is he even spending his time, right? Because winning, like Tom Brady won a Super Bowl, right? So even if the Patriots shocked everybody and beat the bucks on Sunday, Tom still has the ultimate, like, you know, first point tallied on the scoreboard here. And really, for Belichick, if he has an edge in terms of outlasting, it's that he is not playing a physical game. game regardless of, you know, Tom Brady can avoid nightshades all the live long day.

He's still going to get hit sometimes. Belichick is not. If he can create a team that's capable of winning a championship, again in New England with a different quarterback, I think that's how you even the scoreboard. I don't even know if they have to win a Super Bowl. But the reason why that seems less and less possible or likely, it's not purely just because they don't have Brady. It's because Brady has so much help and Belichick has so little.

And that, I don't think, is an excuse for him because I think it's largely of his own creation. Boy, there was a lot there. It is really hard to win a survivor season as a lone wolf. Like the lone wolf stands in contrast to the alliance builder. And I think there are a couple really interesting corollaries there. One of which is, again, like that archetype establishing nature of what Brady is doing now and how that feeds into the idea of legacy. This connects back to our first episode from week one and everything we talked about with Aaron Rogers and the last dance. Like if Rogers tries ultimately to replicate the Tampa Bay experience, that is what.

one more mark in Brady's favor in terms of assessing impact, not only inside of one team, one franchise, one season, but how we think about the way football operates and is played. The thing about alliance building is that sometimes the alliance comes to you, but more often than not, you have to build it,

right? You have to work for it. You have to craft it and then you have to cultivate it and nurture it. And maybe, know, fueled by TB12 and that avocado ice cream out here at 44 in the best shape of his life, striving for that age 50 season eventually. Brady is not only showing that he can do that now, but that he's going to continue to be able to do it. And I think that as we head into our final tribal here, get ready to tally the votes, there are two slivers of this. There's this season

where I think we agree there's not much more to say, right? Brady has the edge of this season, clearly. But when we look long term at who will ultimately be the sole survivor in this pairing who has the edge in that quest for the legacy crown, I think part of it is

admitting and acknowledging despite the prior 50 minutes of discussion that it's always going to be a shared crown in a way, right? Because you can't erase what they achieve together, nor should you. But also the part of analysis and not to get to like

existential here. Part of human nature is constantly reassessing what we think we know and how we understand something. And I've been really struck by how many people in the NFL world have said some version of, you know, last year's Super Bowl really made me rethink a lot. Now, it doesn't erase a course, anything that Belichick has achieved or that Belichick and Brady have achieved together. I think, again, on Kevin's pot, there was a really interesting discussion about, you know, where maybe it shifts from the Super Bowls you credit more to Belichick to the ones you credit more to Brady. But to your point from a minute ago about, like, whether Belichick needs to win a title without

Brady to maybe move back ahead? I would say he does. And so for me, you know, all through a season, you write down the name of the person you're voting out. You're at Final Tribal. you write down the person you're voting for. Right now, I'm writing down Tom Brady's name. Yeah, Soul Survivor.

I am too. And what's really stood out to me about this conversation is, okay, we've spent this whole week, Tom versus Bill, Bill versus Tom. It's like one guy versus one guy. But the thing that's so interesting is that that's just not what it is, right? And there was, so Seth Wickersham has this amazing book coming out. it's better to be feared, like, inside the Patriots dynasty. And ESPN on Wednesday put out...

Positively Game of Thronesian title right there. Oh, my God. Juicy. Juicy, juicy, juicy. They put out not excerpts, but just some little bullets on some of the stuff that's in there. And one of the things was that in, I think, 2017 around then, maybe a little later, Belichick had a study commissioned where some of the... people talked to great athletes about their mindset and what fueled them. And they talked to

like Michael Jordan. I think they talked to Tiger Woods. They talked to Brady. And one of the things they found, according to the book, was that a lot of those guys, what fueled them, the themes were being doubted, rage, enemies. And Brady was actually different. And what fueled him was being in like a supportive environment. And that's what he felt like he wasn't getting in New England. He felt like there was, you know, everybody is sort of siloed into just doing their job. It's all about if you do your individual task, this will come together as a successful collective.

But it's not very like collaboration is not, they don't put a premium on. there. And he wanted to do it a different way. And it seems as though he's had so much success doing that. I think one of the maybe unintended benefits of it, but a benefit for Tom as he, you know, tries to be the sole survivor here, is that he's sort of pulling more and more people into his side because he's got the Tampa people now. And he's a little bit looser. So he's able to talk about it more. And Bill is still standing up at the podium and going, the relationship is good, it's always been good. I'm not going to get into that.

We issued a statement when he left and we're not going to rehash that. It would really be a waste of time. We're just getting ready to play the Buccaneers here. It's less compelling than what Brady's doing. And so I think in some ways, just because of the myriad challenges of team building and leading a team and rebuilding not from scratch, but from a position where, where the cupboard was kind of bare there.

I think Belichick kind of has a taller task, which is why I think that less so in terms of perception, but in terms of reality, if he could make that thing a contending machine again, that's really, really, really impressive. But I'm with you. Brady right now seems like he's got the inside track to be the sole survivor.

And he definitely seems like, you know, when Belichick goes into the Hall of Fame, I assume Brady's going to give him that big hug. It's going to seem very much like, oh, here's that guy that really had a good bit to do with this. And I don't know that it'll seem quite as fully true the other way around. Ooh. Nora has spoken.

The tribe has spoken. This season, football fans are back in action. Whether you're a pro quarterback or an armchair quarterback, a fair weather fan or a diehard fan. All of us. Well, almost all of us are finding something to celebrate. And Patriots fans can pick aside this weekend if they want, but I think some are split on how to warmly welcome Tom Brady back to New England.

We wanted to go straight to the source. So we've got our very own Patriots fan, Justin Sales, here to tell us how he'll be rooting during Patriots bugs. Justin mixed feelings on Sunday? Or do you know where you're allied with the Brady Belichick showdown? Mixed feelings, but not because my allegiances are split. I believe that I. can root for both teams, right?

I can root for Tom Brady on the bucks and wish them well. Also can pull for the Patriots. It's not how sports and fandom work, but continue. You spend 20 years watching a man rooting for his success, and it's hard to let that go, even if you don't end on the best terms. What a conundrum. I compare last season kind of like watching an ex

that you're still friends with, getting married, right? wonderful ceremony, you're happy, you see the pictures on Instagram, it's great. This Sunday is kind of like you invited your ex and her new husband to your wedding, and they step onto the dance floor, and all of a sudden they're cha-cha, and just tearing up the place

and showing you up at your own wedding. And while they're there, they also set the all-time passing yardage record. It's a really good wedding. Yeah. Rough one. Boy. So it's going to be a tough weekend. Imagine the speeches. Yeah. I think it would be a little bit easier if the Patriots were doing a little bit better. Remains to be seen what this team really is. And that's kind of what it comes down to. I'm happy for Tom, but this one's going to be a tough one to watch. I have just one follow-up question. Okay. If the Patriots sack Tom Brady, are you cheering?

Yeah. Yeah, of course I'm going to share. Yeah, because it's a big play. Yeah. What are you going to do? You get into the game. If Brady throws a touchdown, are you cheering? See? A little, like, it's tough.

It's so tough. Wow. I will say it's going to be tough if I have to watch a gronk spike at Foxborough. That'll hurt at the Patriots expense. State Farm offers surprisingly great rates on car insurance for all types of fans, no matter who you are or what you're celebrating. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Get a quote today.

All right. As usual, we're going to finish with our mailbag question. This one comes from Joshua Zinn, who, oh, this one is for me. Very curious to hear Nora's thoughts on LASIC James after three weeks. Oh, boy, Joshua. Well, Mallory, have you seen Ted Lassow? Oh, boy, have I? I love Ted Lassow.

Okay. So James, watching LASIC James right now, is a little bit like when Coach Lassow gets Jamie Tart to like pass and to be a team player and he loses a little bit of his edge. Loses his magic. Yeah. And James is not supposed to be that, but James is supposed to be a little bit reckless, right?

But right now, James is throwing interceptions on only 3.2% of his dropbacks. He also leads a league in touchdown percentage. He's getting touchdowns on 11.1% of his throws. that probably trails off a little bit. The thing is, I'm worried that he is passing up some chances to just kind of go for it. Like, his average depth of target, it's 8.2 yards. It's like Ryan Tannhill, Mack Jones territory.

It's not great. So I think it seems like he looks good from the perspective of Sean Payton coaching some of the recklessness out of him. But I do worry that he's, he's the good parts of that are maybe a little bit missing. too. And maybe he's just been hearing this like, don't take risks. Don't take risks. Play conservative mantra so much that it might be, he might be going too far in that direction. Because I think ultimately like he's looked okay. But the statistical results, at least as far as the percentage stuff, because he hasn't been particularly prolific in terms of collecting yardage, I think it's a little bit misleading relative to how he's actually looked. It makes me think of

home run hitters in baseball. Like, what do power hitters also do? They strike out a lot, you know? Yep. And the fact that, the fact that Jamesus only has two picks is, on the one hand, an indicator of progress, not far removed from a 30-pick season,

but also that's not really who he is as faster as you're noting. I'm wondering, you know, after all the LASIC talk following week one, if the thing that James really saw in week one was just a really bad Packers defense. It seems not not out of the question. All right, Mal, this has been delightful. Thank you for joining me through this, this Survivor-themed Brady Belichick Showdown episode. This has been the ringer NFL show.

Ben Solac, Stephen Ruiz, and Kalin Jones will be coming up next on this feed, previewing the week four games this Friday. I'll be back Sunday night with Kevin Clark, Solac, and Ruiz to break down all the Sunday NFL action. Check out Mel on the Ring Reverse feed on Fridays. And we will be back next Thursday. for the entire NFL season. Thank you to Justin Sales for joining us today. Thank you to production assistant Isaiah Blakely and to Arjuna Ramgapal for additional production supervision on this episode.