I'm a bit underwhelmed with Brady's play this year. He definitely has a lot of growing up to do. But, I think the real problem was treating him almost godlike from the time he was drafted. Even someone with their feet firmly on the ground will eventually get corrupted by that sort of thing. So part of the blame for that is on the old regime, and on us, the fans. We pumped those tires real good.
He has a lot of bad habits he has to unlearn, and rebuild parts of his game to be that total player. It's going to take a while. And frankly, I'm willing to him him a decent amount of time to do it because he's a unicorn. But he isn't getting an infinite amount of time, either.
Someone like Bath gets a much shorter rope (and I think he knows it because he's gone all-in on working with the coaching staff since the change). I really do like Batherson's improvement, but he's got to add long-term consistency to it for me to really get onboard, simply because he's been such a yo-yo the last couple of seasons.
And that's really a big part of this core. No one has really proven anything yet (despite some nice point totals). Timmy, Sandy, Thomas, and Norris...all of them still need to prove themselves to varying degrees. The whole "they're kids!" excuse is definitely starting to wear off. That raises expectations for all of them, and puts them under that microscope. It's the mental game...who can handle it, who can't. Who can be forged in steel, and who bends to the pressure. This is the testing grounds, til the end of the season.
