Buy or Sell: Tom Brady

Tom Brady has long been a cornerstone for fantasy franchises, a QB you could count on to put up top three or four numbers. But he’s getting up there in age and his once full cupboard of weapons is now, for reasons ranging from homicide to injury to age, somewhat bare. That said, he still put up more than 4,000 yards passing and threw 25 TDs in a year in which he lost for all or part of the season Aaron Hernandez, Wes Welker, Rob Gronkowski, Shane Vereen and others. Figuring out how to balance these factors make him one of the trickier players to peg heading into 2014.

Tom Brady
ADP: 62.9
QB: 9

Buy: Maggio

It’s easy to look at Tom Brady’s final 2013 stats and his age—he’s 37—and after taking a gander at the other shiny objects at the quarterback position write him off and forget about him.

But you can’t look objectively at last year and simply assume Brady’s decline has begun. Danny Amendola, Kenbrell Thompkins and Aaron Dobson all played only 12 games for various reasons, Vereen played in just eight, and Gronkowski was present for seven. So what did Brady do? He took a four-year backup in Julian Edelman and turned him into a 1,000-yard receiver.

Sure, all of the aforementioned players are injury risks, with the best—Gronkowski—the biggest risk of them all. But that risk is built into Brady falling well out of the top five at quarterback. I have him at eight, and think he’s probably a value there. ESPN ADP has him at nine. Just remember, Brady was still comfortably in the top 15 at the position last year when basically everything that could go wrong—outside of his own health—did. Prior to that he went seven straight seasons (excluding 2008, when he went down for the year in Week 1) finishing no worse than seventh in fantasy points at the quarterback position, landing in the top three four times. Do I think he’s a top three guy now? No, but with just a little more health from his top targets, Brady’s likely to finish comfortably inside the top 10 in 2014.

Sell: Andy

Last year, with Aaron Hernandez spending his offseason shooting people (allegedly), and with Gronkowski, Amendola and Vereen missing much of the season with injuries and a collection of rookie and, for the most part, mediocre receivers, Brady put up 4,353 yards passing and 25 TDs while throwing just 11 picks. Those are solid numbers. But for Brady they represented a dramatic decline: nearly 500 fewer yards passing than in 2012 and nearly 900 fewer than in 2012. He also has dropped from 34 TDs in 2013 and 39 in 2012. But the Patriots put up a 12-4 record and continued their place among the AFC’s elite teams.

This year, there are reports that Gronkowski may miss several games at the beginning of the season. The WRs are mostly still mediocre – they did add Brandon LaFell from the Panthers. Meanwhile, the team added James White at RB from Wisconsin in the draft. The RB rotation right now also includes Vereen, Stevan Ridley and possibly Brandon Bolden. My concern from a fantasy perspective is that the old days of Brady’s glory years, when he would chuck it up to whatever receivers happened to be on the roster, might be done. It’s nothing but a hunch at this point, but it feels to me like Bill Belichick, a long-time enemy of fantasy players across the nation, is making some concessions to Brady’s age and advanced playing days and focusing more on balance and less on running up the score.

So, Brady is still a quality QB by NFL standards. But I would not be at all surprised to see Brady’s numbers continue to look like they did in 2013 or even slide a bit more — which would probably be fine for the Patriots in “real life.” But it doesn’t present much upside for fantasy players, at least from an every week perspective. If you get Brady, I’d consider making sure you’ve got another solid upside QB on your roster.

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For cheat sheets by Anthony Maggio and Bo Mitchell, click here.