By John Considine
Think of all the people that recruit Tom Brady and the New England Patriots to illustrate their arguments. A sort of intellectual product endorsement. This is especially so when it comes to decisions. Tom is an exemplar. His decision making under time constraints. His decision making off the field to ensure his 42 year old body can compete at the highest level. His decision making about the structure of his contract that enables the Patriots to remain at the top of the NFL.
The latter example of Tom's decision making plays a central role in a nice small book called The Importance of Small Decisions (2019). There is a section in the third chapter titled "Drafting Tom Brady". There is a discussion of the Scouting Combine and the Wonderlic Test. There is also a brief discussion of some economics literature on the draft. Relatively standard stuff.
The discussion of Brady's contract arises in a later section in the same chapter. The authors are interested in Brady's decision to restructure his deal in 2015 so as to "free up $24 million so it could be used to buy other players". They use this decision to illustrate one quadrant of their decision making framework. The authors locate Brady and the Patriots in the top left hand corner of their map. [This is also the place where they locate economic (wo)man.] Tom Brady is used to add weight to the argument that they seem to want people to live in the Northwest.
I was reminded of this when watching Sky's coverage of Week 3 of the current NFL season. The presenter and guests were discussing the percentage of the salary cap taken up by the quarterback. They divided the quarterbacks into two groups - older and younger quarterbacks.
When discussing the younger quarterbacks, the year of the draft and the pick was listed. The key seemed to be the pick number. Lower pick numbers took up larger shares of the salary cap. Baker Mayfield (1) was at 4.0% of the salary cap. Patrick Mahomes (10) gets 2.4% of the salary cap. Dak Prescott (135) gets only 1.1%.
The older quarterbacks tended to have a larger share of their respective salary caps. Here we see some evidence of Brady's decision discussed above. Maybe Tom illustrates the usefulness of the decision making map. Maybe.
The discussion of Brady's contract arises in a later section in the same chapter. The authors are interested in Brady's decision to restructure his deal in 2015 so as to "free up $24 million so it could be used to buy other players". They use this decision to illustrate one quadrant of their decision making framework. The authors locate Brady and the Patriots in the top left hand corner of their map. [This is also the place where they locate economic (wo)man.] Tom Brady is used to add weight to the argument that they seem to want people to live in the Northwest.
I was reminded of this when watching Sky's coverage of Week 3 of the current NFL season. The presenter and guests were discussing the percentage of the salary cap taken up by the quarterback. They divided the quarterbacks into two groups - older and younger quarterbacks.
When discussing the younger quarterbacks, the year of the draft and the pick was listed. The key seemed to be the pick number. Lower pick numbers took up larger shares of the salary cap. Baker Mayfield (1) was at 4.0% of the salary cap. Patrick Mahomes (10) gets 2.4% of the salary cap. Dak Prescott (135) gets only 1.1%.
The older quarterbacks tended to have a larger share of their respective salary caps. Here we see some evidence of Brady's decision discussed above. Maybe Tom illustrates the usefulness of the decision making map. Maybe.
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