Brady had broke out to a top 5 QB before McDaniels left for sure but he was also elite IMO before McDaniels was his OC, just did not have huge stats but a lot of things were different.
The stat breakout happened in 2007 but if you think that was due to McDaniels I'll have to agree to disagree because to me the primary reasons were clearly the additions of Moss and Welker which were major improvements when arguably the two best WR's he had before were Troy Brown and Deion Branch. The addition of these two was actually more than talent, Welkers ability to get open quickly and seemingly at will combined with the stress Moss put on a defense was a beatiful pairing and I think that was huge for Brady's growth and easily the driving motivator for his stat breakout.
I think what Bronco Billy was saying was that when McDaniels left NE that Brady did not skip a beat and that is true for the most part.
Also I was mulling this over the other day and to me the most innovative thing I saw NE do on offense during the entire Bellichick era was how they utilized their TE's as matchup problems. Especially of course when they had Hernandez but that was a pretty creative concept to use two TE's in that manner. Especially as it relates to way he used Hernandez, which I think spawned the slot TE role, the Jordan Reed/Evan Engram role on teams offenses. This all happened in the few years McDaniels was gone. So since 2006 he's been the OC for all but 3 seasons and in those 3 seasons they came up with the most innovative thing the offense has done IMO under Brady/BB.
With regard to McDaniels the best and really only evidence he can succeed without Brady, is what he did with Matt Cassell in 2008 which is what I believe got him the Denver coaching job, not his development of Brady.
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