You always think your empire/dynasty is going to end differently, but the past is always prologue.
End of an Era: Bill Belichick and Patriots to part ways
- Thread starter RedOctober3829
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To be fair, the product wasn’t competitive this year either, so at least we’ll have continuity there.
I said it in another thread but the time for Bill to hang it up was after 2021. Team was in a solid place and even if the same trajectory took place with Mac and the offense, it would’ve been blamed not on Belichick but him leaving. But coaches gonna coach.
Assuming this is at least partly true—and I think it is—it’s more Bill’s fault than anyone else’s – by a lot. For my part, I would’ve been happy having Bill coach until he died. But it isn’t a particularly hard to envision what Graff and others are saying is essentially true: that as the coaches (and players like Brady) Bill trusted left or retired instead of replacing them he increasingly relied on his own instincts and the shrinking number of people who shared them. It’s completely natural and maybe a bit harder, as Graff suggests, for someone who is an introvert.
If you believe Graff’s piece in The Athletic, Bill is largely responsible for Mac’s fall-off:
He goes on to say Welker has been shut out from Gillette since 2013–including no pictures of him at all in the building with everyone else—because Bill has never buried the hatchet with him over how 2013 ended.The way the New England defense played down the stretch of a lost season showed Belichick can still coach. He has an unrivaled knowledge of the game, and his defensive game plans, even in a horrible 2023 season, continue to thwart opposing offenses.
But Belichick long thought he could win with simply average quarterback play, even after working with Brady for so long. If the QB avoided major mistakes, Belichick figured the team would be good enough on defense and special teams to contend. But Belichick’s most costly blunder came at the game’s most important position.
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After an impressive rookie campaign from Jones that saw him earn a Pro Bowl nod, Belichick had to make some changes following offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels’ departure to Las Vegas. Belichick made Judge the quarterbacks coach but used Patrcia as the primary offensive play caller.
Under their tutelage, Jones fell apart. His confidence took a hit as his numbers dipped, dropping from 7.3 yards per attempt and 22 touchdowns in 2021 to 6.8 yards per attempt and just 14 touchdowns in 2022. He was frustrated with the coaching he was getting and sought outside opinions, something that angered Belichick.
In the offseason, Belichick wasn’t willing to bury the hatchet. Instead of building up his young quarterback for a bounceback, the coach went out of his way to avoid any positive remarks about Jones. Belichick was upset that, in his eyes, Jones had disrespected his coaching that year by seeking opinions from outside the building and complaining openly on the field.
GO DEEPER
The Bill Belichick-Mac Jones rift is real — and it's hard to blame either side
So Belichick didn’t commit to him publicly. He let Jones’ top wide receiver, Jakobi Meyers, leave in free agency so he could sign Smith-Schuster. When asked specifically in March if Jones was the starting quarterback, Belichick only said, “Everybody will get a chance to play.”
The move confused many within the building. They’d used a first-round pick on Jones. Then, just two years later, Belichick couldn’t be bothered to confirm Jones was the quarterback?
Instead of motivating Jones, the move knocked the confidence of an already-shaken quarterback. Coupled with a shaky offensive line and wide receivers who struggled to create separation, Jones was a mess. His mechanics fell apart. He didn’t trust his reads and he panicked under pressure. He finished 2023 with 6.1 yards per attempt, 10 touchdowns and 12 interceptions and now seems likely to head elsewhere this offseason, a remarkable downfall from the promise of his rookie season.
Assuming this is at least partly true—and I think it is—it’s more Bill’s fault than anyone else’s – by a lot. For my part, I would’ve been happy having Bill coach until he died. But it isn’t a particularly hard to envision what Graff and others are saying is essentially true: that as the coaches (and players like Brady) Bill trusted left or retired instead of replacing them he increasingly relied on his own instincts and the shrinking number of people who shared them. It’s completely natural and maybe a bit harder, as Graff suggests, for someone who is an introvert.
This is also the right approach, contra Tennessee’s owner, who answered softballs thrown by the team’s in-house reporter in a recorded interview. Kraft owns the team and drove this decision, so he gets to take the bullets.
I say this in the nicest way.... Chad Graff has proven time and again he's the least competent writer NE has ever seen, not sure how he got that job after leaving MN but I assume it's because he'd work cheap, he has no idea how the salary cap works, he doesn't have any scheme knowledge, he doesn't know basic stuff, he's garbage.
Also, Mac's falloff was because Mac is a mediocre QB who can't handle adversity at all
Yeah, Mac was bad at the end stages of 2021 and then couldn't handle adversity at all. The league adjusted and Mac couldn't.
BB became coach of the Pats when I was one year old. End of an era, and with Brady, BB, and Ortiz all gone, this is officially the end of my childhood and probably anyone else born in that time period. The greatest to ever cut the sleeves, thanks for all the memories. A Patriot forever
Mac is a terrible QB who would have failed anywhere other than maybe in the SF offense. The narrative that the patriots ruined him is idiotic. He has no tangible talent
Mac is responsible for his own play. BB doesn't openly praise many players until they earn it.
Mac's snotty little presser at the end of the year saying he worked soooooooo hard and thus should have started should forever end the discussion about his worthiness as an NFL QB.
“But Captain Kirk, er, William Shatner, did actually go to space — last year, aboard a capsule piloted by Jeff Bezos's company Blue Origin. Shatner details his experiences in his new memoir Boldly Go.
"I was crying," Shatner told NPR. "I didn't know what I was crying about. I had to go off some place and sit down and think, what's the matter with me? And I realized I was in grief."
This context was what struck Shatner the most.
"It was the death that I saw in space and the lifeforce that I saw coming from the planet — the blue, the beige and the white," he said. "And I realized one was death and the other was life."”
Honestly, not much to say that I haven't already, but Jonathan has been effectively running the day to day operations of the entire Patriots organization (with the obvious exception of football decisions) for over a decade. Bob has basically been a fan and a figure head, which is fine, but I'm not worried about Jonathan, unless he decides to mettle in the day to day operations of the team itself, and there is no evidence that he has any interest or time to do so. Him and his father will decide on the next coach, GM and then we'll go from there, but from a business/organizational standpoint, it's awfully hard to argue with what he and Robert have done since they took over. Multi Billion dollar companies take a lot to run, even if they are a football team. The Revolution, the real estate, the employees, Patriot Place, and on and on and on...That's all been Jonathan for a long time.
https://x.com/barstoolsports/status/1745477461016510890?s=46&t=faVPh5Mjzm9ce4ZWVWMtxQ
We’re all hurting today
We’re all hurting today
Robert says they talked about Bill reliquishing some power but in the end he didn't think it would work and would only create confusion.
Okay, one more. I'm only on page 3, and I'm done. I can't do this today. I think I'll just go into denial mode for a while and focus on other shit.
Yeah, it was a logical response. He's had complete power for 20 years, taking it away from him at this point with his fingerprints all over the organization probably just wasn't tenable.
This is a good point, even if they retain a number of scouts and other staff, the new coach / GM are going to have to sort through all of the personnel and figure out who they want to listen to and work in all the new people they may bring in, and they may not really be able to get going until . Whereas BB could be spending three months figuring out what he wants to do had he stayed on.
He did reference having discussions about the future in the very near term (twice), so sounds like they will have some announcements over the coming days/week?
Says he hasn't given much thought to the org structure yet. Last few days were focused on the split with Bill.
My take on what Robert Kraft just said. 1. He didn’t feel that they would be able to make a Shared role with a GM type position to try to execute after Bill has had so much control and 2. I get the impression he felt Bill didn’t have enough voices in the room giving him straightforward feedback as a check and balance in the decision making process.
A lot of sadness around these parts today, understandably. Maybe these types of memories which, I’m sure, are shared by all of you here can put this sad day in some appropriate context?
Edit: From 2018 SB postgame.
Edit: From 2018 SB postgame.
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They are pretty behind the 8ball already, this could turn very messy if they don't start to get going.
I don’t care for Graff’s work either and didn’t share the article.
But what he’s writing here isn’t entirely unique to his reporting. We’ve heard a lot of stories about Bill having very few people he consulted with in the end. Combined with some of his well known personal qualities (not Mr. Gregarious), and human nature (getting more stuck in our ways as we age), it’s not exactly like he’s inventing things whole cloth.
As for the Mac stuff, this idea that Bill is blameless in his regression—that nothing could have been done—is as silly as suggesting Mac is blameless. I mean, Bill himself would probably take responsibility for it – he scouted and drafted Mac, hired and replaced his coordinators and coaches, approved his game plans, and built the roster around him. Whether or not it was always destined to fail, it is absolutely on Bill that Mac failed as QB of the NEP.
Again: I would’ve been fine with Bill reigning over this franchise until he drew his last breath. But let’s dispense with this idea that Belichick’s unprecedented run might not have ended had he not been shivved by the dastardly Mac Jones.
For posterity...
Full Kraft presser:
View: https://twitter.com/Patriots/status/1745519912687157581
Full BB & Kraft presser:
View: https://twitter.com/Patriots/status/1745490547303686547
Full Kraft presser:
View: https://twitter.com/Patriots/status/1745519912687157581
Full BB & Kraft presser:
View: https://twitter.com/Patriots/status/1745490547303686547
Bruschi said on ESPN that we will never see another coach with BB’s personal style because now everything is about relationships and collaboration and the players feeling included in the decision making processes.
This is basically what lots of us here have thought. The guy is fantastic at coaching still, it’s the rest of the job that he’s fallen behind on. I wonder how much of all this is due to the absolute brain drain we saw over the 2016-2021 period. Lots of those guys didn’t find success elsewhere, but the McDaniels/Caserios of the world were probably more valuable than I realized (Ernie Adams too of course, but I always assumed he was insanely valuable. Same with Dante)
I'm also old enough to remember when "the Patsies" were the punchline to any joke about NFL futility: The Stupor Bowl, the parade of guys - Ken Sims, Rich Camarillo, a stream of QBs who would have been at home in Cleveland...
If Marciano's right, and the pre-BB past is prologue to the post-BB era, we won't see a lot of competitiveness next year. I'm with Bergs, not sanguine at all about finding a plug-and-play shortcut to relevance.
I really think it's not so much that he has lost it in terms of team building. It's that there's too much on his plate in a day when the job is more complex than ever. The brain drain was real. He operated with the smallest coaching staff in the league, and I think this is one of his weaknesses - he believed he was capable of doing it all and in the end, at this point in his life, he just wasn't, at least not to the same standards he had been before. But Kraft was right - to remove him and have someone else as GM, when forever everything ran through Bill..that would have created organizational confusion and chaos. Even if Bill was good with it.
So I want a new, robust organizational structure with lots of collaboration but clear lines of authority. But yeah, all the pieces working well together. It can be done.
I remain optimistic about the New England Patriots.
So I want a new, robust organizational structure with lots of collaboration but clear lines of authority. But yeah, all the pieces working well together. It can be done.
I remain optimistic about the New England Patriots.
I remember Ditka guest starring on LA Law, probably a year or two after SB XX. He was on the stand doing a stereotypical Ditka rant and he yelled something like "If you want to be a loser, go and root for the Patriots."
I still remember that for some reason.
@JonasLGray
Forever thankful to Coach Belichick for the shot that launched my NFL career and for instilling a winning mindset that made us the best-prepared team every game. His football legacy is unmatched. A heartfelt thanks, Coach, and wishing you success in all that comes next.
Forever thankful to Coach Belichick for the shot that launched my NFL career and for instilling a winning mindset that made us the best-prepared team every game. His football legacy is unmatched. A heartfelt thanks, Coach, and wishing you success in all that comes next.
I don't think he'd consider it, but I'd counter with:
1. Maybe not anymore
2. He likes Rodgers, always goes out of his way to chat with him after games, etc.
3. Robert Saleh's job security is nil.
