I think his handling of the QB situation has sucked ass and that his decisions around his coaching staff have too. Otherwise, I agree.
Level of Confidence in Direction of the Patriots Franchise
- Thread starter BigSoxFan
- Start date
Marv Levy coached until 72. After making his final SB he went 7-9, 10-6, 10-6, and 6-10. IIRC that was more a function of those Bills teams finally aging out but Marv definitely slowed down towards the end as well.
This thread is a sports radio discussion.
A week ago it was crazy to be jumping ahead and even considering there to be a QB controversy. Mac was still the man for 75%+ of reasonable people. We had 1 starting QB and 1 wild card who could be decent back up if not more. And the coaching staff was being lauded for having a 4th Rd lottery pick QB prepared for NFL level play.
One bad (okay, terrible) game later and suddenly we have zero QBs and the franchise's future is in question? Talk about reactionary.
Whatever you want to call it, whatever circumstances you want to use to justify his record. He's been a below 500 coach without Brady is just as much of a fact as those circumstances that may have impacted his record. I'm thankful for what he's done but I want to see him prove he's as good a coach as some claim and I haven't seen a guy who can elevate this roster. And when you make all the decisions, guess who that falls on.
What do you call last year or 2001 or 2009 or hell 2020?
What does elevating a roster mean to you?
Because yes if you throw out 20 years of his career he is slightly below .500.
You keep on with this. So what is your replacment hc? Salva too
Does tb win 6 wo the BB D in 01 and 03. Or shit the Bb D clamping down vs atlanta or Lar in 2018
Is Seymour drafted? Is Jules? Fuck, is Tom?
Then we roll into the BB DC times, 2 sb champ on his D.
So provide a solution / option or stop the whining
There are not many run-first QBs I guess but there are two mobile starting QBs in the Patriots' own division and you're likely to meet Mahomes and Jackson in the playoffs. Even Burrow kept a lot of plays alive with his legs in their playoff run last year. These guys are all very tough because they're super-accurate and have good vision but Fields should be handle-able.
The Patriots like to play man and they have a good secondary who excels at it. The issue is if the line can keep contain on the QB and if the LBs don't get lost. The LBs are a known issue, though they've looked better this year, but the line not keeping its lanes is what has killed them recently. I feel like this is about coaching and winning your battles.
Context, circumstances, digging deeper beyond surface facts matter. And have often been a hallmark of the better discussions around here. He has shown he can coach effectively without Brady (Cleveland, until Modell blew it up, 2008, last year). This has already been pointed out to you, but you obviously refuse to engage on a level beyond weekday afternoons, 2-6.
Mac has regressed in Year 2. It’s perfectly fine to be concerned about him. As the starter of the thread, I am now placing you on double secret probation and your punishment is having to watch the Bears game on loop until Sunday.
Same.
Same.
I would literally rather watch Bill die on the job than watch any other person try to coach this team. Not because I think Bill would necessarily put up the best record of any coach but rather because I am more interested in watching him build a team than I am in watching “winning” football in 2022.
Bill is—unquestionably IMO—the greatest living football mind and also, while it is perhaps more up for debate, the greatest football mind in history. Despite having a clear philosophy and coaching style, he has reinvented his teams multiple times over the course of his 50 years in coaching. In a sport as conservative as football, I am actually struggling to think of another coach that did it even a single time.
Is that a guarantee that he will successfully do so again? Absolutely not. But, I will be more fascinated to watch him try to do so again with this team than I would watching any other coach.
Because as much as rooting for this team is about winning for me it’s been as much about how they’ve won – esp. in a league that has changed so drastically it bears almost no resemblance to the game when Belichick took over the Pats in 2000 much less when he entered the league in 1975. His coaching—the style his teams play, the innovations he brings to the game—is just that much more compelling to me as a fan – and it makes the game better and more watchable to me as a fan.
Bill Belichick makes football a better game.
I get why others would prefer W’s no matter who – and why they may doubt Bill right now. But the moment he retires it won’t just be a loss for the Patriots – the game will suffer that much more.
Coach for life.
Please no, though those few minutes of Zappe glory might just make it bearable...
It's not totally absurd. I've been making that point about Mac just trying to argue there MIGHT be a QB controversy brewing. It's just funny how quickly fortunes seemed to have flipped in one game, one half even, things could've turned out differently if Meyers holds onto the ball.
QB is suddenly a huge wild card and that's a very strange place to be. The roster isn't void though, the last 2 drafts especially are looking very good, and they have cap space next year. This season's fate is very much up in the air, no doubt, but it basically was as soon as Mac's ankle was badly sprained. That would be the case with almost every team and their starting QB.
I'd thought of good ol' Marv as well, but 4 Super Bowl losses do not a legendary coach make. Just win, baby.
Seriously though, he's a reasonable comp, and by the time he was in his 70s, Bills fans seemed content with letting him stay as long as he wanted. IMHO, BB stays as long as he wants.
Bingo. What made the tandem truly special and able to last so long was that Brady was willing to take a discount.
I think Belichick is the greatest coach ever. I think he’s the best coach in the league right now. I also think he’s a very mediocre executive. If you add it up it seems like the team is kind of stuck in this loop where they are good enough to make the playoffs but clearly not a threat to actually win anything.
The other thing I wonder, and it ties into the Brady discount thing, would Belichick be willing to pay the rate to have a truly superstar QB now? It kind of goes against his philosophy of team building to have one guy tying up so much of your cap and resources
I don’t think Bill is gonna be a coach/GM who stays longer than his abilities allow him to be effective, so I deeply discount the hypothetical of having to kick a Paterno-like figure overboard.
Relatedly, I expect his leaving the team will be planned in consultation with the Krafts, as I don’t think it’s in anyone’s interest to have an acrimonious end to his tenure. And tying this into my first point, if the trajectory of the team gets bad enough that the Krafts approach Bill with a succession plan/exit strategy then my read is that Bill will have perceived the need for a change as well.
Basically, Bill loves his job and probably feels a sense of ownership over the franchise/system he built, but he strikes me as someone who doesn’t want to hold on for its own sake.
Relatedly, I expect his leaving the team will be planned in consultation with the Krafts, as I don’t think it’s in anyone’s interest to have an acrimonious end to his tenure. And tying this into my first point, if the trajectory of the team gets bad enough that the Krafts approach Bill with a succession plan/exit strategy then my read is that Bill will have perceived the need for a change as well.
Basically, Bill loves his job and probably feels a sense of ownership over the franchise/system he built, but he strikes me as someone who doesn’t want to hold on for its own sake.
I wanted to respond to all the people who replied to me in one post so I apologize for the lengthy post, but here goes.
I am thankful for what Belichick has done and I do think he and Brady needed each other. I am old school, I enjoy the successes but I also root for the team, not coaches or players and I want the team to be successful. How I feel may be simple but it’s how I feel and people can disagree with it, that’s fine but it also doesn’t mean I am any less of a thinker than someone else because I don’t base my opinions in analytics or new age thinking.
I have always thought that in sports players make coaches much more than the other way around and that is part of why I feel I do. I also think you are what your record says you are and circumstances or not the record says he is 67-71.
I am not trying to say he is a bad coach, just that his pedestal isn’t as high as the one that he and Brady are on together. But, given the amount of success he had with Brady and the success we as fans have become accustomed to, I am not sure he has the ability to get the team back to that level of contention which is why I originally said maybe someone other than a below .500 coach should be at the helm.
Who should coach is a fair question and to be honest I’m not sure but I don’t think I’m the only one that wouldn’t feel great if the reigns were handed over to someone currently on the staff (isn’t that the original point of the thread?). The grass may not always be greener, but sometimes it actually is, if they were to look outside the organization.
I think when this run started BB and the organization was lauded (and rightly so) for the way things were run, constantly zigging when other teams were zagging, etc. Over time in a copycat league more and more teams are zigging making it harder to stay ahead of the curve.
This is where BB the GM comes in, when this run started he was good at looking for value and getting the most out of those mid-round finds. But, with more teams doing the same thing drafting has become even harder for a team like the Patriots who like to work in the middle rounds. I understand that drafting is hard and it is a crapshoot, but it is my feeling that if this is a good part of your roster building then you need to be better than average at it in order to be effective, or else you end up with a mediocre roster like the one they have now. So yes the Patriots haven’t hit or miss more than others but I think that’s part of the problem, they need to be better than that.
Lastly, when you are both GM and coach it all begins and ends with you. If players don’t work out, be it through free agency or the draft, to me that says either your ability to coach players up has failed to some extent or your ability to scout the right players for the way you want to play has failed.
I enjoyed the last 20 years along with everyone else, but the track record both pre and post doesn’t instill me with a lot of confidence moving forward which is why I originally responded the way I did. I am a fan of the Patriots, not Bill Belichick or Tom Brady for that matter.
I’m sorry for the long post but I wanted to explain myself a little further since some felt my previous responses were surface level. We can agree or disagree on any or all of this and people can try and pretty up BB without Brady as much as they want, but underneath it all he’s a decent coach with a below .500 record who has shown the ability to make bad teams mediocre and mediocre teams fringe playoff teams.
Relatedly I think BB cares a lot about the organization he's built (scouts and training staff and video guys and all included) and would really like a transition to take place that left as much of the organization in place as possible. The Steelers historically have done this (replace a head coach but keep coordinators in place, keep a head coach but change GMs but keep scouting in place). I'm not saying BB gets to pick the successor but if Groh keeps doing well in the draft you could imagine perhaps Mayo at head coach, Groh as GM, a little shuffling of the coordinators based on whether there's good in-house talent, and the vast majority of the football side employees keeping their jobs.
I think there's an overreaction to one horrible game, which the Pats have 1-2 of every year, just like pretty much every NFL team. There's a lot of young talent on the team, and I believe both Mac and Zappy have the tools to take a BB-coached team deep into the playoffs. I'm not exactly sure what has happened to Mac, but I'm not giving up on him yet, and Zappe I mean I think he's looked pretty good. Bears game was terrible, but it wasn't exactly good throwing conditions, and the Pats D couldn't stop shit and made the offense entirely predictable against a pretty good defense. I think they'll be fine.
I'm fairly confident BB wants Shula's record, and I wouldn't be surprised to see him stick around just for that.
100% he does. 23 wins away, which I suspect he figures means coaching 2-3 more years after this one.
I think Bill really disliked Shula's holier than thou attitude during any of the "cheating" stuff considering what Bill knows of all of Shula's "gamesmanship" throughout the years so he'll be happy to knock Shula down a peg.
Shula was a pretty big prick toward Bill. I’d imagine the Halas mark means a bit more to Bill historically and professionally and the Shula thing will just fester regardless. More than anything I think Bill just really enjoys his profession and thinks he can do it at the highest level. (Reminds me of someone else…). If he feels like he’s building something, he’ll be here.
Having 17 game seasons should help, but getting 10 wins is really needed otherwise he's extending that by another season or two.
soo, who do you think will be better gm/ and or coach for the Pats?
edit-siince across multiple areas rip on this
2018 - won a sb!
2019 - lost early in playoffs with goat qb
2020 — didnt do much under cam. No playoffss
2021 - playoffs with rookie qb!
Soo bb 3/4 years went to playoffs. 2 with tommy, 1 sb. Failed with cam. Made it with rookie.
there are literal franchises that have never been to sb or playoffs in years
No solutions just whining. Over many Threads. and you hammer bb, one playoff sans tb… go look at detroit or numerous other franchises. Ill wait
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I don't know if you missed it but I said, "Who should coach is a fair question and to be honest I’m not sure but I don’t think I’m the only one that wouldn’t feel great if the reigns were handed over to someone currently on the staff (isn’t that the original point of the thread?). The grass may not always be greener, but sometimes it actually is, if they were to look outside the organization." The question of the thread is your level of confidence, I have very little and I'm not the only one. Replacing legends is hard sometimes you get George Seifert sometimes Barry Switzer. If you want a name why not Eric Bienemy or Leftwich or poach someone from Cincy or Buffalo or one of the teams you are chasing for a fresh look? It's a decision that will have to be made at some point.
He was in the playoffs *last season* though. This isn’t some multi year drought.
Do you think any of those names will be an improvement over bb?
People can vote against bb and staff for age / out of touch / whatever. Fine. But offer other options if you do so and explain why.
Two seasons ago was the first time they’ve missed the playoffs since 2008.
Other teams with great QBs miss the playoffs.
Rodgers has missed the playoffs three times. Brees missed it five times. Not counting his rookie year, even the Colts with Peyton (year four) missed the playoffs.
That BB went 11-5 with Cassel and won 10 games and went to the playoffs with a rookie QB last year tells us that he’s a damned good coach.
Other teams with great QBs miss the playoffs.
Rodgers has missed the playoffs three times. Brees missed it five times. Not counting his rookie year, even the Colts with Peyton (year four) missed the playoffs.
That BB went 11-5 with Cassel and won 10 games and went to the playoffs with a rookie QB last year tells us that he’s a damned good coach.
I live in Tampa and I am a Bucs fan…Byron Leftwich is under a ton of fire here and honestly might not make it through the season
Especially anyone from Cincinatti... team has a ton of talent and is 4-3. What record do you think BB would have with Burrow, Chase and Higgins.. let alone Boyd and Mixon. If we switched coaching staffs right now.. what would their records be?
What was your confidence level after the Detroit game? How about the Browns?
Why is the grass greener in any of the other organizations you mention at least when it comes to coaching? I get Buffalo in a way (even though they were last in the SB 29 years ago)... But isn't the entire 'problem' that the Pats have a talent gap with those teams because they've been drafting late for the past twenty years or so? That and their starting QB got hurt and they've been trying to figure out which QB to use or had to change QBs in 3 out of 7 games this season?
Honestly my confidence level after those games was the same as it is now. Those were teams they should beat. This is the soft part of their schedule. I honestly don't see many of any wins after the next 3 weeks. So no I wasn't overly excited jumping up and down.
The flip side of that is that regression years have been very rare under BB but this is one of them. Give him a mulligan for 2019, when Brady left and Covid messed up the year. This team is going to finish below .500 after what looked like the beginning of a a successful rebuild last year. I don't think that has happened before in Bill's tenure.
We don’t know that they’ll finish under .500 this year. There’s ten games left.
And keep in mind that after winning the super bowl in 2001 (technically 2002 but it was the 2001 season), they only went 9-7 the next year and missed the playoffs.
Building a championship team isn’t necessarily a linear process.
The fact that Shula never won a SB with Marino is more of an indictment of Shula than BB's record without Brady. Christ, Marino threw for 48 TDs in 1984, the next closest guy threw 32. Marino was way ahead of the curve in the 80's.
Marino was the first "modern" QB in the way he played. He'd drop right into 2022 without an issue.
Shula never, ever built a defense or a running game to compliment Marino's talents. The defense that got them to SB XVII had aged by SB XIX and remained terrible for the vast majority of Marino's career.
BB takes shit for not winning as much without Brady, but Shula went from 1972 to 1995 without winning anything while being gifted a top 5 overall QB in Marino after he dropped to 27th in the draft over "character" concerns. He got drafted after Blackledge for crissakes.
Dan Marino was insanely good, possibly on par with Brady, definitely a top 5 of all time QB. Shula's inability to put WRs in front of him that were halfway decent, and a defense that could keep teams under 20 on a regular basis (while playing the mediocre Patriots, Jets and Bills in 6 of his games every year...) is proof that he stayed in the job for vanity reasons, not for "what's best for Miami" reasons.
Were any of the Pittsburgh tootski-rootski rumors about Dan M ever confirmed?
It is perfectly reasonable to question whether Bill Belichick can be a winner without Brady. In 9 seasons without Brady on his roster he has won exactly one playoff game, and this year isn't looking great. This re-writing of history where he left Cleveland in amazing shape is banana pants, they finished his final season at 5-11. Did his owner decide to move the team? Yes! But Lou Brown faced the same challenge and he took his team to the playoffs in the same city!!!
It is perfectly reasonable to never want Bill Belichick to leave the Patriots under any terms other than his own. He has earned it and then some.
These ideas can co-exist.
It is perfectly reasonable to never want Bill Belichick to leave the Patriots under any terms other than his own. He has earned it and then some.
These ideas can co-exist.
I don't think so, but it was the mid-80s so anything was possible. He did have a senior season that was off from his junior one, which combined with the nose candy rumors caused his stock to drop.
To be fair, the idea of removing pieces of Art Modell's clothes as they won games was significantly more off-putting than removing those of Rachel Phelps.
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I remember Duper and Clayton being pretty decent for a number of years
I honestly consider the question “could Belichick win a playoff game without Brady” (in the abstract, not speaking of this year in particular) a bit absurd. No offense meant. Many weak, even poor, coaches have won playoff games without the great Brady: surely BB is capable of pulling off such a feat?
Consider this pair of fantasy scenarios. Does anyone believe that if, say Aaron Rodgers, had chosen to walk away from Green Bay and come to leafstrewn New England (for the Cape’s warmth and chowder, if nothing else, and to get away from brats), that he and BB and McDaniels and company could not have won a playoff game together? Or, alternatively, if a team like Buffalo, or Kansas City, or Cincinnati, had swapped coaches with the Patriots in the last season or two, that Belichick would have bungled the opportunity? Everyone who has met him thinks he is a football savant; even his harshest detractors would admit he was at least a decent coach…and many decent coaches with very good and great quarterbacks and offensive systems have won many playoff games.
I think that a better question would be “Can (or more importantly for me, will) Belichick win a playoff game, preferably more than one, without a very good quarterback and a good offensive system in place?”
Or even better: “Can BB nurture and coach up and succeed with an ailing QB? Can he be, as it were, a quarterback whisperer, as Andy Reid and Brian Daboll and other offense-focused coaches have been?”
And I’m not sure about those answers at all. I hate to doubt him, but that’s a question very much open for doubting. So far this year, he has not been, or he seems not to have been. Not saying he doesn’t know offensive football, but I think that the above is a special skill… just my .02.
Consider this pair of fantasy scenarios. Does anyone believe that if, say Aaron Rodgers, had chosen to walk away from Green Bay and come to leafstrewn New England (for the Cape’s warmth and chowder, if nothing else, and to get away from brats), that he and BB and McDaniels and company could not have won a playoff game together? Or, alternatively, if a team like Buffalo, or Kansas City, or Cincinnati, had swapped coaches with the Patriots in the last season or two, that Belichick would have bungled the opportunity? Everyone who has met him thinks he is a football savant; even his harshest detractors would admit he was at least a decent coach…and many decent coaches with very good and great quarterbacks and offensive systems have won many playoff games.
I think that a better question would be “Can (or more importantly for me, will) Belichick win a playoff game, preferably more than one, without a very good quarterback and a good offensive system in place?”
Or even better: “Can BB nurture and coach up and succeed with an ailing QB? Can he be, as it were, a quarterback whisperer, as Andy Reid and Brian Daboll and other offense-focused coaches have been?”
And I’m not sure about those answers at all. I hate to doubt him, but that’s a question very much open for doubting. So far this year, he has not been, or he seems not to have been. Not saying he doesn’t know offensive football, but I think that the above is a special skill… just my .02.
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They were certainly halfway-decent: eight Pro Bowls, multiple All Pro awards…someone had to catch Marino’s incredible passes. Clayton caught more TDS than Reggie Wayne, Steve Smith, or even Harold Carmichael!
Marino is an all-time great. He had decent receivers. The rest of the team and the coaching…? Well, he reminds me a little of Aaron Rodgers, a machine who has made exactly one Super Bowl (and won it…but he wasn’t facing Montana and Walsh), and doesn’t look like he’s going back soon. There were quite a few good pieces on those Dolphins teams, and one other Hall of Famer, but just not enough.
I mean, Belichick has already won a playoff game without Brady. He has already answered that question.
The good news on the QB front is that Bill does have a pretty good record in drafting (& developing?) QBs. Aside from the obvious TB12, Jimmy G, Jacoby B and Mac/Zappe have all been starters for teams this year (and Stidham has also made an appearance for the Raiders). Can't be that common for a coach to have drafted a full quartile of a quartile of the league's starting QBs (if I'm understanding Jim Irsay's newmath correctly).
Yes but when it comes to the Patriots, the poster who went with that idea has an axe to grind. That poster may well be correct - these ideas can indeed co-exist as well - but in their cold, dark NFC-East front-runing heart, they are seriously enjoying all the feels the Patriots fans are feeling now.
Also, don't share any information about your mother here. Not a good idea.
They were both fine. They were both really similar too, good route runners, OK but not amazing catchers of the ball....they both made a bunch of Pro Bowls, but it always felt more like marketing than true jaw-dropping talent. Neither of them - at least to my memory - ever took a game by the scruff of the neck and just won it the way that you would expect of an elite receiver. They kind of just caught the balls that the greatest QB of his era threw to them. Maybe I am overstating it, but generally....,meh.