SBLII: What Did the Butler Do?

ScubaSteveAvery

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The coaching staff hasn't said anything bad about him.
Poorly worded on my part. There should be a comma there. "Some will view it as a response to the coaching staff, and to the media saying bad shit about him." The proof is already there because Trollin' Volin is already using statement and the fact Brady liked it as evidence of some rift between him and management.

I don't have any issue with the statement or whoever the hell liked it. But I know the football media very well and they will use this as evidence.
 

Marciano490

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And I think you and others are putting too much credence in what is really a pretty narrowly worded statement.
I'm not saying I 100% believe it, but your take is like telling your significant other you didn't sleep with X and she comes back with, oh so you just kissed her? You felt her up, etc. He used a pretty broad denial to reflect the fact that there were a ton of rumors out there - probably some that we haven't seen yet, and instead of saying "I didn't do drugs, I didn't drink, I didn't have women in my bed, etc.," he kept it simple.
 

Smiling Joe Hesketh

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You guys....

We're never going to get the full picture. Belichick said it was for football reasons. Butler's statement says he broke no rules. So whatever the actual reasoning was, we're not going to ever get it unless Belichick goes against everything he's ever done in this organization, or if Butler decides to cop to possible bad behavior and cost himself millions of dollars.

We won't, but we might be better off letting this go.
 

steveluck7

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Ben Volin on Twitter is already suggesting Brady liking/commenting on Butler's post means more friction between Brady and Belichick.. so yeah.
It’s Armageddon according to Felger and Mazz.
“A public middle finger to Bill”
“A direct response to the Wickersham piece, to which Bill was the source” — perhaps the hottest take of all time
“Brady’s piiiiised”
 

Captaincoop

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I'm not saying I 100% believe it, but your take is like telling your significant other you didn't sleep with X and she comes back with, oh so you just kissed her? You felt her up, etc. He used a pretty broad denial to reflect the fact that there were a ton of rumors out there - probably some that we haven't seen yet, and instead of saying "I didn't do drugs, I didn't drink, I didn't have women in my bed, etc.," he kept it simple.
Your example is exactly what I'm talking about.

Whatever, as SJH points out, we're never going to know and it's not worth parsing much further. For me, Belichick has more than earned the benefit of the doubt in these situations. Others may feel differently. Unfortunate situation all around.
 

dcmissle

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He's fucking fucked if no one thinks he's a good enough fit for their system to be worth money and if teams do like him for their systems then he's not fucked even if his agent drafted statement isn't all that honest.

His risk assessment is also, well, not so good.
I guess I have not communicated my point well.

If he went to a Rick Ross concert, broke curfew, smoked weed or whatever, it is not smart to lie about it. Those things can be explained, with great difficulty, and it may cost you money, but it is not the end of the world. If you issue that statement and you did these things, it probably is the end of the world. I’m not giving tens of millions to a guy caught in a flat footed lie on something important. So I think it’s highly probable that the statement is true, and this was a “football decision.”

If it was, that will go into the mix with the tape of his play this year — 97% of the defensive plays over 18 games — and his entire record in NE. That is more than manageable. I still think he gets a very nice contract.
 

drbretto

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Yep. I'm officially over it.

The truth is probably at least somewhere in the middle, but we'll never know for sure. It doesn't do anyone any good to parse Tom Brady's liking habits on instagram.

Even if this was the absolute worst case scenario, BB gets at least one full, no questions asked pass.

Recommend just letting it go and moving on.
 

Rusty13

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You guys....

We're never going to get the full picture. Belichick said it was for football reasons. Butler's statement says he broke no rules. So whatever the actual reasoning was, we're not going to ever get it unless Belichick goes against everything he's ever done in this organization, or if Butler decides to cop to possible bad behavior and cost himself millions of dollars.

We won't, but we might be better off letting this go.
The only times I can ever remember him going on the public record to respond in actual detail to a big news story was: (1) right after the Aaron Hernandez arrest; and (2) his infamous "Mona Lisa Vito" Deflategate press conference.
 

Bowhemian

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You guys....

We're never going to get the full picture. Belichick said it was for football reasons. Butler's statement says he broke no rules. So whatever the actual reasoning was, we're not going to ever get it unless Belichick goes against everything he's ever done in this organization, or if Butler decides to cop to possible bad behavior and cost himself millions of dollars.

We won't, but we might be better off letting this go.
Agree 1000000000%
There has only been speculation, no statements, that there were disciplinary reasons. Malcolm was denying that speculation. His post in no way refutes anything that the Pats said about it being a football decision.

And like SJH says, we will NEVER know, even if BB writes a tell-all book.
 

genoasalami

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We lose the game and then it is the never ending story of why a CB did not play. I am going to trust that the best coach in NFL history had his reasons for not playing him. Time to move on to potential personnel and coaching changes. We are blessed that we have a decent shot of making the Super Bowl again next year. How many teams can say that for 18 years and counting?
 

Al Zarilla

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I hope Tom liking Malcolm’s post is just a “loved having you as a teammate” thing and not defiance toward Belichick about the super bowl benching. If the latter, we finally might have a Tom Jackson scenario. Or worse, a TB/B.B. divorce. I think it’s the loved you as a teammate though.
 

lexrageorge

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Butler's post was very positive, and it should be a surprise to noone that it was liked by Tom Brady and other teammates, past and present. Maybe Bill himself would have liked it had he done InstaFace.

It may be correct that Brady and others disagreed with Bill's decision. It's not Bill's job to make decisions that Tom Brady agrees with. It's instead Bill's job to make decisions that he feels are in the best interest of winning football games.

The idea that Brady's liking it is somehow going to cause problems between him and Belichick is one of the most absurd things we've heard in a thread of absurdities.
 

DeadlySplitter

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I hope Tom liking Malcolm’s post is just a “loved having you as a teammate” thing and not defiance toward Belichick about the super bowl benching. If the latter, we finally might have a Tom Jackson scenario. Or worse, a TB/B.B. divorce. I think it’s the loved you as a teammate though.
that's exactly what it is.

it's a blanket statement. we didn't learn much here I think
 

Soxy

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Its possible that it was football decision and it could have even been a good football decision.
Considering how terrible the pass defense was, that seems highly unlikely. If it was purely a football decision, it was clearly a bad one.

They were playing Johnson Bademosi over him in a Super Bowl. If Butler really was not benched for disciplinary reasons, that is unconscionable.
 

Smiling Joe Hesketh

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In two days the takes are going to be "The would have won with Butler playing," which frankly given the way the game we saw played out is not a thing I can say with any sort of confidence.

They nearly won without him playing, oddly enough. Brady with the ball and 2 mins left and down 5? That was a GREAT situation for the team, Butler or no Butler.
 

Ralphwiggum

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What is not to “like” about Butler’s post? It’s positive and respectful to the Pats, it denies the reports in the press about him being caught with weed or missing curfew, which the Pats have not accused him of, and it says he’s ready to move on and focus on what’s next.

I’d be more shocked if his teammates didn’t “like” it.
 

dcmissle

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Its possible that it was football decision and it could have even been a good football decision.
Quite possible, now probably likely, it was a “football decision”.

But it was not one decision. There were multiple decisions made over 3 hours. Every time the defense took the field, a decision was made.

The bottom line is the defense played its worst in the most important game of the season. In the other 18 games, MB was on the field 97+% of the defensive snaps.
 

RedOctober3829

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You guys....

We're never going to get the full picture. Belichick said it was for football reasons. Butler's statement says he broke no rules. So whatever the actual reasoning was, we're not going to ever get it unless Belichick goes against everything he's ever done in this organization, or if Butler decides to cop to possible bad behavior and cost himself millions of dollars.

We won't, but we might be better off letting this go.
He's not going to explain it, but it doesn't mean the issue is just going to go away. If Butler did nothing wrong, then the benching was due to performance. He isn't Revis in his prime, but he is a heck of a lot better than Patrick Chung covering a slot WR, Johnson Bademosi, or Jordan Richards in a bigger role. I'll even give BB the benefit of the doubt in wanting to try something unorthodox early. But, once it wasn't working they had to try to make adjustments. Are they going to sit here and say that one such adjustment wasn't inserting Butler into the game? It is a slap in the face to everyone in that locker room.
 

Al Zarilla

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Butler's post was very positive, and it should be a surprise to noone that it was liked by Tom Brady and other teammates, past and present. Maybe Bill himself would have liked it had he done InstaFace.

It may be correct that Brady and others disagreed with Bill's decision. It's not Bill's job to make decisions that Tom Brady agrees with. It's instead Bill's job to make decisions that he feels are in the best interest of winning football games.

The idea that Brady's liking it is somehow going to cause problems between him and Belichick is one of the most absurd things we've heard in a thread of absurdities.
that's exactly what it is.

it's a blanket statement. we didn't learn much here I think
On Felger and Mazz, Massarotti is running with the this will be a Brady/Belichick breach though. I’ve never watched Felger and Mazz. Is Tony a shit disturber?
 

RetractableRoof

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I'm not saying I 100% believe it, but your take is like telling your significant other you didn't sleep with X and she comes back with, oh so you just kissed her? You felt her up, etc. He used a pretty broad denial to reflect the fact that there were a ton of rumors out there - probably some that we haven't seen yet, and instead of saying "I didn't do drugs, I didn't drink, I didn't have women in my bed, etc.," he kept it simple.
Agreed with the sentiment, but there is space in his comment for parsing this thing. Let's speculate and say the issue was him smoking some medicinal herbal remedy in his hotel room - which became obvious at curfew check. That might be a major issue for the team, on whatever grounds. He can quite easily say that it was a nothing event because it's 2018. There's a lot of room for him to say "I didn't do any ridiculous thing" being reported - because to him, that doesn't fall into that category. An agent is smart enough to have crafted the statement for just that purpose. Hypothetically if true, who is going to report what he was doing? The coach that did the curfew check? So he's safe on that side of it as well.

Having said that, I don't care what he did or didn't do - either 1) BB benched him for performance/football decisions - and he's BB and it's his choice to make or 2) it was behavioral and he's BB and he only has to answer to Kraft. Either way, as a fan - I think BB's way has served the team well for this long I'm not going to micro-manage this decision - at least not for pointing fingers. Now if these kinds of things lead to a pattern where it feels like BB has lost his fastball, then that's a different conversation then.

*I have no problem discussing why Butler would have been better or worse in certain plays or what have you as conversation about the game. It's still hypothetical though because his presence might have changed a 1000 things for better or worse.
 

Leather

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It's possible that Pete Carrol's call at the goal line could have been a good football decision. But it cost them a Super Bowl.
So fucking what?

If your only criteria for judging whether a decision is justified or not is the [short term] results, then you’re asking the impossible.
 

Helmet Head

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Its possible that it was football decision and it could have even been a good football decision.
The results suggest it wasn’t a good football decision. Not giving him a chance when your defense continued to get run off the field was also a really poor decision in my opinion. I do think a lot of players are questioning this decsion as well. I have no problem with BB thinking this was a poor matchup for Butler but to play him 0 snaps throughout that whole game was a huge misstep if this was sticktky a football decision. They had to atleast give the guy a chance and see if he maybe gives them a spark they desperately needed.
 

dcmissle

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On Felger and Mazz, Massarotti is running with the this will be a Brady/Belichick breach though. I’ve never watched Felger and Mazz. Is Tony a shit disturber?
You picked today to watch the first time? They both suck. The worst in town.
 

TheoShmeo

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I agree that Butler's post was fine and I think that Pats players liking it was fine. Nothing much there. That said, I think Tom's comment to the post went reasonably far and in a context in which his coach is getting skewered by just about everyone, could be seen -- by Bill, Kraft and teammates -- as a tilting toward Malcolm and implicitly criticizing Bill.

There's of course enough ambiguity for that not to be the read. But this is unusual ground and an unusual step for Tom to take.

Taking a step back and considering how Bill answered DeflateGate questions ("ask Tom"), maybe this is fair game and the ground is not really that unusual in the context of Bill/Tom's public statements.

As to whether Tom's view matters and what may flow from all this, the answer is that it's hard to see anything changing. That is, assuming Bill wants to stay and that looks to be a safe assumption. But with Josh now gone, the in house heir apparent is gone, so it's hard to see Kraft doing anything in response to Tom's reaction. The more likely result is that they react and then calm down, and then meet and move forward. But at this point, and with the backdrop of Bill making a series of decisions that many think contributed mightily to losing a SB, no outcome would truly surprise me.
 

dcmissle

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In two days the takes are going to be "The would have won with Butler playing," which frankly given the way the game we saw played out is not a thing I can say with any sort of confidence.

They nearly won without him playing, oddly enough. Brady with the ball and 2 mins left and down 5? That was a GREAT situation for the team, Butler or no Butler.
I don’t think people are going that far. And nobody here has come close to “fire B.B.”

The Eagles has 10 possessions. 8 ended with points. There was the fluky INT, which might have saved a blowout, and one stop leading to a punt.

I posted previously how I think this unfolded, and I think it’s understandable in human terms. He kept hoping things would get better; they never did; he stayed invested in a bad hand. Game moves fast.

Rubicon was half time. I thought we’d see Butler in second half and I was wrong.

I suspect Patricia or someone probably tried to persuade him, but that we will likely never know.
 

Leather

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So, to summarize, Bob Kraft won’t fire Bill Belichick based on Tom Brady making a benign comment on a teammate’s Instagram post. But he WOULD if McDaniels was still around.

Good to know.

You’re on crack.
 

Bongorific

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Its possible that it was football decision and it could have even been a good football decision.
There’s nothing directly inconsistent about BB, Patricia, and Butler’s statements. It’s poasible they wanted Rowe on Jeffrey for size which would have kicked Butler into the slot where he rarely plays. Perhaps that was the plan and after the flu, limited practice, and perhaps not having his head on straight, he couldn’t demonstrate by the end of the week that he would be reliable taking on a new role. They were only going to use him in some packages that didn’t come up as Patricia said.

Now, I’m not sure that fully explains not mixing it up somewhere in the 3rd quarter when things clearly weren’t working. But it at least explains everyone’s comments.
 

JokersWildJIMED

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But at this point, and with the backdrop of Bill making a series of decisions that many think contributed mightily to losing a SB, no outcome would truly surprise me.[/QUOTE
Agree. No word from the Kraft family...would have to think Krafts have gotten full story...I doubt McDaniels leaves if Kraft not satisfied with explanation
 

Leather

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Agree. No word from the Kraft family...would have to think Krafts have gotten full story...I doubt McDaniels leaves if Kraft not satisfied with explanation
You’re also on crack.

That goes against everything we know about the B.B./Kraft dynamic. Can you imagine BB’s reaction, after winning FIVE FUCKING SUPER BOWLS, if Kraft says “I don’t like your football decision. I’m keeping McDaniels around in case I want to fire you for it.”

The deep seated need to read intrigue into everything is really bizarre. This is how conspiracy theories are born.
 

Couperin47

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Random reactions to this thread:

The numerous paeans to fuhrer/duce efficacy as the model of successful sports franchise are a bit disturbing.

Considering the demonstrated literary talent elsewhere at this site, the low quality and melodrama exhibited in the ton of fan fiction postulated in this thread is disappointing.

For someone who constantly preaches 'no distractions' Bill's decision to spring 'you're not getting to play' on Butler and the whole team and coaches just before the game will go down as one of his worst decisions ever.
 

heavyde050

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I take Brady’s like of the Instagram post of him supporting a teammate and friend that helped get him a ring knowing that he is almost certainly gone from the Pats.
Nothing more nothing less.
I don’t think it is a shot at BB.
 

Leather

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Random reactions to this thread:


For someone who constantly preaches 'no distractions' Bill's decision to spring 'you're not getting to play' on Butler and the whole team and coaches just before the game will go down as one of his worst decisions ever.
Fact not in evidence.
 

Couperin47

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Fact not in evidence.
Really ? Then tell us exactly when Butler, the coaches and the players were told ? If Butler was told earlier, why was he crying ?
and as already pointed out, Rowe was only told hours before and if the rest of the coaching staff had any notion earlier than that, curious that none have said anything.... but please, I don't want to interrupt your knee-jerk reaction....
 

RetractableRoof

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The evidence would seem to stem from Rowe being quoted as not knowing he was starting until hours before the game.
Just to quibble - 1) we have no exact knowledge about when the coaches were told, and 2) We have some knowledge that the captains had more notice of it.
 

Marciano490

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I wonder if there's some sort of psychological phenomenon that makes people want to live in alternate realities like this thread. There's no saying Butler would've played any better, especially if he was still sick. We had dozens of opportunities to win the game. We couldn't stop the run. We couldn't get off on 3rd down. We couldn't block the pass rush on the second to last drive. We couldn't execute on special teams. We lost.
 

Leather

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The evidence would seem to stem from Rowe being quoted as not knowing he was starting until hours before the game.
He practiced aside Gilmore all week. That nobody said “Oh, hey, these packages we’re practicing a few days before the Super Bowl? Yeah, these are the ones we plan to use in the game.” doesn’t exactly scream “Oh my God it was a bombshell decision!”

We really don’t know anything.
 

Ralphwiggum

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I agree that Butler's post was fine and I think that Pats players liking it was fine. Nothing much there. That said, I think Tom's comment to the post went reasonably far and in a context in which his coach is getting skewered by just about everyone, could be seen -- by Bill, Kraft and teammates -- as a tilting toward Malcolm and implicitly criticizing Bill.

There's of course enough ambiguity for that not to be the read. But this is unusual ground and an unusual step for Tom to take.

Taking a step back and considering how Bill answered DeflateGate questions ("ask Tom"), maybe this is fair game and the ground is not really that unusual in the context of Bill/Tom's public statements.

As to whether Tom's view matters and what may flow from all this, the answer is that it's hard to see anything changing. That is, assuming Bill wants to stay and that looks to be a safe assumption. But with Josh now gone, the in house heir apparent is gone, so it's hard to see Kraft doing anything in response to Tom's reaction. The more likely result is that they react and then calm down, and then meet and move forward. But at this point, and with the backdrop of Bill making a series of decisions that many think contributed mightily to losing a SB, no outcome would truly surprise me.
Man it must be exhausting to be you. You’ve somehow made a connection between this and Deflategate for crying out loud.