Bill Belichick is making the Patriots’ possible decision for a divorce an easier call than ever
As if what happened in Germany weren't embarrassing enough, it turns out the Patriots did indeed have another rock bottom to discover this season when they lost to the Giants on Sunday.
COMMENTARY
They should fire Bill today.
We’ve finally reached the point where there is no gray area up for some ostentatious debate; the 2-9 New England Patriots are in organizational free-fall and desperately need a complete overhaul in philosophy. I think we’re all clear on that, right?
However, no matter how much all-phases-flavored drool Fox’s Jonathan Vilma left behind in the MetLife TV booth on Sunday, that rebuild is not going to include Bill Belichick in New England.
How could it possibly?
On that note though, you’ve really got to hand it to the Patriots head coach. He’s making this inexorable divorce easier by the week.
As if what happened in Germany weren’t embarrassing enough, it turns out the Patriots did indeed have another rock bottom to discover this season; a humiliating 10-7 loss to the New York Giants, a team with the likes of Finn DeTrolio at quarterback, that cements what most of us had already surmised one month into the season; New England might have the very worst team in all of football.
Unless your name is Norv Turner, the architects of those types of units don’t usually get to keep their jobs.
That’s difficult for some still under the Spell of Bill to handle, acknowledging the fall of their football emperor, the man who delivered six Super Bowl titles to a once-barren trophy case in Foxborough. Heck, only weeks ago, talk of firing Belichick was treated as thankless and crude by national talking heads. This is Bill Belichick we’re talking about here. Doesn’t he deserve a graceful exit after all he’s done for the franchise?
Sure. Maybe he did. But we’re way beyond that now.
There’s been this theory over the course of this debacle that Bob and Jonathan Kraft wouldn’t fire Belichick during the season, not after two-plus decades together. Maybe there would be a cordial parting of ways, a flowery ceremony to create the impression that all are still friends. But they wouldn’t do him the injustice of firing him in the midst of the season.
It’s a theory that aged about as well as “Well, they’re 0-2, but they hung in there with both the Eagles and Dolphins, so maybe they’ve got some fight in them.” (We were so young.)
You have to wonder where the Bill Burrs of the world figure that Belichick doesn’t deserve to have his name on the hot seat, as if the suggestion that firing a long-tenured head coach is on par with passerby using the Salvation Army kettle as a spittoon. The man is not the pope. He’s one of the greatest coaches of all time who just so happens to be revealing many of his greatest flaws in the twilight of his coaching career. Does that grant him immunity?
The answer, particularly following fortnights like the useless stretch that accompanied the team’s bye week, is increasingly no. Belichick’s refusal to name a starting quarterback in the wake of another Mac Jones disaster overseas was a very public dismissal of the media, team ownership, and particularly the fans. It’s a neat little shield that Belichick has created for himself; just keep tossing Jones out there so the anger and frustration are directed at the kid, not the hooded Taoist who, you know, led you to six Lombardi Trophies. (It should have been seven, but this is not the place.)
Mac Jones was a project. A project that was bound to deliver average-to-above-average results from the quarterback position, but the signs were there from his rookie season; Jones could play — to some degree — in the NFL. He even made the Pro Bowl. It was exciting.
What Belichick managed to accomplish in the two seasons that followed was a complete decimation of an athlete who really wishes he had ruby slippers to take him back to his Oz of Alabama.
Call it his petty revenge for having to trade Jimmy Garoppolo all those years back. Maybe he is trying to stick it to Kraft for making him pick the quarterback instead of trying to trade up for Micah Parsons. Not like he was going to do that anyway, but if it makes him look better, it’ll fit the narrative.
Belichick has always carried a disdain for the quarterback position, insistent on the sum of parts rather than the new toy at the helm. Understanding that, do you know how much he has to hate finding success with one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time? It’s like Miles Raymond finding all his dreams fulfilled at the bottom of a bottle of merlot.
So, if his goal in the absence of Tom Brady was to send the position back 20-30 years with a carousel of noodle arms that included a broken-down Cam Newton, Mac Jones, and Bailey Zappe, and give them little-to-no weapons to utilize and prove that he can still win without making the quarterback any more important, well he failed. Tremendously. And in the process, he bottomed the franchise into a rebuilding hell that might take years to dig out of thanks to erratic drafting decisions that make you really wonder where the focus has been. He should have had the keys to the general manager closet taken away one year into the N’Keal Harry experiment.
This is all Bill’s fault. Why shouldn’t he take the blame? We seem to worry an awful lot about giving Belichick the ultimate respect on his way out the door without ever really wondering why he never gave any back to anybody else not named Ernie Adams.
The team has been terrible for two years straight. Now, Bill seems intent on taking the whole franchise down with him.
End this. Today. Tomorrow. Soon. It’s no longer the season at stake, but the overall health of a $6.7 billion franchise.
I guess they should thank him for making this all so much easier than anticipated. Because at this point, firing Bill Belichick might come as a pleasure, not a burden, for the Krafts.
So, why wait?
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