Bill Belichick indicated he would be willing to relinquish GM role to stay with Patriots
Belichick also explained what the upcoming process with Robert Kraft might look like, and how he feels about the personnel moves made prior to the disastrous 2023 season.
A day after losing to the Jets to finish the season 4-13, Bill Belichick acknowledged that changes will be inevitable for the Patriots.
The big question remains if Belichick’s exit from New England will be one of the changes to come in the offseason.
Speaking during his end-of-season press availability on Monday morning, Belichick candidly recapped the worst year of his Patriots tenure.
“Proud of the way our team competed, but not the results obviously from any of us, starting with me and all the way down, everybody that was in involved in it,” he told reporters. “I know we all feel the same way.”
The upcoming meeting(s) with Robert Kraft
Regarding his own future, he began with a description of his present circumstances.
“I’m under contract, will do what I always do, which is everyday I come in, work as hard as I can to help the team in whatever way I can,” he said. “So that’s what I’m going to continue to do.”
After the game on Sunday, Belichick noted that he will have an upcoming meeting with Patriots owner Robert Kraft per the usual end-of-year procedure.
On Monday, he emphasized not getting ahead of himself.
“As far as any decisions or direction or anything like that for next year, it’s way too early for that,” said Belichick of his future. “End-of-the-year process I don’t think will be fundamentally any different from the standpoint of how it’s done.
“The decision,” he added, “that’s a whole other conversation.”
Belichick explained what the process will look like.
“How it’s done [is I] meet with Robert like I always do, meet with the staff, meet with the personnel department, kind of recap the season, the big picture and some of the individual situations that are looming one way or another,” he said. “But that’s obviously a long way off from where we are right now. So will start at the end of the day putting the pieces back together in terms of setting things up to go through a good, detailed analysis to kind of start a reconstruction if you will.”
Asked when the meeting with Kraft would take place, Belichick declined to provide specifics.
“I’ll leave all that out,” he replied. “It might be a series of meetings. I don’t know. We’ll deal with that internally.”
Belichick also dismissed the idea that he hadn’t spoken with Kraft in the last few months, simply replying that, “We met during the season.”
His thoughts on giving up GM responsibilities
One potential scenario in which Belichick could stay with the Patriots centers on the idea that he would give up his current role as having final say in personnel decisions (something he’s had in New England for decades).
Asked if he would relinquish that role in order to simply coach and stay with the Patriots, Belichick appeared to indicate that he would accept it.
“Look, I’m for whatever collectively we decide as an organization is the best thing to help our football team,” he said. “I have multiple roles in that and I’ve relied on a lot of people to help me in those responsibilities. Somebody has to have the final say. I have it. I rely on a lot of other people to help, and whatever that process is, I’m only part of it.”
Looking back on personnel decisions and building the 2023 roster
The 2023 Patriots finished last in the AFC East. Now that the season is finished, the extent of the damage can be measured.
Did Belichick think the team’s roster was built to contend coming into the regular season?
“The moves that we made, given the options that we had, felt like we did what was best for the football team each time,” he replied. “Obviously the results aren’t good. Some of those things were I think positive, some of them didn’t work out as well as we hoped they would.
“There were other circumstances in some of the other decisions,” he added, “so we’ll go back and look at all of them and look forward to working towards solutions and things that will improve our team.”
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