Should Bill Belichick Really be on the Hot Seat?
We live in a crazy world when you consider that Brian Cashman apparently has lifetime tenure but Bill Belichick is now on the hot seat (Sorry, had to vent as a Yankees fan).
That’s right. If the reports are true, there appears to be something brewing in New England. Missing out on the playoffs this year could be the end of Belichick’s time with the Patriots.
I guess this could be somewhat understandable from a relationship standpoint. Maybe owner Robert Kraft and Belichick are finally at their wits’ end with each other after 23 seasons? That can happen in any working relationship.
But that has to be the reason, doesn’t it? Because from a football standpoint, the fact that Kraft would even consider moving on from Belichick at this point is nothing short of insane.
You would think that after a 19-year stretch where his offense scored more points than any other team and his defense allowed fewer points than any other team (and the Patriots happened to reach 9 Super Bowls, winning 6 of them) that he’d be given a long leash to rebuild the roster after his legendary quarterback leaves.
It’s easy to see where the doubt in Belichick’s abilities comes from, though. There’s a clear dividing line for when New England started to fall off. And that’s when Tom Brady left for Tampa. This has given the “Belichick rode Brady’s coattails” crowd plenty of ammo to chip away at the Hoodie’s resume.
Of course, there are some legitimate reasons for New England’s struggles since 2019 outside of Brady. It was a bit of a perfect storm. After years of salary cap maneuvering and trying to keep the team around Brady for one final run (or a few final runs), New England finally hit a wall.
The Patriots lost their final 5 of 9 games with Brady under center in 2019, one of the worst stretches of the Brady-Belichick era. That offseason, the Patriots didn’t have the money to keep Brady and add the receivers it would have taken to make him want to stay (he was likely gone regardless, for what it’s worth).
They didn’t have much money to keep or sign anyone for that matter.
The Patriots lost all four of their starting linebackers, as well as safety Patrick Chung, to free agency and Covid opt-outs. They had more Covid opt-outs than any team in the league, in fact.
The Patriots also had no real plan or ability to replace Brady at quarterback at that point. They signed Cam Newton for pennies on the dollar just two months before the 2020 season after the rest of the league had passed on him. Newton, who had missed 14 games the year before due to injury, was a shell of himself. It didn’t help that the key remaining cog in New England’s offense, Julian Edelman, would miss 10 games and then retire after the season.
The Patriots finished 7-9 in a year that wasn’t even the beginning of a re-build. It was very much a stop-gap season. The price to pay for two decades of greatness.
2021 was when the re-build began in earnest. They drafted Mac Jones and added pieces like Matthew Judon in free agency. Despite a rookie QB at the helm, the Patriots managed to start the season 9-4 and were the #1 seed in the AFC entering Week 15.
They finished a disappointing 10-7 and were bounced in the Wild Card Round by the Bills. However, by just about any other team’s standard, the first year of the rebuild looked pretty good, and the Patriots looked to be on the upswing with a new quarterback of the future.
2022 brought New England back down to earth. This was largely due to the loss of OC Josh McDaniels and the resulting controversial decision to turn the offense over to the defensive-minded Matt Patricia.
The combination of new players with the loss of trusted coaches, as well as Brady’s departure, all coincided to drop the Patriots down a peg over the last three years. When you lose that many key pieces throughout the organization, pieces that have institutional knowledge and have played key leadership roles, rebuilding is not going to be an easy or quick process.
While all the decisions made to this point have been Belichick’s, who else would Kraft want guiding his team through this rebuild?
Don’t Forget History
Some of us (especially those who don’t like to judge history based only on what’s happened in the last 10 minutes) are old enough to remember that first Super Bowl run in 2001. This wasn’t a situation where Tom Brady carried the Patriots to a title and Belichick hopped on.
The defense held opponents to just 15.7 points per game in the playoffs (and all but shut down the Greatest Show on Turf). Adam Vinatieri made clutch kick after clutch kick. The defense and special teams combined to score more touchdowns in the playoffs (3) than the offense did with Brady under center (2).
In fact, Brady played 10 quarters during that post-season, leading the offense to just 29 total points (including field goals). That’s an average of 11.6 points per game, which likely wouldn’t have even cut it back in the 50’s.
So I’m very sorry if this hurts your feelings, but half of the starting QBs in the NFL in 2001 would have won the Super Bowl with that level of support.
And if you continue through those first 3 championship seasons from 2001-04, despite the fact that Brady was becoming a very good quarterback (he wasn’t just a game-manager by any means), the passing game wasn’t exactly leading the team to win after win.
Brady certainly had a flare for the dramatic, but he threw for less than 250 yards in 7 of those first 9 playoff games. He threw just 11 touchdown passes across those 9 games as well. And the offense scored fewer than 21 points in more than half of those games (5). They still won all 9.
None of this is meant to be a criticism of Brady. His career speaks for itself. But some perspective is needed. Belichick built complete teams outside of the quarterback position for two decades, and particularly in those early years. The last 3 seasons don’t change that, as much as some have tried to discount his role in the previous 19.
The bottom line is that Belichick has done it before many many times. There’s no reason to believe he can’t build the Patriots into a winner again.