Let's say BB stays on until he retires. What does that mean for the franchise?
- Thread starter Eddie Jurak
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Which Bedard surely knows. But when in hot take Rome, make like a Roman.
Where they were basically every year from 1960 through 2000 outside of two.
.500, battling for a playoff spot. Pretty solid on D, awful on O. So we should fire the coach who WON SIX SUPER BOWLS AND WENT TO 13 AFC CHAMPIONSHIP GAMES in 19 years?
It sounds like Rothstein has been coaching with the offense the whole season as he’s listed as an offensive assistant on the website. He was seen with Joe Judge working with the QBs in camp and worked closely especially with Bailey Zappe. In Detroit, he actually was the emergency defensive playcaller in the covid year. So, given that Patricia is doing two jobs at once it would not shock me at all if he delegated responsibility down to his guy. The fact that this is even a thing speaks to the lack of quality coaches on staff.
Are you paying the coach for future performance or past performance? Because I do not see any way that Bill Belichick gets to another Super Bowl without much better draft selections, much better talent development (coaching), and much wiser use of cap spending. Thanks for the 6 Super Bowl wins! Now hire the coach who is most likely to get the 7th.
A few counterpoints:
- They have the worst D in the division.
- They really aren’t battling for a playoff spot.
- The Coordinator situation and the QB situation are both hot messes, and both are critical to the success of a team in 2022.
- Belichick has won one playoff game in 9’seasons as a HC with Tom Brady not on his roster. That is really bad. Most guys who have that record either wear a suit in a studio on Sundays, are the DC somewhere, or coach the Lions. It is fair to ask the question whether he is the guy for the future.
With that said, and I say this without a tinge of sarcasm, he has earned the right to chase and pass Shula’s win record with the Patriots at the expense of the team’s bigger picture success.
I 100% agree, but that wasn't a luxury Bill was willing to afford Brady so any discussion regarding his place on the team should only take future expected performance into account, especially considering he's the highest paid person at his position in the sport (which Brady wasn't and didn't even ask to be at the time they decided not to bring him back).
I'm not inclined to even discuss moving on from Bill, I think at the worst he's still among the top 5 or so coaches in football, I just think he's in the same sort of decline relative to peak performance he usually uses as justification to let still very good players go.
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I have to quibble with this. Miami has allowed 100 more points, 500 more yards. By any measure I can find Miami trails the other 3 teams in the division on defense.
Buffalo has allowed the 4th fewest points at 209. Jets are 6th with 223, Pats are 7th with 226. Pats have actually allowed fewer yards than the Bills. The top three defensive teams in the division are all tightly bunched, with Miami trailing far far behind.
By DVOA the Pats actually have the third best defense in football and the best in the division.
Oh well as long as you don’t see it, we should definitely fire him then. One year removed from being in the playoffs with a rookie QB. It’ll be super easy to find a HC who will get that 7th.
All coaches lose it eventually. It's not just the players whose performance deteriorates. On the other hand, if you look at the head coaches in the Kraft era, it's a very small list but all 3 are hall-of-fame head coaches. I have more confidence in the Krafts identifying another high-quality coach than I have in Belichick getting it done moving forward.
Counter-counter points…
- Maybe, and others used data to refute that. But the D is generally good enough to win if the O was at all functional.
- Sure they are. Win the next 2, see how the Jets and Chargers fare, and who knows. It’s quite possible a 9-8 team gets the #7 seed.
- Agree and I said as much in my post. I’ve been raging against the Patricia as OC thing since it occurred in the off-season. It’s a terrible move and it’s on Bill.
- Eh, the “he doesn’t win without Brady” stuff doesn’t interest me, to be honest. In my eyes BB was a HUGE factor in Brady’s development from ‘01 to ‘05. Plus he built the D and schemed the O. Then Brady carried the team more than we realized from ‘14-‘19. It was symbiotic.
Kraft is 81 and the last time he hired a head coach was 23 years ago. I don't think there's any evidence that he'd be better at hiring an elite coach to replace BB than BB would be at restoring the franchise to championship caliber. There aren't really a lot of guys who can coach at a high level in the NFL consistently year-after-year, and finding the next one is going to be hard for whoever is making that call (Bob or Jonathan). The Krafts have been pretty much the model ownership family as a fan, but I'd worry that in addition to being in QB purgatory a coaching change puts us in coaching purgatory too where we are cycling in new guys every few years. It's incredibly destabilizing to a franchise.
I have some concerns about BB's decline, and the coaching decisions on the offensive side of the ball absolutely deserve to be second guessed. But I still think the best move for this franchise is to stick with Bill until it is obvious he just can't do it anymore, and I don't think we are close to being there yet.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnAR2qB24yQ
I think the bigger question for the Pats is what is the ultimate transition plan. BB built a particular system (one that uses certain scouting grades for example)--do you try and keep the scouting system, the scouts, the offensive and/or defensive systems and just get rid of BB and make someone like Mayo the coach, Groh the GM, and keep most of what you have in place ? Do you say we really need a unified system but BB's system isn't especially good, so we're going to give complete control to for example a Sean Payton? Do you say I like the system and organization and want to find a good coach who can work within the system? Do you move [this would be my call] to what I'd call the Pittsburgh/Ravens approach which is to have essentially four separate functions--an offensive coach who runs the offense, a DC who runs the defense, a GM, and a head coach who runs neither the offense nor the defense but is outstanding at the other parts of the game (game management, motivation, synchronizing defensive and offensive and special teams approaches, dealing with the media)? Whether you replace BB now or in three years you have to visualize what the next step is.
You are right. Miami's defense is not as good as I had thought. Actually....Miami's stats are pretty interesting. McDaniel is doing some good work down there.
On a personal level, he needs to figure out whether getting the record is worth it for the potential change in the narrative regarding the dynasty. He has 20 wins to go. If he gets it in 2 seasons then the narrative can still include discussion of GOAT status. If it takes 3-4 seasons then he starts to look like a guy (not dissimilar to Shula) who hung on for too long, and who was a good coach who got lucky in the 6th round of a draft. I think Don Shula is a shitwhistle, so I am rooting for Bill, but right here, today, I think that 39 games to win 20 in a division that is tough may be difficult.
Shula spent the last 21 years of his career not winning the Super Bowl despite getting lucky with the 27th pick in the draft when a GOAT-tier QB fell into his lap (I bet NE, NYJ, KC or Pittsburgh wished they had taken Marino instead).
Hell, with Marino his playoff record is 6-7. That's pretty brutal given what Marino brought to the table.
I cant see any situation where BB is in that same boat, even if it takes him 3 years to break the record.
Hell, with Marino his playoff record is 6-7. That's pretty brutal given what Marino brought to the table.
I cant see any situation where BB is in that same boat, even if it takes him 3 years to break the record.
An interesting post, so maybe discussion is worthy of its own thread? We know that the two Bills believe in the "Coach as Grand Poobah of Everything" model, but I too find the Steelers' model compelling. The demonstrated long-term track record of the Rooney Family sticking by their coaches might be a key part of making that model work even though the coach does not have absolute powers. If you are another organization without that kind of track record, however, with players more likely to view coaches as temporary and flushable, are you better off with the Grand Poobah model?
I know Marvin Lewis get a lot of shit, but he got the perenially lousy Bengals, with the worst ownership in the league, to the playoffs 7 times in a 10 year span. It's of course to his detriment that they lost all of those games, but these things really need to be graded on a sliding scale and what Lewis did in Cincy might well be one of the most impressive coaching feats ever, which speaks to his security as head coach there for so long.
Patriots unfiltered, Florio and Curran, and others are starting to beat the drums for BB losing power and eventually getting replaced. Florio says his son should have been fired last year for the playoff loss. I find that incredibly stupid. Their defense was out how many starters again? They have one of the better defenses in the NFL this year and had a top 10-ish unit last year. Florio is just a hack with an axe to grind. Steve Belichick has been fine.
As mentioned above, the Pats are 3rd in defensive DVOA this year. The playoff game was a fiasco but that's why you don't make decisions based on one game.
Agreed with both of you. On the team / franchise list of issues, Steve Belichick doesn't warrant mention in the top 20, if not top like 50. Hell he might even be an asset, who knows.
Moving on from BB, the coach, is utter and total insanity, IMO.
Figuring out a way to get BB to allow someone else to buy the groceries on offense, and figuring out a way to get BB to bring in an offensive coordinator and staff that actually know how to coach an offense, should be the priority.
The man is getting older, it's fine to admit that he can't do it all anymore, he needs to delegate this shit to someone who is better at it than he is (or has ever been, really). I still wouldn't want anyone other than BB drafting defensive players, picking up defensive players on the open market, coaching defensive players and game planning against opposing offenses. That's a lot of feathers in his cap.
But, the man needs to give someone else the reigns for the offense, both on roster construction and coaching.
Figuring out a way to get BB to allow someone else to buy the groceries on offense, and figuring out a way to get BB to bring in an offensive coordinator and staff that actually know how to coach an offense, should be the priority.
The man is getting older, it's fine to admit that he can't do it all anymore, he needs to delegate this shit to someone who is better at it than he is (or has ever been, really). I still wouldn't want anyone other than BB drafting defensive players, picking up defensive players on the open market, coaching defensive players and game planning against opposing offenses. That's a lot of feathers in his cap.
But, the man needs to give someone else the reigns for the offense, both on roster construction and coaching.
But therein lies the rub.
Belichick is the one who decided to proceed this way. With a totally unqualified offensive whatever MP is.
I don't want to replace BB either but if he doesn't get real about his staff, then maybe he DOES have to go. Cause this isn't working and I think many fans saw that it would not before the season even began.
It's not a popular take around here, but I see no reason to veer from how teams have been constructed for a very long time, including Patriots SB winners, and that is to have defined coordinators who can take the reigns and control things on both sides of the ball.
I don't believe Bill has had a defensive coordinator, other than the Matt Patricia years from 2012-17 since Dean Pees in 2009. He's also had no offensive coordinator many times, but he's always had guys like Dante, Flores, McDaniels (before he was OC), etc. coaching in those years.
This year, he has Matt P. a defensive coach, acting as OC and OL coach. I've got no problem if BB doesn't want to define a coordinator. He's done it with success many times. But he can't do that, and have a staff that sucks ass.
I agree with you that the rub therein lies. Can BB be convinced to take a step back when it comes to scouting/drafting offensive players? I don't know. I would hope so, but I'll say this, it won't be Robert Kraft involved in making that decision, it'll be Jonathan Kraft.
Right. I don't really care if he names a coordinator or not but why did he not have a successor ready for McDaniels and the other assistants that Josh took with him -- it was pretty obvious Josh was going to leave sooner or later? What have we lost with Ernie Adams leaving and has that been replaced? Why did his replacement for Scarnecchia utterly fail and what's the status now? Plus, the team looks unprepared and makes uncharacteristic mistakes on gameday almost like they didn't have enough time to work with their coaches or something...
There are plenty of young football minds being hired by teams both in college and the pros. Shouldn't the best football mind ever be able to find the next generation? Bill always stresses the importance of depth and has found players off the practice squad or sometimes off the street that can perform. Why does that not extend to coaches?
Continuity is good but it seems insane if the only people Bill trusts are Patricia, Mayo and a guy who is literally related to him.
Edit: There may be perfectly reasonable answers to all of these questions. But they are what I'd ask if I had the chance.
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The narrative of it being "Brady and Friends" vs. "Brady and Belichick" is already getting momentum.
Shula did not win Super Bowls, but his career has 4 very distinct phases:
Phase 1: Colts - Generally considered to have been a very good coach there. I will openly admit, I think this phase of his career was overrated. He won something like 60 - 70 games in 7-8 seasons and only won a couple of playoff games....but the playoffs were like 3 teams big back then, so hard to make objective decisions.
Phase 2: Miami in the early 70s. This coach was tremendous. He won Super Bowls, he never lost games, he was amazing. He made mediocre QBs look incredible.
Phase 3: Miami from the mid-70s to the mid-80s. This includes the first few years of Marino, which were pretty good, obviously. He won games, he made the playoffs somewhat regularly, but he struggled to win playoff games in a meaningful way with good teams.
Phase 4: This is the phase Belichick wants to avoid. Shula's last 7 years in the NFL were an embarrassment. He squandered Marino's prime, and the team were stuck in the "good enough to make the playoffs, but not good enough to make any news"....and then the Bills got really good. By the time Shula left no one in Miami was sad. His narrative was permanently "was good early on, but the game passed him by and he hurt one of the greatest QBs ever to play."
You know......in this context the Mac Jones pick makes a ton of sense. Belichick plays chess while the rest of us are playing Go Fish.
If BB is only here for few more seasons, the Pats likely aren't a desirable destination for bright young coaching talent, even if BB were inclined to bring them into the organization.
The other issue is whether BB can still coach up medium talent to superior execution given the practice limitations of the CBA now. As GM, he may have to shift to putting more of an emphasis on premium talent in roster construction.
The other issue is whether BB can still coach up medium talent to superior execution given the practice limitations of the CBA now. As GM, he may have to shift to putting more of an emphasis on premium talent in roster construction.
That's the grocery shopping problem. BB has always had great/superstar players on his teams. He had the best QB, all world tight end in Gronk (and pretty good ones before him), the best slot guys in Edelman and Welker (and Troy Brown before them), and he surrounded them with good to great offensive lines (depending on if Dante was in the house) and capable backs and guys like White, Vereen, Faulk, Givens, Patten, etc.
On defense, he's almost always had a shutdown corner, between Law, Gilmore, Samuel, Revis, etc. then he had Seymour and Wilfork, and surrounded them with guys like Bruschi, Vrabel, Mayo, etc.
The problem is he has almost zero top end talent on this team, and that's his fault as GM, but he's still coaching up that defense to respectable levels (great levels when they play a bad/mediocre QB) even though he's got very few truly game changing guys on that side of the ball besides Judon, and maybe Duggar and Uche...He's got a bunch of guys he can coach up to be above average, but he doesn't have the guys that change games or carry that above average talent when they play average.
He needs to go back to what worked, but he can't identify the guys or doesn't want to pay premium talent the money they are commanding.
Why not? If he's only here for a few more seasons that seems like a great place to be (if you can't get a top job somewhere else) since you know there will be opening(s) in a few years and if you impress Bill it's going to carry weight with the ownership. I suppose a new guy could bring in all his own people but that could happen anywhere. Or what am I missing?
Well I think it's safe to say that if BB right now had an all-time great QB like Marino, none of us here would be worrying about this franchise, or its ability (or BB's ability) to win another Super Bowl.
It's one thing to be a good team year in and year out that occasionally makes a pretty good run but never wins it all if you have a guy like Mac as your QB. It's another to do it with Dan Marino as your QB - THAT team should win at least one title.
The NFL literally passed Shula by as the salary cap was implemented right when he retired.
Nobody brings this up, but Belichick has done all of this in the salary cap era. There's no doubt he has been the best coach, regardless of Brady. He managed far inferior rosters and got guys to play great that other teams passed on. He didn't just get to hoard a bunch of superstars like the great coaches of the past. It's not even comparable.
I think some of this is fair and some of it is unfair. At various points in McDaniels' tenure, the Patriots would have been better-positioned to succeed him. Daboll was on staff as recently as 2016, but he got tired of waiting and went to Alabama. Jerry Schuplinski and Chad O'Shea followed Flores to Miami after 2018; Jeff Fisch took the Arizona head coaching job after 2020. Mick Lombardi, Carmen Bricillo, and Bo Hardegree followed McDaniels to the Raiders. They've been integrating new guys all along - Billy Yates (assistant OL), Vinnie Sunseri (RB), Troy Brown (WR), Ross Douglas (assistant WR) are all new or fairly new and Nick Caley (TE) is under 40. They've also got Tyler Hughes as an offensive assistant and Evan Rothstein, who is supposedly doing some Ernie-Adams-type stuff. But they didn't have an obvious "next man up" like they might have had five years earlier or even a couple years earlier. And worse, it came at a time when Adams and Scarnecchia and Ivan Fears all retired.
So they have a lot of young, inexperienced guys - I think what they're missing is more veteran offensive coaches, which is probably why they went with guys in Patricia and Judge who have a ton of coaching experience, even though they haven't done a lot on that side of the ball.
I also think that there was a little hubris here. BB is a smart defensive-oriented guy who knows tons about offensive football, Patricia is a smart guy, and they thought you know what we can cobble together an offense. It's not so easy when the offensive line is injured and underperforming, all the weapons are 2s and 3s and the QB's best talent is as an on-target, in-rhythm pocket passer, not being a big strong thrower and runner.
He has won one playoff game in 9 seasons of being a HC without Brady. He made the playoffs three times in those 9 seasons. That is not good. There really is no "regardless of Brady" when you look objectively at the results he has delivered. Not only is he not in the GOAT conversation, he would be coaching in the PAC-12.
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I also think this OC of the NEP is a somewhat tough job to convince someone highly credentialed to take. The offensive talent is average, at best and even the best version of the 2022-23 Pats is likely to be a run heavy ball control offense. It's a tough sell to say you're going to be the HC in waiting--If the teams are good it's pretty easy to see BB keeping the job for three to five years. If I'm an outsider and I think someone on staff is going to replace BB, I'm betting a guy like Mayo (charismatic former player, has worked in media and private industry, seems to be beloved by the Kraft family, heck they probably helped him get his job in industry) --and if it's not someone on staff it'll be a big name from outside. If I think the Pats are going south, well also not good for my HC prospects. I'm sure there's a guy like Adam Gase out there who's not really a viable HC candidate now who you could hire--there's always someone--
I think this is right. The BB tree might not be generating a ton of successful head coaches but an awful lot of pretty good coaches come through here and have pretty good careers.
I also think this OC of the NEP is a somewhat tough job to convince someone highly credentialed to take. The offensive talent is average, at best and even the best version of the 2022-23 Pats is likely to be a run heavy ball control offense. It's a tough sell to say you're going to be the HC in waiting--If the teams are good it's pretty easy to see BB keeping the job for three to five years. If I'm an outsider and I think someone on staff is going to replace BB, I'm betting a guy like Mayo (charismatic former player, has worked in media and private industry, seems to be beloved by the Kraft family, heck they probably helped him get his job in industry) --and if it's not someone on staff it'll be a big name from outside. If I think the Pats are going south, well also not good for my HC prospects. I'm sure there's a guy like Adam Gase out there who's not really a viable HC candidate now who you could hire--there's always someone--
Experienced at failing, for sure.
You cannot look at the Lions or Giants now and not realize that the coach matters. Judge was terrible and, incredibly, Patricia was worse. And Belichick is like, "I'm going to bring them back to fix things." It is dumb. Get some new blood.
Almost all great coaches in the modern era are tied to a HOF QB. Guys like Manning and Brees didn't make the conference championship game as many times as the Pats. The Pats early success was more on their defenses than Brady. Or if you don't like that their defenses played a huge role in the first 3 championships vs Brady who was more of a good game manager at that point in his career. He lasted for over twenty years consistently innovating on offense (Doug Farar writes about this). He is usually ahead of the cycle of change in the NFL. Yes Brady played a huge part in his success. Anyone telling you otherwise would be an idiot. But if you look at his success rate over a very long period of time vs others it shouldn't matter that it was with one QB because other coaches with their goat QBs couldn't remotely sustain what he did. He might be slipping but BB is the GOAT or damn close to it.
Brady turned it up in 2004 but he wasn't the Brady we know until later in his career.
Furthermore man it is really hard to win without a great QB and for a long period of his non-Brady tenure BB hasn't had one.
I get the point but it's also kind of funny to imagine BB's non brady career as one career held by a snake bit, Billy Martin type who just kept getting canned. Like "I started building something in Cleveland but then the team announced it was moving and the team collapsed my last year. Then I got to the Pats for one year when they were in cap hell; I found a rookie QB who seemed good but I got fired (and my evil twin brother coached them to a superbowl the next year). Then I got hired for one year by the pats after my evil twin went 18-1 but Brady got hurt in game 1 so we missed the playoffs at 11-5, then I got fired again. Then my evil twin brother and Brady left the team one year after it won a superbowl and I got a shitty team in cap hell.....
BB took on franchise reboots in 1991 and 2000. Holding those years against him is ridiculous. Holding 1995 against him is also silly given how the franchise was in total chaos. I guess he could have built the Browns into a playoff team faster, but if I'm not mistaken that was also before free agency began, so things took longer for everyone.
Dinging him as not being a good coach without Brady just doesn't land for me. He drafted the guy, made him the sole backup and stuck with him in '01. He built a massive defensive, special teams and running game safety net for him in his first few seasons, which gave him a ton of space and time to develop.
Dinging him as not being a good coach without Brady just doesn't land for me. He drafted the guy, made him the sole backup and stuck with him in '01. He built a massive defensive, special teams and running game safety net for him in his first few seasons, which gave him a ton of space and time to develop.
Since 2011, there have only been 12 other rookie quarterbacks who started postseason games in the NFL with a minimum of 10 games. The article cuts off the last 4 but of the previous 8 they went 1-7. Just getting to the playoffs is a feat.
He missed in 2020 with Cam and no team. Truly dreadful year. His first losing year since 2000. 2008 he went 11-5 and missed the playoffs having lost Brady in game 1 of the season. Kind of a fluke you go 11-5 and miss the playoffs. 2000 was his first year taking over the team and he made a lot of changes to the roster. It was not a good team. So for the Patriots in 4 of the years he didn't have Brady in NE there are some circumstances that explain why he didn't have success. I don't imagine many other coaches would have won either.
His Browns tenure he didn't have a good QB. He left after 5 years of which only 1, 1994, was successful. It was also his first coaching tenure. Not a good stop for sure but it was, you know, 30 years ago. It's disingenuous to me to arbitrarily just look at the years he didn't have Brady. He also did a lot of things during Brady's years that maximized their chances.
He missed in 2020 with Cam and no team. Truly dreadful year. His first losing year since 2000. 2008 he went 11-5 and missed the playoffs having lost Brady in game 1 of the season. Kind of a fluke you go 11-5 and miss the playoffs. 2000 was his first year taking over the team and he made a lot of changes to the roster. It was not a good team. So for the Patriots in 4 of the years he didn't have Brady in NE there are some circumstances that explain why he didn't have success. I don't imagine many other coaches would have won either.
His Browns tenure he didn't have a good QB. He left after 5 years of which only 1, 1994, was successful. It was also his first coaching tenure. Not a good stop for sure but it was, you know, 30 years ago. It's disingenuous to me to arbitrarily just look at the years he didn't have Brady. He also did a lot of things during Brady's years that maximized their chances.
There is too much of “take out the bad games and he’s a great pitcher” in this analysis.
Brady was nowhere near TB12 GOAT when the Pats beat the Rams in what was a coaching masterclass.
Isn't the obvious correct answer that won-loss record reflects circumstances a lot more than it reflects how good a coach someone actually is? There's an alternative universe where the Browns stay in cleveland, BB drafts Ray Lewis, and BB ends up being rembered as a tough defensive coach who never good quite win the whole thing.
One funny things I just added up was that Parcells is 2 games under 500 as a head coach without Belichick on staff (and 3 playoff games, all loses in 7 years), 44 games over with 3 super bowls appearances and an 11-6 playoff staff with BB on staff.
Or maybe he hires a good OC, Ozzie helps with drafting and he has a long and successful career as the Ravens HC? These hypotheticals don't move the needle for me because they didn't happen. What did happen was he got to the CC game at a higher clip than Manning and his coaches did, Brees and his coaches did, Rivers and his coaches did, etc. Unless we think Brady is that much better than his peers (I don't) then maybe just maybe some credit is due to his coach and GM? Seems fair.