End of an Era: Bill Belichick and Patriots to part ways
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Jerry Jones immediately proclaimed himself General Manager upon buying the Cowboys and pushed Jimmy Johnson out mere months after the coach won the team's second consecutive Super Bowl championship. It's quite a stretch to see the Patriots reaching this level of ownership meddling - I think an outcome like the Rooney family in Pittsburgh is much more likely than Jonathan becoming the Yankee version of Jerruh.
It’s a common reflex of certain members of this board to brand everyone who is critical as lazy sports talk callers. Not sure why they feel the need to do so, maybe it makes them feel better or superior, but it happens.
Also, I know people who have had personal interactions with Jonathan outside of the Patriots and some of those interactions weren’t overly positive. He is apparently as shrewd as he appears, which can sometimes be a good thing as an owner. Maybe others here have had similar interactions? Who knows.
I’m not overly concerned about Jonathan’s eventual takeover myself. I think he wants to win and will do what it takes to do so. Only question is will he have the humility to let his football ops people make the decisions, like Robert does, or will he meddle once he finally gains control? We won’t know until that situation presents itself.
It isn't a problem to have a shrewd (and smart) owner who wants to win. The problem is that said owner - despite being in the football business a long time - knows jack compared to actual football people, but he might very well think that he knows enough to be the guy calling the shots.
Exactly. I actually like Jonathan’s demeanor. I’m sure he’ll be involved in everything but hopefully he isn’t like Tepper and bullying his football ops team to make poor decisions. I’ve seen nor heard anything to suggest this will be the case but you never know what a future king will do until they put the crown on. For now, it’s very low on my list of worries for this franchise.
I’m truly baffled. What has Jonathan Kraft actually said or done that makes people believe he’s about to be a meddlesome owner?
I listened to his appearances on the Pats radio pre-game show, and he always came across as smart and likable.
I listened to his appearances on the Pats radio pre-game show, and he always came across as smart and likable.
The act of firing BB, but leaving everything else untouched is a bit weird and implies that they believe BB was the main problem.
Now it could be as some people suggested that Mayo and personal people got in the Kraft's ears about how BB was the reason the team sucked.
But there is an enormous void right now and one very easy path to follow is that the owners want to get more involved.
I really don’t follow. Owners are always involved. The Krafts have been involved since Bob bought the team.
People seem to mistake Bill being GM for the Krafts doing nothing but sitting in their offices and watching CNBC all day.
The suggestion is that Jonathan Kraft is about to take on quasi-GM duties. That seems preposterous to me, because there’s nothing to suggest that’s about to happen.
Aside from some people super mad about Bill leaving.
Fully agree with this take. Jonathan cares about winning. Of course, that in itself doesn’t mean much (see Dallas). But I have faith he’ll do the right things for the franchise.
You don't think it will happen, others seem to think it might happen.
No one knows anything, time to wait and see.
I really hope you are right, and fear (with no proof to do so) that you are wrong.
Well what I’m not doing is getting preemptively angry before anything happens.
I don't see why this is weird. Seems like the Krafts were at least negotiating with Belichick about restructuring BB's role in the organization, which could not have been a simple conversation. Once it was clear there was no way it was going to work, all decided it was best to make a clean break. Which means they were likely willing to keep Belichick around as a coach. No report or source has disputed this version of events either.
Bill ran the organization top to bottom. Now, I guess they could have decided to fire the head coach, personnel folks, and most of the assistants an an attempt to "clean house". But then they would be left with a number of holes to fill in an organization that seemed to working OK for the most part. Offense needs help, like a lot of help, but a good QB would go a long way to fixing that. So no real reason to clean house entirely and leave the organization in a deeper hole. The Krafts are following the blueprint of a lot of successful companies that go through tough times, where "cleaning house" is often overrated if not outright wrong.
Moving on from the Krafts. But to your points in bold above.
If the organization seemed to be working OK for the most part and a QB would fix the biggest issue, firing the greatest coach in the history of the game does not make sense.
Since what you have done is remove your biggest advantage over the rest of the league.
I'll start by saying I disagreed with the firing in the first place. However, there were clearly some problems with the bringing in talent on the offensive side of the ball. Could have been a temporary blip, with the Krafts simply getting impatient (which is honestly my theory - NFL owners are gonna NFL owner). Or something more fundamental to the process, a result of people no longer being able to work together as effectively after 24 years. I don't really know, but if it was the latter, then sometimes it is indeed best for the parties to move on and part ways.
Post BB a factoid about the Cowboys: It has been 27 years since the Cowboys have made the NFC championship game. When dynasties collapse you become just another team.
To someone who grew up in the days when the Cowboys really were America's team it is unimaginable.
To someone who grew up in the days when the Cowboys really were America's team it is unimaginable.
I tend to agree with you, however, the Cowboys are the exception to that. They are never just another team. They’re the most popular team in the NFL, by far. Their games have the highest ratings, their fanbase is the largest. It’s a remarkable testament to their brand since there hasn’t been nearly enough on field success to warrant that popularity.
The Pats developed a top 5 fan base during their dynasty, but it won’t last. We won’t end up being bottom 10 like we were pre-2001. But we’re on our way to falling out of the top 10. That’ll reverse trend of Mayo has some success.
You're basically making a long winded argument that the Patriots personnel people were hampered by Bill Belichick, and that positive of removing Belichick from the front office side outweighs the negative of removing him from the coaching side.
I think this 'Garfield minus Garfield' approach has failure written all over it. But I guess the Krafts have more visibility than us about how Belichick was sabotaging the front office with his poor judgement. I just don't buy the idea this is a super bowl organization again if you only remove Belichick from the equation.
Over the past several years, the Pats under BB's guidance as head of football ops, have been in rebuild mode. IMO he has had sufficient time to put together a competitive product, and he did not.
That some folks are upset that the owners are seen as meddling with the future of their $5b asset and that it does not become a $4 billion asset, (not to mention associated enterprises) and making an operational change after 24 years, seems ridiculous.
That some folks are upset that the owners are seen as meddling with the future of their $5b asset and that it does not become a $4 billion asset, (not to mention associated enterprises) and making an operational change after 24 years, seems ridiculous.
FWIW, while the Cowboys still sell the most team merchandise, the Patriots are #2 or #3 according to the links below:
https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Daily/Closing-Bell/2022/01/14/NFL-Merch.aspx
https://www.nfl.com/photos/top-10-team-jerseys-0ap3000000908391
https://www.sportico.com/leagues/football/2023/nfl-epl-profits-comparison-1234737931/
A lot of this seems to be from 2022. I think it will take a while for the Patriots to fall out of top 10; a lot of people became fans during the Brady/Belichick era.
That's not my argument, as I made clear. I don't agree with the firing in the first place, but I also acknowledge that we don't have a lot of information of what went on between the Krafts and Belichick. Just saying that "cleaning house" is unlikely to be the best solution once the decision was made to move on from Bill. And I've seen much "longer winded" (lol, guffaw, lol) arguments in this forum and in this thread.
I get where @Silverdude2167 is coming from. Some of this is hard to understand from the outside so it’s understandable to be worried they are making a mistake by letting the best football coach in history go.
I think the Krafts are looking at this somewhat like they are parting ways with a longtime CEO who has managed a company for a long time and still has certain business lines humming along but has increasingly had higher and higher profile failures that he’s been unable to address.
There are almost certainly things about the organization as it is today, even with the 4-13 record that they feel good about – and other aspects that they concluded would require new leadership. Based on the fact that they brought in BOB to fix a specific area of the organization and things actually got worse, my sense is that it’s probably less things like “offense” and “personnel” they identified as the issues so much as the decision making and cultural things that go into those areas. And those are at Bill’s feet.
I think we tend to simplify the problems this team has had into binary terms – defense good and offense bad, coaching good and personnel bad. And so forth. But again, those are outputs. I don’t think you can watch and follow this team over the last few years without concluding that, based on both the reports and the on field results, the organization had become dysfunctional. And ultimately the Krafts concluded that they couldn’t address the dysfunction with Bill still in charge.
I think the Krafts are looking at this somewhat like they are parting ways with a longtime CEO who has managed a company for a long time and still has certain business lines humming along but has increasingly had higher and higher profile failures that he’s been unable to address.
There are almost certainly things about the organization as it is today, even with the 4-13 record that they feel good about – and other aspects that they concluded would require new leadership. Based on the fact that they brought in BOB to fix a specific area of the organization and things actually got worse, my sense is that it’s probably less things like “offense” and “personnel” they identified as the issues so much as the decision making and cultural things that go into those areas. And those are at Bill’s feet.
I think we tend to simplify the problems this team has had into binary terms – defense good and offense bad, coaching good and personnel bad. And so forth. But again, those are outputs. I don’t think you can watch and follow this team over the last few years without concluding that, based on both the reports and the on field results, the organization had become dysfunctional. And ultimately the Krafts concluded that they couldn’t address the dysfunction with Bill still in charge.
Actually there are multiple reports, Kraft made the decision to fire Belichick after the Colts game.
Well said.
If the reporting is accurate, it wasn’t like Kraft called Bill into his office and angrily berated him. Sounds like they each talked through what they felt was necessary to right the ship. And they didn’t have enough alignment on that to continue together. Since Bob owns the team, that means Bill leaves.
I wanted Bill to get another season. At the same time, it’s been 24 years.
I was referring to the reports that Kraft and Bill had multiple discussions, starting the Monday after the loss to the Jets, and those discussions revolved around ways to potentially move forward. Nobody has disputed the official narrative around the nature of those discussions.
Understand. Just saying we don't know how sincere Kraft was if he had already decided Bill needed to go in week 10. Maybe Kraft was open to it but also possible that Kraft simply felt he owed it to Bill to hear him out and was more going through the motions.
The Krafts are extremely PR focused and always have been. This doesn’t mean the public facing isn’t accurate to an extent but the PR implications of their actions is always considered. It was some time ago so I may have the exact phrasing wrong but about 20 or years ago one would often hear folks in the local business community say that everyone did business with the krafts once. None of this is intended by me to include Myra.
He's smart. He knows the value of the franchise and won't want to erode said value. And he wants to win.
He has grown up in the organization seeing how entrusting the football experts with football decisions works. And what works makes money.
And then reports came out that he was torn late in the season as the team continued to play hard.
Jesus man, nobody is trying to feel superior or get internet points here. Until Jonathan Kraft has his Alexander Haig "I'm in charge here" moment, the mention of JK is a reliable indicator that someone is consuming local clickbait media full fucking stop. I don't know why this viewpoint is controversial. Until he grabs the mic, we're only talking about it because people whose livelihoods depend on angry, bitter fan engagement told us to. It's embarrassing. Fwiw, I don't know either Kraft and aren't carrying anyone's water.
There is smoke tho dude. Big smoke.
Lots of people are saying that there's smoke tho.
Not disagreeing with you, more just expanding.
The level of dysfunction around this team since going into Brady’s last year that has shown up in public has been so bad that almost nothing reported internally would surprise me, especially when measured against other public actions and planted stories by the same people.
I don’t see how anyone could possibly be optimistic about the direction of the organization. I don’t know what that would be based on.
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My optimism is based on the Kraft family being in the higher echelon on NFL ownership circles over their three-decade tenure. Some of us have seen first-hand what really shitty ownership looks like, and in my opinion we aren't even remotely close to that right now with this team. I think many fans are just really emotional right now and some are lashing out.
There’s damning with faint praise, and then there’s “higher echelon on NFL ownership circles.”
More to the point, they had the GOAT and quite possibly the GOAT coach for the vast, vast majority of that time. We also had several WTF moments during even that wildly successful tenure. I’m not going to list them and then have 37 posts of back and forth with everyone on each one, because it will distract from my fundamental question: What should we be giving ownership credit for in connection with the team itself? Mostly staying out of the way (until more recently meddling, at least), and the CBA? I’m not trying to be a prick, but, rather than the characterization, what are the specific variables that remain from the past three decades that make you optimistic? Because this answer feels a lot like Belichick’s response to the same question at the beginning of the year.
You keep stating this or something to this extent. What is the evidence to support this claim? Multiple people have already pushed back on this point you’re making in this very thread.
If you have further proof that people are gobbling up sports talk points, by all means present it.
Not everyone consumes Boston local sports talk. Shoot, many here don’t even live in Boston anymore. This is why I feel it’s lazy to group people of a certain viewpoint as being in that bucket.
And I think your broader point of it being silly to be worried about what JK might do when in power as a good one. As I mentioned above, I’m not worried about it at all. In fact, I might even be the opposite and welcome it.
I live out of market and follow the Patriots pretty closely though I do avoid some of the more click-baity sources. The only stuff I see about JK is from the aforementioned crap-stirrers and stuff that makes its way here from Boston sports talk radio/Facebook and the gated communities like Pats Planet etc. (as a side note this is true across all Boston sports teams - which has led to a lot of confusion over the years when a talk radio point becomes a talking point here seemingly out of nowhere). I asked it in the other thread but I will ask here - what real evidence other than mostly unsourced anecdotes do we have that JK should be a concern? It really does feel like a Boston sports media construct but maybe we should be worried.
Zero evidence that J Kraft is a problem or potential problem from what I’ve seen. My only point is that people who feel that he might be aren’t necessarily doing so because of whatever clickbait stuff is being said or written. It might be as simple as someone extrapolating from other situations like Dallas or elsewhere. Or, they may have other reasons. I’m sure sports talk might have some influence here, I just find it hard to quantify just how much.
The last 24 years are all we have to go on, plus the fact that everyone aside from Greg Bedard seems to like Jerod Mayo as coach.There’s damning with faint praise, and then there’s “higher echelon on NFL ownership circles.”
More to the point, they had the GOAT and quite possibly the GOAT coach for the vast, vast majority of that time. We also had several WTF moments during even that wildly successful tenure. I’m not going to list them and then have 37 posts of back and forth with everyone on each one, because it will distract from my fundamental question: What should we be giving ownership credit for in connection with the team itself? Mostly staying out of the way (until more recently meddling, at least), and the CBA? I’m not trying to be a prick, but, rather than the characterization, what are the specific variables that remain from the past three decades that make you optimistic? Because this answer feels a lot like Belichick’s response to the same question at the beginning of the year.
Sure, the media and us fans can all point to various incidents, many of which happen to other teams as well. But the incidents are not necessarily conclusive as to the future, IMO. I personally think it’s a positive that Mayo is staying, but that’s obviously will remain a point of debate at least until next season. At the same time, I’m not expecting a quick rebuild, as most rebuilds take a few seasons and quite a few rebuilds fail completely.
Jonathan Kraft being significantly involved in front office decisions seems really unlikely. The Patriots have been too well run over the years.
But if true, some version of "me and pops were right about Brady so I really understand this stuff" would be awesome.
But again, very unlikely.
Let's see how strong/experienced of a GM they hire.
But if true, some version of "me and pops were right about Brady so I really understand this stuff" would be awesome.
But again, very unlikely.
Let's see how strong/experienced of a GM they hire.
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Yeah that's fair. The recent JK trending on SoSH is not simply a coincidence with JK trending in the local clickbaitsphere. However, you are correct that it does not categorically follow that someone's sudden interest in JK was necessarily driven by the usual suspects. I acquiesce.
Curran is worth a read today
It was indicated to me very strongly that ownership won’t be making football decisions nor have they been. There’s no desire to put a Jerry Jones-ian stamp on things. To put a twist on an old Bill Parcells-ism, “They know what they don’t know.”
View: https://twitter.com/nbcsboston/status/1746967091842896309?s=46
It was indicated to me very strongly that ownership won’t be making football decisions nor have they been. There’s no desire to put a Jerry Jones-ian stamp on things. To put a twist on an old Bill Parcells-ism, “They know what they don’t know.”
View: https://twitter.com/nbcsboston/status/1746967091842896309?s=46
Shocker Wickersham bent the truth. Fuck. That. Guy.
Wickersham’s article noted Mayo was seen swinging a baseball bat at defensive meetings. Come to find out it was a mini souvenir bat and that -- in these never-ending meetings -- all manner of balls and fidget toys would at times appear.
Wickersham’s article noted Mayo was seen swinging a baseball bat at defensive meetings. Come to find out it was a mini souvenir bat and that -- in these never-ending meetings -- all manner of balls and fidget toys would at times appear.
But what are the things in the past 24 years? I know that they happened, but what were the things? If we had to make a list of skills and attributes, what does it look like?
I’m not capable of making an exhaustive list. But we can start with physical infrastructure. The Kraft’s built the practice and training facilities in Foxboro, and have invested in those for years. They were far ahead of many franchises, who have built similar facilities only relatively recently.
Seriously. That was the image conjured in my mind while reading, nice pull. I don' think it was accidental on the author's part. But it literally made zero sense when trying to square that with anything we have ever heard about Mayo prior.