New England Patriots version
I’ll probably be writing one of these for the Iowa Hawkeyes in the next few years and if Kirk Ferentz blows this offensive coordinator hire it will be sooner rather than later. But that’s not what this one is about; this is about Bill Belichick and the Patriots deciding to mutually part ways. I’m glad everyone could be adults about this, put aside contractual commitments, and just realize it’s better for everyone if you shake hands and walk away like gentlemen. Robert Kraft and Bill Belichick have accomplished too much together to have this end acrimoniously. In a few years the Patriots can have Belichick and Brady return to Gillett Stadium to unveil their much-deserved statues outside the stadium and go down in history together, as they should.
The Belichick legacy will be fully intact no matter what people say about him not being able to win without Brady or how the last several years in New England have gone. Great coaches having great QBs isn’t a new phenomenon. Don Shula has the most wins all-time, some of his QBs in his career; Johnny Unitas, Bob Griese (with some Earl Morrell sprinkled in), and Dan Marino. Andy Reid is just behind Belichick, most of his coaching wins were with Donovan McNabb and Patrick Mahomes. Belichick was lucky enough to have Brady for almost 20 years but it wasn’t luck that he chose Brady over Drew Bledsoe after Bledsoe was injured. He recognized there was something special about Brady and even though he had a good QB he didn’t give Bledsoe the job back when he got healthy, he stuck with Brady.
Belichick has always been a defensive genius and there was no clearer example of that than this season when he lost his top pass rusher Matt Judon and his star rookie CB Christian Gonzalez, early in the season and the Patriots defense was still good. Over his 24 years he made plenty of smart personnel decisions (not just picking Brady over Bledsoe), but it was his personnel moves that failed over the last several years that have led to his demise. His inability to find an adequate QB replacement for Brady was the glaring one but it goes deeper than that. His drafts over the past 5-7 years have been pretty brutal. His first-round track record is even worse, he hasn’t hit on a first-round pick since he took Chandler Jones and Dont’a Hightower in 2012 and he let Jones walk in free agency after four years. CB Christian Gonzalez has a very good chance to break that streak but he’ll be doing it for new head coach.
Here’s Belichick’s first round picks going back to 2013 (there are several years the Patriots didn’t have a first-round pick). OG Cole Strange (’22), taking an OG in round one is dumb, it’s not a premium position, and Strange may have already lost his starting job. QB Mac Jones (’21), benched for Bailey Zappe, doesn’t get much worse. WR N’Keal Harry (’19), drafted over second-round WRs Deebo Samuel, AJ Brown, and DK Metcalf. OL Isaiah Wynn and RB Sony Michel (’18), second-round offensive linemen they could have drafted; Braden Smith, James Daniels, Brian O’Neill. A second-round RB they could have had in that draft was Michel’s college teammate Nick Chubb. In 2014 and 2015 they took undersized, injury-prone DTs Dominique Easley and Malcolm Brown, neither one amounted to much because they were often injured, that was predictable. Belichick was always bad at drafting WRs, the Harry pick was egregious and he followed that up with taking Tyquan Thornton two picks before George Pickens two years ago. The 2023 might buck the trend of being complete disasters but only if Jerod Mayo gets the best out of them. His misses in free agency aren’t as bad but the Jonnu Smith signing was a terrible reaction to missing on two third-round TE picks in the same draft a few years earlier when he was trying to replace Rob Gronkowski, it was ugly.
This is all to say that GM Bill Belichick failed head coach Bill Belichick far more than coach Belichick failed the Patriots organization. It’s not hard to understand why things went so bad towards the later years. The Patriots organization has hemorrhaged personnel talent for years. Belichick started his run in New England with Scott Pioli and while Belichick always had final say on personnel moves, he gained more and more power as his personnel executives moved on. He had Pioli, Thomas Dimitroff, Bob Quinn, Jason Licht, Jon Robinson, Nick Caserio, and Dave Ziegler all move on to become NFL GMs, all of them to various levels of success. That’s a serious brain drain when it comes to knowing the draft and free agency and as Belichick aged, he struggled without their counsel. Belichick can still coach and he can still lead but his next employer shouldn’t give him final personnel say and should have a good GM. They also need to insist he finds a new offensive coordinator with a new system he can work with (yes, this is exactly what I’ve been saying about Kirk Ferentz and it’s as true for him as it is for Belichick).
Belichick isn’t done coaching and there will be plenty of teams that want to hire him. If he takes the Washington Commanders job, he should ask Eric Bieniemy to stay (if he doesn’t get a head coaching opportunity), if it’s the Chargers job, he can hope Kellen Moore will stick around. If he goes to Atlanta, he should hire anyone not named Arthur Smith, sign Kirk Cousins as his QB and that team will win 11 games next year (and I’m not a Cousins fan but he can get that offense humming once he’s healthy).
Belichick is the greatest coach of all time and you can’t convince me otherwise. Don Shula was great but he was great when the NFL wasn’t what the NFL is today. Belichick won for two decades during a time when teams couldn’t hoard talent because of the salary cap, the league is designed for parity. And while he had Brady for all those years the offenses they ran varied greatly while Belichick’s defenses were always great. They had the heavy run-based offense early in the Brady run with guys like Corey Dillon and Antowain Smith. There was the high-flying offense with Randy Moss and Wes Welker where Brady set passing records. There were the two-TE heavy sets with Rob Gronkowski and the guy we don’t talk about. Belichick cycled through many coordinators on both sides of the ball but won with all of them at one time or another. Charlie Weis, Bill O’Brien, and Josh McDaniels were the offensive coordinators (McDaniels and O’Brien with two different stints). He probably should have branched out a little more in the end. Guys like Romeo Crennel, Eric Mangini, Dean Pees, and Matt Patricia held the defensive coordinator title but others served in the role, like Steve Belichick, Bill’s son, without holding the official title. All of these guys had success under Belichick and yet none of them had real success as head coaches after leaving New England. Jerod Mayo hasn’t held the title of defensive coordinator but he’s now the man tasked with replacing the legend. He’s also the first Belichick protégé who isn’t leaving New England so it will be interesting to see if the organization can support a new young coach and find real success. That leads me to the next part.
The New Era of Patriot football.
Jerod Mayo is a former first-round pick of the Patriots who came into a veteran team and by his second season he was a captain. He played ILB which is a position very important to the leadership and performance of any Belichick defense. Belichick loved having Mayo leading his defense and when Mayo retired, Belichick wanted him to start coaching. The stories told online are how Mayo wanted to branch out and had other interests and pursued those for a few years before Belichick finally convinced him to come back and join the coaching staff. Every story you read about Mayo talks about how people are drawn to him, he’s a natural leader, and everyone respects him. His players love him, the coaching staff loves him (including Steve Belichick) and clearly the Kraft family loves him.
So, as a coach Mayo isn’t the schematic genius Belichick is (at least as far as we know) but he’s learned plenty playing and coaching with Belichick. What he does have is the team culture aspect, the Patriot Way, if you will. Was it Belichick or Brady who set the culture, well it doesn’t matter now because it’s up to Mayo. He’s been around long enough to watch both those guys but the thing is, he isn’t Brady or Belichick. He isn’t the genius curmudgeon Belichick is, he seems to be a far more genial man. Brady was a superstar QB with a model wife and yet had a singular focus on football that ended his marriage before he retired. Mayo is a smart guy who had other pursuits in life that he wanted to try before he ended up coming back to coaching. That’s not Brady-like at all.
Mayo is his own man but we can hope that he brings the same type of leadership and culture to the Patriots like DeMeco Ryans has to the Texans and Dan Campbell has to the Lions. Robert and Jonathan Kraft passed on the opportunity to interview some really strong coaching candidates (Mike Vrabel, Ben Johnson, Eric Bieniemy) to give the job to a guy who wasn’t even their defensive coordinator. I like the hire because it also gives the Patriots the ability to hire a GM who can run the personnel side of things. A guy like Vrabel may have wanted all the power and I’m against that model. Also, hopefully Mayo will look outside the Patriot/Belichick circle to find a new offensive coordinator. I would really love to see some new blood on that side of the ball to go with a new QB and while I’m still hoping for Drake Maye, I’ll settle for Jayden Daniels. It’s a new era in New England. A new head coach, hopefully a new offensive coordinator, a new GM (even if it’s someone from within their own front office like Elliot Wolf), and a new QB. All of them ready to start the next 20 year run with six more Super Bowl titles. The Brady Way, The Belichick Way, The Mayo Way? Let’s just go back to calling it the Patriot Way.
The Hott Read 