No free link. Excerpts.
Hell Week in Coaching Fraternity
Selena Roberts
The Oz behind the hoodie can hum every Bon Jovi classic from “I’ll be there for You†to “Never Say Goodbye,†even if he cannot identify the lyrics.
Bill Belichick is no sap for romantic attachments. He is a practitioner of disposable emotion. Say goodbye, Deion Branch and David Givens. Not there for you, Adam Vinatieri and Willie McGinest.
What was once a gruff quirk is now an obsessive pattern of behavior. The more glorified his mystique, the more Belichick’s anti-star prejudice expands. He mistakes star requests for complaints and their contract demands for insubordination, and locker-room dissent as a challenge to his brilliance.
He insists on humility from everyone but himself. But who knew the dimple-chinned Tom Brady, everyone’s favorite metrosexual quarterback, would be the accidental accomplice in building Belichick’s bubble? Who knew Brady would become an innocent tool in New England’s attrition of headstrong superstars?
***
But which team is spiraling out of control? Patriotrs or Giants?
***
And everyone thought Belichick was history’s favorite Svengali. More than Coughlin, it is Belichick who is losing his team.
***
Belichick believes he whisks wins from his mind. He is a savvy tactician and deserves raves for converting his vast brain into dynamic success, but he is too quick to reduce his players into a parts-are-parts logic. He is capable of dismissing everyone with one exception: Brady. Belichick has not only coveted him as a quarterback, but as the unwitting enabler of Coach Hoodie’s no-stars legend.
Maybe as soon as now, Brady is finding out how easily he was manipulated by Belichick. In the giddy afterglow of three-ring success, as Belichick preached teamword and harrumphed disdain for divas, Brady was eager to please when he took one for the team.
He extended his contract with the Patriot in the spring of 2005 when he signed for six years and $60 million. Nice money, but it was well below his market value, ranking him fifth among quarterbacks in average salary.
The pay-it-forward philosophy was supposed to make salary cap room for his buddies. Instead, he was setting an impossible bar. How could a teammate complain about his coupon-clipper’s paycheck when scout Brady was okey-dokey with his underwhelming salary?
Troy Brown once noted before the Patriots played in the 2005 Super Bowl, “Bill always says the best thing we can do for our careers is to win games.â€
As the Patriot’s owner, Robert K. Kraft, said that same week: “So many of our guys want to win and be part of this system. It creates an incentive where other free agents and players want to come here.â€
It’s not incentive. This is punitive competence. Work harder, win more, earn less.
But Brady bought in. And Belichick took advantage of it. Instead of using the cap-room courtesy of Brady to re-sign stars, Belichick used his quarterback’s example as leverage to jettison anyone who didn’t fit a very Brady mold of the team guy.
So now, with his talented friends in other places, it’s Brady who is miserable, whose body language on the field spells out despair.
Is this dissent? Would Belichick see bad body language as rebellion?
He might not go that far. Or maybe he would. Arrogance is a slippery slope.
****
Hell Week in Coaching Fraternity
Selena Roberts
The Oz behind the hoodie can hum every Bon Jovi classic from “I’ll be there for You†to “Never Say Goodbye,†even if he cannot identify the lyrics.
Bill Belichick is no sap for romantic attachments. He is a practitioner of disposable emotion. Say goodbye, Deion Branch and David Givens. Not there for you, Adam Vinatieri and Willie McGinest.
What was once a gruff quirk is now an obsessive pattern of behavior. The more glorified his mystique, the more Belichick’s anti-star prejudice expands. He mistakes star requests for complaints and their contract demands for insubordination, and locker-room dissent as a challenge to his brilliance.
He insists on humility from everyone but himself. But who knew the dimple-chinned Tom Brady, everyone’s favorite metrosexual quarterback, would be the accidental accomplice in building Belichick’s bubble? Who knew Brady would become an innocent tool in New England’s attrition of headstrong superstars?
***
But which team is spiraling out of control? Patriotrs or Giants?
***
And everyone thought Belichick was history’s favorite Svengali. More than Coughlin, it is Belichick who is losing his team.
***
Belichick believes he whisks wins from his mind. He is a savvy tactician and deserves raves for converting his vast brain into dynamic success, but he is too quick to reduce his players into a parts-are-parts logic. He is capable of dismissing everyone with one exception: Brady. Belichick has not only coveted him as a quarterback, but as the unwitting enabler of Coach Hoodie’s no-stars legend.
Maybe as soon as now, Brady is finding out how easily he was manipulated by Belichick. In the giddy afterglow of three-ring success, as Belichick preached teamword and harrumphed disdain for divas, Brady was eager to please when he took one for the team.
He extended his contract with the Patriot in the spring of 2005 when he signed for six years and $60 million. Nice money, but it was well below his market value, ranking him fifth among quarterbacks in average salary.
The pay-it-forward philosophy was supposed to make salary cap room for his buddies. Instead, he was setting an impossible bar. How could a teammate complain about his coupon-clipper’s paycheck when scout Brady was okey-dokey with his underwhelming salary?
Troy Brown once noted before the Patriots played in the 2005 Super Bowl, “Bill always says the best thing we can do for our careers is to win games.â€
As the Patriot’s owner, Robert K. Kraft, said that same week: “So many of our guys want to win and be part of this system. It creates an incentive where other free agents and players want to come here.â€
It’s not incentive. This is punitive competence. Work harder, win more, earn less.
But Brady bought in. And Belichick took advantage of it. Instead of using the cap-room courtesy of Brady to re-sign stars, Belichick used his quarterback’s example as leverage to jettison anyone who didn’t fit a very Brady mold of the team guy.
So now, with his talented friends in other places, it’s Brady who is miserable, whose body language on the field spells out despair.
Is this dissent? Would Belichick see bad body language as rebellion?
He might not go that far. Or maybe he would. Arrogance is a slippery slope.
****
