Let's just put it this way- at the end of the day, there are more than a handful of posters on this board who study the Pats far more closely than Colin Cowherd, Boomer Esiason, and Stephen A. Smith do. The consensus among people who watch how the Patriots handle personnel situations year in and year out is that Belichick is not a petty guy. When Mankins reported weeks after calling out Belichick and Kraft, he played. Why? Because he made the team better. When Asante refused to sign with the Pats long-term, and signed the franchise tag only on the condition that he'd be gone after that season, he started the whole season. When Moss said that everyone knows that the Pats don't pay their players, he didn't see the bench because of it. When Seymour and Wilfork were stuck in their own drawn-out, kind-of-ugly contract stalemates, they didn't stop playing.
There's a whole ton of track record stating, conclusively, that under Belichick, the best players play. When you put all of that track records against unfounded, sensationalist speculation, you'd have to be an idiot to conclude that it's the latter at work. End of story. If there is a discipline issue at work here, then it's virtually guaranteed that it's not directly contract-related.
