Kraft kept this team here.......Thanks!!

[farn]

Your facts are hardly as compelling as "owners don't win championships". You obviously put lots of importance on Kraft's contributions. I say : he is responsible for keeping the team in NE but matters very little on the field in comparison with the coaches and players. They are, IMO, fully responsible for the product and the wins and the SBs.

Kraft chose Parcells & it got him a few good seasons that had been rare in these parts in the past. He got Pete, who was so-so. He finally got a true winner in BB and has benefitted from BB's brilliance and the players' performances since.

You love Kraft because the team remained local. That blinds you to his importance on the field.

 

[shmessy]

Your facts are hardly as compelling as "owners don't win championships". You obviously put lots of importance on Kraft's contributions. I say : he is responsible for keeping the team in NE but matters very little on the field in comparison with the coaches and players. They are, IMO, fully responsible for the product and the wins and the SBs.

Kraft chose Parcells & it got him a few good seasons that had been rare in these parts in the past. He got Pete, who was so-so. He finally got a true winner in BB and has benefitted from BB's brilliance and the players' performances since.

You love Kraft because the team remained local. That blinds you to his importance on the field.

Without Kraft, there are no New England Patriots.

You 'd be rooting for the Giants or the Bills or the LA Rams.

So yes, you are correct in stating, somewhere and for some other team, Belichick would be working and that Brady would be selling insurance in his dad's firm.

Life would have gone on.

Or perhaps some team with PSLs that eventually would have been placed here IF after having a crisis of voters worrying about irrelevancy the Commonwealth of Massachusetts not being in the NFL forced the Massachusetts Conventions Authority ponied up billions of taxpayer dollars for a stadium. But that's a very big IF in Massachusetts. My expectation is that the Commonwealth would just as soon save the money and go without a team.......but Rhode Island or CT would probably waste their taxpayer money for one.

 

[AzPatsFan]

I think Kraft's the best owner in the league. Don't have to agree with everything he does though.

So do I. And a New Englander to his core too.

 

[AzPatsFan]

Your facts are hardly as compelling as "owners don't win championships". You obviously put lots of importance on Kraft's contributions. I say : he is responsible for keeping the team in NE but matters very little on the field in comparison with the coaches and players. They are, IMO, fully responsible for the product and the wins and the SBs.

Kraft chose Parcells & it got him a few good seasons that had been rare in these parts in the past. He got Pete, who was so-so. He finally got a true winner in BB and has benefitted from BB's brilliance and the players' performances since.

You love Kraft because the team remained local. That blinds you to his importance on the field.

You underestimate his perspicacity. Every single one of his Head Coaches have been proven to be a Super Bowl victor, even though only one was such when hired.

 

[AzPatsFan]

I get it : he kept the team in NE.

He also got lucky with BB. The coaches and players did all the work to win those SBs and he was lucky to get the greatest coach in the history of the league.

You MAY choose to believe he studied hard and relentlessly pursued BB and that he is the reason NE has been a successful franchise. My opinion is that he got lucky with BB and once the coach started rolling, it didn't take much to keep him onboard.

He has never hired a HC who did not prove to be a Super Bowl victor. Extraordinary. Only Art Modell has as many as two HOF coaches, Bob already has one, will have another, and might have three! He has never fired even one, while Model fired both, to his everlasting ignominy.

 

[Actual Pats Fan]

Long-term stability (something the franchise truly never had until that point) had already been achieved.

what the New England Patriots were to the NFL

IMO, Robert Kraft showed vision, courage, determination and faith in stubbornly hanging onto the lease and ultimately paying a record price for the team and keeping it here, and building the stadium, and it's obviously his pride and joy.

I may be a football freak, but it is the most popular pro sport in this country. Despite deep lifelong attachments to the Red Sox ('67 and hopping the Green Line to Fenway for $1 bleacher seats), Celtics ('78-'79 did exactly nothing to diminish my enthusiasm - watched every game) and Bruins (Derek Sanderson arrived at the Garden for Game 4 vs. the Blues in '70 wearing a white tuxedo - "Hey, if you're going to win the Stanley Cup, you gotta do it in style"), the Patriots remained my #1 since Cheevers jumped to the WHA (can't blame him$) and then Fairbanks was hired.

So, nevermind about Pedro, Larry's swan song and Vladimír (Rosie) Růžička, I apparently was in the minority with the Pats as my #1, and always watched intently. The inevitable financial collapse of Billy Sullivan was well-documented and took a long time, but I never watched a game thinking, "let's win it for the owner!". The millions of Patriots fans around the globe hardly evaporated into thin air, even if they couldn't spend a fortune on merchandise and/or weren't here to take the trek down Route 1 to attend the games.

What the Patriots were to the NFL-and local and national media-remains the same as today: Tagliabue's stupid declarations after the league's moronic, cover-their-own-asses "investigation", the notion that Foxboro Stadium was worse than-Municipal Stadium? That there'd never been a 1-15 team in history before?

So Kraft's "Yes Whatever You Say" approach to the league stayed the same from when he agreed with Orthwein's decision made after he'd been here five minutes: Loyal lifetime fans are not the profitable demographic target group, so screw them and the team's history - out with the old - and in with whatever's a fad in the early 90's, let's adopt the logo the fans hate and uniforms that look like our opponents'. Even with the utterly ridiculous apology he made to his fellow owners on 4/1/08, it wasn't until Goodell's second robbery of a first-rounder and dragging through the mud of the team that local fans finally began to take exception to his approach.

 

[Actual Pats Fan]

He has never hired a HC who did not prove to be a Super Bowl victor. Extraordinary. Only Art Modell has as many as two HOF coaches, Bob already has one, will have another, and might have three! He has never fired even one, while Model fired both, to his everlasting ignominy.

LOL Please. He hired two (2) head coaches. He deserves credit. Doesn't make him a football genius.

 

[Actual Pats Fan]

He has never hired a HC who did not prove to be a Super Bowl victor. Extraordinary. Only Art Modell has as many as two HOF coaches, Bob already has one, will have another, and might have three! He has never fired even one, while Model fired both, to his everlasting ignominy.

We should really thank Modell for firing Bill, and Parcells for going to the Jets.

 

[shmessy]

It's halftime now, and I find it rather weird that "Actual Pats Fan" posted those above 3 posts during the 1st half of an AFCCG. (The first one of the three is long and bizarre).

I wonder if he knows that there was an ACTUAL PATS GAME going on at the time.

 

[shmessy]

We should really thank Modell for firing Bill, and Parcells for going to the Jets.

Trolling.

 

[Actual Pats Fan]

Ooooooh, sorry, but you could not be FARTHER from the truth on that post!!!!

Too bad you tried that here...........



From the 1962-1963 Official Boston Celtics Yearbook:

"Walter A. Brown

Do events make the man, or does man bring about the events? When it comes to professional basketball, there's no question that the game enjoys its lofty position today largely because of the pioneering and deep thinking of Walter A. Brown, President and half-owner of the world champion Boston Celtics........Walter Brown has every reason to feel proud of his basketball achievements and innovations. He inaugurated the annual East-West all-star game in 1951 over the stubborn opposition of his fellow owners........Thus, it is no surprise to learn that he holds a lofty position in all fields of athletics......He has acquaintances all over the nation....."

etc.

.....and, of course, his mother loved him very much.

Look, there is an excellent argument to be made that Walter Brown was the greatest owner in any US sport ever. However, the statement you made in your above post can be proven ridiculous in any Celtics yearbook from the late 50's to mid 60's when he died. I have a few from back then when my dad covered the team for a few wire services. And yes, he revered Mr. Brown whom he still thinks of as a saint.....but your historic revisionism regarding "executive bios" was too rich for me not to bring some reality back to your discussion.

Whatever is written about Mr. Kraft in any Patriots yearbook is simply not going to be any more purple in prose than what the Celtics yearbooks had for Mr. Brown.

They were both great and no write-ups of the boss by either Howie McHugh nor Stacey James is going to change any minds in the public.

Brown was mostly a reserved, humble man who loved Boston and benefited from having Red to fight the team's competitive battles within the league.

After his sudden passing he left a difficult situation for his successors dealing with the Bruins-owned Garden which remains today, and spawned a string of mostly messy ownerships until the current group stabilized things.

Just a glance at all the miserable franchises/ownerships/teams that have won Super Bowls says that winning them is not the measure of a great owner. To me (alone, apparently) the measure of Kraft's success is that he gave his employees the opportunity to succeed, and he encouraged personal responsibility and accountability. On the field, nothing from '94-'00 occured that was as exciting, relevant or historic as what the team accomplished in previous decades.

Just as titles didn't arrive until Russell did for the Celts, they didn't come to Foxboro until Brady took over. That they did does not make Bledsoe better than several predecessors here, or even Kerry Collins or Carson Palmer or Neil Lomax, nor does it make the flying elvis traditional, classy, respectful or attractive.

 

[Actual Pats Fan]

It's halftime now, and I find it rather weird that "Actual Pats Fan" posted those above 3 posts during the 1st half of an AFCCG. (The first one of the three is long and bizarre).

I wonder if he knows that there was an ACTUAL PATS GAME going on at the time.

FYI, I've been watching the whole game...I know it's against internet protocol, but why don't you take a break from dumping on people? You're clearly a smart, knowledgeable fan.

 

[Actual Pats Fan]

Without Kraft, there are no New England Patriots.

You 'd be rooting for the Giants or the Bills or the LA Rams.

So yes, you are correct in stating, somewhere and for some other team, Belichick would be working and that Brady would be selling insurance in his dad's firm.

Life would have gone on.

Or perhaps some team with PSLs that eventually would have been placed here IF after having a crisis of voters worrying about irrelevancy the Commonwealth of Massachusetts not being in the NFL forced the Massachusetts Conventions Authority ponied up billions of taxpayer dollars for a stadium. But that's a very big IF in Massachusetts. My expectation is that the Commonwealth would just as soon save the money and go without a team.......but Rhode Island or CT would probably waste their taxpayer money for one.

You're right-Kraft accomplished this on his own. And rather than look in admiration and try to follow his example, fellow owners remain petty and jealous and learn nothing from it.

Had the team moved or folded, that would have been it for me. It's the Patriots or nothing. I don't think I'm alone, as every single one of the countless people I've spoken to in person on the subject over the years-including players, both pre- and post-Kraft-completely prefers the original logo & uniform.

 

[AzPatsFan]

You're right-Kraft accomplished this on his own. And rather than look in admiration and try to follow his example, fellow owners remain petty and jealous and learn nothing from it.

Had the team moved or folded, that would have been it for me. It's the Patriots or nothing. I don't think I'm alone, as every single one of the countless people I've spoken to in person on the subject over the years-including players, both pre- and post-Kraft-completely prefers the original logo & uniform.

I don't know anyone who likes the original Tri-corner hat logo

 

[Actual Pats Fan]

I don't know anyone who likes the original Tri-corner hat logo

While this was worn in the team's first 14 games,

this was their official logo in programs and was put on helmets in '61

...and stayed there for 32 years, until the NFL sent Orthwein here and he decided after five minutes here that, "All the local and national media and the league and all my friends and associates are right when they call this a worthless, broken, ridiculed franchise, and as Paul Tagliabue now and Roger Goodell later both say, the Patriots "damaged the league" so I'm going to put the ugly replacement the fans hate on the helmets and dress them in silly league-conforming uniforms until I move them to St. Louis next year...After all, the fans who rooted for them the last 33 years are all losers, and Steve Grogan retired two centuries, that is, two decades...um, well okay eighteen months ago so nobody cares.

And that stadium full of people who made the trek down Route 1 to the game in '79 and were unanimously for the real logo don't count. They're not really Patriots fans; neither are they New Englanders to the core. Whatever it doesn't matter they won't have a team anymore next year anyway."

 

[IllegalContact]

This is a stupid argument

Bob Kraft kept the team here, built his compound in Foxboro, and has managed to stay out of the way of the guy he hired to run football operations. He is a businessman, however, and as an owner of an NFL franchise, he has some really ****ed up people as peers. He has not been perfect in the handling of some of the things the league levied against the Pats, but the bottom line is that the team is still successful and the organization managed to steer itself through it all.

I think he is the best owner in the NFL because he has either done the right things or entrusted someone else to do the right thing.

Unlike the fellowship of the miserable here, Kraft along with the organization managed to keep it about football and not the ****show that the league front office is.

anyone doesn't like Kraft, go find another team to root for......maybe the Jets or the Bills

 

[Actual Pats Fan]

This is a stupid argument

Bob Kraft kept the team here, built his compound in Foxboro, and has managed to stay out of the way of the guy he hired to run football operations. He is a businessman, however, and as an owner of an NFL franchise, he has some really ****ed up people as peers. He has not been perfect in the handling of some of the things the league levied against the Pats, but the bottom line is that the team is still successful and the organization managed to steer itself through it all.

I think he is the best owner in the NFL because he has either done the right things or entrusted someone else to do the right thing.

Unlike the fellowship of the miserable here, Kraft along with the organization managed to keep it about football and not the ****show that the league front office is.

anyone doesn't like Kraft, go find another team to root for......maybe the Jets or the Bills

I love Kraft, he just needs to open his eyes

 

[IllegalContact]

I love Kraft, he just needs to open his eyes

for who?

fuk that.......he needs to keep doing what he's been doing all along. who gives a **** about window dressing

 

[RayClay]

Cho

Your facts are hardly as compelling as "owners don't win championships". You obviously put lots of importance on Kraft's contributions. I say : he is responsible for keeping the team in NE but matters very little on the field in comparison with the coaches and players. They are, IMO, fully responsible for the product and the wins and the SBs.

Kraft chose Parcells & it got him a few good seasons that had been rare in these parts in the past. He got Pete, who was so-so. He finally got a true winner in BB and has benefitted from BB's brilliance and the players' performances since.

You love Kraft because the team remained local. That blinds you to his importance on the field.

Chose Parcells? Lol.

 

[Actual Pats Fan]

for who?

fuk that.......he needs to keep doing what he's been doing all along. who gives a **** about window dressing

...or first round draft picks, or suspensions, or money, or a competitive disadvantage...

...or respect, or self-respect, or heritage, or tradition, or loyalty, or honor...