Content Post Dear Bill - Thanks for Giving Away the Super Bowl.

[mosslost]

I thought Butler's response to Reiss while getting on the team bus was telling because he genuinely seemed surprised and unsure of the reason for his benching. This tells me one of two things. Their was no single event that occured that was the obvious reason for his benching. If there was an incident he would have answered the question differently or not at all. The other possibility is he's a better actor than than most people give him credit for. I'm going with the first answer and assume it was performance related. This kid has all of the physical skills to be the top corner in the game but mentally, he seems to struggle at times.

Belichick had a 8 Hour brain fart and got dumb.. that’s all.

Brady almost bailed his azz out.... again...

 

[RobertWeathers]

That very well may be the truth.

But that argument goes out the window after halftime, when you realize that Rowe and Bademosi are completely overmatched.

To not even give Butler an opportunity and just continue on with the status quo is entirely the issue here.

No.

BB still didn't think Malcolm could help the team.

 

[Observer]

Bill had a point to prove and he did it quite convincingly.

Yeah, he certainly proved that obedience is more important to him than winning.

 

[mosslost]

The cost should be considered. So should the precedent. And so should the reasons that a man like Belichick might pay that cost.

The Patriots have several more years to play for championships, as long as Tom Brady is still Tom Brady we will be in the mix. And it's entirely possible that we stick the replacement and are still competitive after he goes, if Bill does a good job coaching the younger replacements.

Now let's factor that into the decision. The Superbowl is important, but is it possible that another consideration is even more important?

Let's consider the things that Bill Belichick does to create greatness in this franchise. I think that it's a pretty fair thing to say, that bill knows what he's doing more or less. Now obviously, if he still makes the decision to put the Superbowl win at risk by benching Butler, he's protecting something more important to him than Superbowls.

Since there isn't very much more important to a football head coach than Superbowls, I think we can narrow the reasoning down to 1 of 2 things -- either Bill was on an ego trip, or he feared an existential threat to the Patriot Way if he let Butler carry on as if nothing was wrong.

Since Bill on an ego trip would be INCREDIBLY out of character, I think we've successfully narrowed down the core of the issue. The exact allegations of Butler's behavior are almost meaningless in that context. Whatever the meat of the problem with Butler was, the bones of the problem were that he represented a precedence-forming threat to the team culture that Bill was simply not prepared to tolerate.

The Patriot way is one of the few things in all of football that has a legit claim to being more important than any one Superbowl. The strong team culture that Bill has built up has had a huge role in producing at least 3 of our 5 Superbowls. Watching that team-culture edifice crumble in the name of short term gain is not a price Belichick would ever be willing to pay -- not unless he was short timing it and knew he was done at the end of the year anyway, which thank goodness, he doesn't seem to be acting as if that's the case.

Whether you like it or you don't, I think that's the core of the issue here. Allowing short-timing guys to ignore the rules and do whatever they want, whatever "whatever they want" happened to actually be in Butler's case, is not a path Bill will go down, because the end of that path is the death of the unique culture he's built in New England, and if he makes an overt decision to let that culture slip, even to win a Superbowl, he'll never get it back again. Pro athletes know a loophole when they see it and it's very, very hard to reestablish discipline in a team once you start to let things go.

If Bill honestly felt that tolerating Butler's sabotage of the Patriot way, whatever it happened to be, would have opened the entire Pandora's box of player disobedience and disregard for the rules that's sabotaged so many good to great teams (most notable recent example; the Steelers), then he had to take a stand against that. Even if it cost a Superbowl.

Omg

 

[Love The Drake]

Some people should root for new teams and coaches.

 

[sambam94]

Its what fans do. I get people are pissed off and upset. I am too.

BB makes mistakes. There are dozens of them to count.

My beef with some of these posters is:

A) They think it was just some dumb rule Malcolm broke
B) Do Your Job is a punchline.
C) They haven't a clue how you create and maintain a winning culture

C makes sense long term, but do you lose a SB over it?

 

[Love The Drake]

You can follow Josh to Methapolis

 

[PatsDeb]

Lmao at those disagreeing with this. They honestly believe their judgment, with nothing to support it, is better than those involved with the decision, who had all the information needed to make the decision.

Dearest Ivan - 41 points with NO adjustments is all the information I need. If you need more I don't understand how you are lyao at me or anyone else on here disagreeing with IN BILL WE TRUST, which just cost us a Super Bowl.

 

[Simpelton]

Yeah, he certainly proved that obedience is more important to him than winning.

The Patriot way *is* more important to this franchise than any one Superbowl. the Patriot Way is about consistent greatness, and you can't have that consistency if you start letting the team discipline slide.

This is on Butler for pushing things far enough that Bill had to choose between short term gain and his overall job as a Head Coach to maintain discipline and team culture. Most of the time by the time we hit the Superbowl, everyone's either on the same page or gone. Butler did something that made Bill decide he wasn't ready to be on the same page as the rest of the team. Butler bears the responsibility for that series of decisions.

One thing everyone should be absolutely sure of is that Bill Belichick did not bench one of his best defensive players lightly or for no reason.

 

[SammyBlueCat]

Certainly there must have been a better way to deal with insubordination than disrupting the (fragile) chemistry of the entire defense.

 

[RobertWeathers]

What Actions Robert?

Whatever he did BB didn't think he could trust Malcolm to do his job.

Apparently according to bill it wasn't disciplinary.

He might be graying the lines. Whatever it was BB felt Malcolm was not prepared to do his job and the coaches could not trust him out there.

Should we blame butler for getting sick the week before the game and having a bad week of practice? Agahlor was sick, im sure he wasn't perfect in practice, yet the eagles played him.

I think if Butler had prepared for the game like Devin McCourty or the other 51 players BB would absolutely put him out there. Even for limited snaps.

I believe this benching was not about the flu.

 

[mosslost]

Some people should root for new teams and coaches.

Lol

 

[makoute]

For the Butler would have been the difference crowd just rewatch the season opener.

And disregard all the other games. Hopefully you are not one of the people who thought the defense got better as the season went along.

 

[ForThoseAboutToRock]

Every single bit of this is on Butler. He was an immature jerk. He played below his potential all season because he was pissed he didn't get traded or get a huge contract.

Player management is a more refined skill than roster management. Butler the person was mismanaged the previous offseason, which resulted in a player on the roster who didn't perform as well as he did in 2016. There's shared blame for that result.

Then when it came to the biggest game of the season he decided he was more important then the team. He put the coaching staff in a no win position. There are team rules, there are consequences if you break them. He broke them, he was punished, end of story.

Go cry somewhere else about BB following rules and benching a player that didn't care, until he got on camera and could cry for national tv. Hopefully he will grow up, probably he won't.

This all assumes facts that are murky at best at this point.

 

[mosslost]

You can follow Josh to Methapolis

Josh gon be HC of the NEP 2018

 

[patsfan13]

Some people should root for new teams and coaches.

Some of us have been ' for the laundry' while BB was at Annapolis. Some of us choose not to be mindless sycophants. YMMV.

 

[Simpelton]

Certainly there must have been a better way to deal with insubordination than disrupting the (fragile) chemistry of the entire defense.

Since we don't even know what Butler did, I have no idea how you can say that with such seeming certainty.

 

[RobertWeathers]

C makes sense long term, but do you lose a SB over it?

Again, BB felt Malcolm was not ready, prepared or trusted by the coaching staff to do his job on Sunday.

There is nothing more to it.

We have 18 years of observing BB and knowing why players play and why they don't.

 

[XLIX]

I will believe it because it's what our coach said. I guess you're calling him a liar now?

I believe that yes, Belichick was lying when he said it wasn’t disciplinary. I do not believe that statement for a single second, not even the moment he said it.

 

[Absurdly Metro]

Patsinthesnow, appreciate the comments but I just don’t buy the premise that Butler would have made a stop that would have changed that game or defensive performance. And while I think that Butler healthy and in the right frame of mind could have helped them I don’t believe that was the case. Like Collins I think he had tuned the coaches out and he had become a problem, but that’s just my take on it. I think people claiming he would have been the difference are talking out of their asses because they have no information on how he was performing and behaving leading up to the game, and then projecting him as some MVP performer in it. I don’t think Belichick took this lightly in any way or that he was being arrogant or cavalier about it. I think it was a decision he put a lot of thought into, and that he consulted with his defensive coaches and Scar about it.

I think the much bigger problem, both in that game and going forward is that the Patriots have real trouble with RPO offenses and mobile quarterbacks, and it’s going to take changes in personnel and schemes to completely address those issues. I don’t think Butler is the difference maker in those games, and their defensive performances against teams like KC and Carolina demonstrate that. And without much much much more knowledge about how Butler performs against those offenses, as well as his performance leading up to the Super Bowl, I find it impossible to say that Belichick’s decision to bench Butler cost them the game.

I understand why people are upset about losing a Super Bowl, my problem is the extreme overreactions we are seeing.

I agree it is impossible to say for sure whether Butler’s presence out there may have saved the game for us. But wouldn’t you agree he couldn’t have been worse than what we were seeing out there on every single drive?

Ask Seattle if Butler is capable of helping our defense make just ONE STOP on the biggest stage.