BB the GM is declining

[RobertWeathers]

First off - BB is the best coach of all time. There is no argument to this. Belichick is one of the reasons I'm a huge Patriots fan.

The saying has always been "In Belichick We Trust", but he's made a lot of errors recently as GM. At 65 tears old we have to wonder if he's beginning to lose it. Many of you will hate on me for making this thread, but this is a discussion board and this is a big topic that most will be scared to touch because of how good Belichicks pedigree is.

1. Letting LaGarette Blount go for nothing. Blount straight up said he wanted to stay. And that was after having the best season of his career with a league leading 18 TD's. Blount was an emotional leader and big part of our last 2 superbowls. He wasnt even asking for a lot of money. BB and the front office let him walk. They signed Mike Gillisslee instead, who turned out to be a huge bust. We are actually LUCKY that Dion Lewis surprised everyone and turned out to have as good of a year as he did. Otherwise our running game wouldve been terrible. Lewis and Blount are completely opposite running styles and we never had that short yardage battering ram all year.
2. Letting Chris Long go for nothing. He literally donated his entire salary to charity this year. He also wouldnt have cost much to re-sign. Long is the perfect Patriots type player, good locker room guy, no character issues. He was happy to play here and then left because he felt the scheme didnt fit, or maybe he was upset that Trey Flowers passed him on the depth chart and thought he wouldnt get many snaps if he stayed. Whatever it was, I think if BB really wanted him to stay he couldve had a little last minute chat like he did with McDaniels and Devin McCourty and gotten him to stay. But they let him walk for peanuts and he went to team that had 3 losing seasons in a row. Long didnt set the league on fire, but he would've been a huge locker room guy and a leader. We could've used some veteran depth at DE this year, and he would've been a key part of the rotation.
3. Knowing that Rob Ninkovich was close to retirement and Jabaal Sheard wasn't going to be re-signed. Surely after coaching him for so many years, BB must've known Ninkovich was close to retirement. We literally had one of the deepest DE rotations in 2016 with Ninkovich, Sheard, Long, and an emerging Trey Flowers. They were a HUGE part of the SuperBowl comeback... knocking the Falcons out of Field Goal range, and sacking Matt Ryan. One year later.... Flowers was the only one still on the team. Losing all that depth in one off season, and who did BB replace them with? A late 3rd rd pick and 4th rd pick. We are actually lucky that Deatrich Wise contributed as much as he did. Usually you cant count on mid-round DE's to do much. Even if Rivers were healthy, who's to say he wouldve been any good? 3rd round DE's are hit and miss (Shawn Crable anyone? Jake Bequette?). I couldnt believe it when the Pats went into this season without any sort of back up plan for losing 3 DE's. Oh, wait... we got Kony Ealy and Cassius Marsh! Kony wasnt given much of a chance and got released before the season started. Marsh was a failure and got released midway through the season. Now we are 1 year later and we still have a huge need at DE. We got lucky the Steelers messed up and let James Harrison go. He was our best pass rusher and played better than expected but it's kind of sad when you have to rely on a 39 year old cast off that signed with your team in week 16.
4. Trading Chandler Jones. He led the league with 17 sacks this season. Yeah he's making a lot of money but, what's the point of drafting good players if you're never going to sign them? By trading away Jones the front office basically admits they don't want a superstar pass rusher and instead want to pick up scraps for less money. The problem with that is there aren't good scraps to be found every offseason. Last offseason is proof of that. Jones is also a good leader and locker room guy. He had one little incident but overall his character seems okay. His reputation was that he tappered off as the season went on, but the coaches also ran him into the ground and he basically played every snap. Shouldve done a better job at rotating players in and keeping him fresh. We couldve used some of that pass rush in the SuperBowl. People will also refute this by saying we got Joe Thuney and Malcolm Mitchell for him, but OG and back up WR are dime a dozen. Star DE's in their prime dont come around very often, especially for the Patriots who are consistently drafting late in the 1st.
5. Letting Akiem Hicks walk right when he was hitting his prime. He was a hidden gem that the Pats picked up for basically nothing. He's turned into one of the best interior linemen in the NFL and isn't getting paid like it. He would've been a steal if we re-signed him long term. Huge talent evaluation misfire. The coaches see these guys in practice every day. They missed on Hicks big time.
6. Instead, we re-signed Alan Branch at 32 years old. He was a healthy scratch for most of the season. Huge disappointment and waste of money. Got replaced by mis-season pick up Ricky Jean Francois.
7. Dwayne Allen trade. Total bust. The Colts mustve been ecstatic to offload that terrible contract on the Pats. He got paid $5million this last season for a total of 86 yards. Absolutely pathetic. All these players the Pats supposedly can't afford to pay. Meanwhile they paid Allen 5million. This was a terrible misfire.
8. Recent Drafts haven't been successful. Cyrus Jones, Jordan Richards, Geneo Grissom, Dominique Easley. None of them have contributed much, if at all. The only player that has panned out recently is Trey Flowers.
9. Underestimating chemistry. We went into the playoffs with newly signed players in the Front 7. Ricky Jean Francois became a Patriot in November. Eric Lee signed in late November when Marsh was released. James Harrison became a Patriot in December. Marquis Flowers in his first season, after being a career special teamer. Deatrich Wise a rookie. It's fine to plug and play a few players when you have a solid core group of players, but this year we didn't. The Front office let the core walk away or traded them away. I know a lot of people are ****ting on Matt Patricia, but Belichick set him up for failure with this defense. Our D was counting on rookies and cast offs. Simply put, Phillies OLine was far superior to our DLine.

Belichick had a reputation of always cutting ties at the perfect time. Players that left the Patriots went on to be forgotten and never played as well. This isnt the case anymore. The players that have left have flourished and the Pats were left with an anemic defense that got exposed.


Going into next season the entire Defense needs help. We need a new CB to replace Butler. We need LB depth since Hightower is injury prone and Elandon Roberts is horrible. We need DT since Alan Branch is good as gone. We need DE. The draft isn't going to solve all those problems and this is a bad free agent year. We'll be lucky if we solve one of those spots in FA.

I'm not even going to bother reading this trash. I already know your MO

You are the type of guy who if you ask a good friend for money and he gives it to you, you wouldn't say thank you.

You are also the type of guy who if that same friend was in jail, you let him rot.

I'm sure you have no idea who Sam Jankovich or Joe Medes is.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

With any NFL franchise, if you have 2-3 bad drafts in a row, you are going to really suffer somewhere from it. The Patriots front 6/7 has been the most effected group, since they happen to have had the most turnover over the last couple of years. When you trade away someone like Chandler Jones, the idea is that you will replace at least some of his production with cheap, young talent on a rookie contract. Hindsight is easy; I'm sure they expected they'd generate a pass rush with Hightower and some other options through the draft, but injuries to both Hightower and Rivers changed that.

I agree, the Patriots made a bad decision on Blount/Gillisee. Their red zone offense was not great this year, and a lot that was from a lack of a power running back. Gillisee got a relatively huge deal for a RB in New England, and he couldn't even make the active roster. But that's just the way it goes...can't be right every time.

Their free agency deals were overall pretty decent this past offseason, although they fell short of high expectations. Even the biggest Cooks detractor can't say the trade (31st overall pick) was terrible; I'd say it's probably a wash right now. The Gilmore trade is looking better, and though I'm not sure Gilmore was worth that much, it's clear he was the better option than Butler for a big contract. Dwayne Allen was decent overall, a very good blocker, even though his weaknesses were on display when they lacked a variety of pass catching targets.

 

[JMC00]

I agree, the Patriots made a bad decision on Blount/Gillisee. Their red zone offense was not great this year, and a lot that was from a lack of a power running back. Gillisee got a relatively huge deal for a RB in New England, and he couldn't even make the active roster. But that's just the way it goes...can't be right every time.

Blount 18 TD in 2016

Lewis, Burkhead and Gillislee 16 TD in 2017

 

[archstanton543]

Also, the league took away two first rounders (and a fourth) for what amounts to nothing. The impact of that cannot be understated. And it will continue to impact the franchise for the foreseeable future.

 

[ATippett56]

I'm saying we're lucky that Harrison got released. You cant count on things like this to happen late in the season. He was gifted to us.

Lucky that a rookie 4th rounder (Wise) turned out decent. Couldve been another Jake Bequette or Geneo Grissom or Shawn Crable. Can't count on 4th rd rookies to contirbute much. Anything we got was a bonus.

Dion had the best year of his career. He far exceeding expectations

Let's face facts. The "Big Nickel" was a "Big Flop".

Advanced Stats Report: Tom Brady’s mastery marred by defensive implosion

"Much to Patriots fans dismay, the Pats decided to install a four-safety package involving backup safety Jordan Richards who was in the game because of the trickle-down effect of Butler’s absence.

Without a solid third cornerback option, the Patriots turned to safety Patrick Chung as their nickel corner. Chung played as a slot corner on 36% of his snaps this season, which is the highest of any position he has played. But he mostly covers tight ends not wide receivers and was forced to play a season-high 43 snaps as a slot corner in the Super Bowl.

Typically, with Butler playing outside corner, Eric Rowe would cover the receiver in the slot while Chung would play the hybrid linebacker role in the Patriots’ dime packages as Richards was on Sunday night.

In just 11 snaps in coverage, Richards allowed a team-high 81 yards into his coverage, as the Patriots opted to have him cover Eagles tight end, Zach Ertz, while Patrick Chung mostly saw Eagles wide receiver Nelson Agholor."

 

[Patstopia]

Too much EEI and 98.5?

 

[ATippett56]

Too much EEI and 98.5?

Michael Felger
Ron Borges

 

[MainePatsFan26]

If Brady doesn't get strip sacked, we're not getting all of these threads. That should tell you what you need to know.

Say we win the Super Bowl 47-41 in overtime because we got the touchdown and 2 point conversion in regulation, won the coin flip, and drove the field again. Regardless of Brady passing for 650-700 yards in that scenario, that final score is still 41 points allowed by our defense in the most important game of the year. Everyone would be ecstatic about winning the championship, but it wouldn't change the issues that got exposed by Philadelphia and would follow this team around throughout the offseason.

I'm interested to see what happens to this defense with Patricia gone. Does it improve under another coordinator or was Patricia the one band-aid holding an otherwise historically bad defense together throughout most of the season? I hope we get someone with some acuity in there as opposed to a bootlicker who happened to get lucky Patricia was leaving. Belichick needs someone to challenge him for a change rather than another in-house yes man.

 

[Chris Stevenson]

Say we win the Super Bowl 47-41 in overtime because we got the touchdown and 2 point conversion in regulation, won the coin flip, and drove the field again. Regardless of Brady passing for 650-700 yards in that scenario, that final score is still 41 points allowed by our defense in the most important game of the year. Everyone would be ecstatic about winning the championship, but it wouldn't change the issues that got exposed by Philadelphia and would follow this team around throughout the offseason.

I'm interested to see what happens to this defense with Patricia gone. Does it improve under another coordinator or was Patricia the one band-aid holding an otherwise historically bad defense together throughout most of the season? I hope we get someone with some acuity in there as opposed to a bootlicker who happened to get lucky Patricia was leaving. Belichick needs someone to challenge him for a change rather than another in-house yes man.

did philly’s d get exposed? i think it did

 

[MainePatsFan26]

did philly’s d get exposed? i think it did

Philadelphia's defense got exposed, for certain. But their failure on defense doesn't change our failure on defense.

That logic is like saying that one presidential candidate is "all good" just because the other is awful. In other words, bad is bad. Sure - if we get back to the Super Bowl next year, the odds are it won't be against Philadelphia and thus we won't have to worry about Nick Foles. But do we really trust our defense against an Aaron Rodgers or Drew Brees if we can't stop Nick Foles? If I recall, the opening stretch of games where our defense struggled was against Alex Smith, Drew Brees, Deshawn Watson, and Cam Newton. With most of those guys playing well, we were shredded. The rest of the season, by comparison, the best quarterbacks we faced were Phillip Rivers, the rapist, and Jay Cutler. The only one of those we held to beneath 24 points was Philip Rivers. In other words, we fared well as a defense against subpar quarterback play and got exposed against decent to good quarterbacks. Just look at the awful quarterbacks we faced on our way to the Super Bowl. Heck, we almost lost to Blake Bortles and rationalized his great performance as him "maturing" or "being better than we thought." Maybe it was just our defense being that pitiful against even mediocre play.

Philadelphia has its own concerns moving forward once they are done celebrating a hard fought win. But their issues shouldn't be used to deflect from our issues in the least.

 

[Steve102]

 

[ivanvamp]

The Patriots have had a 1st and 4th round picks stolen from them. They're always picking at the very end of every round. That kind of thing adds up after a while, you know?

BB has also made some terrific moves.

- Signing Long in the first place.
- Signing Gilmore.
- Drafting Cannon and Mason and Thuney and Andrews.
- Picking up Amendola and Hogan.
- Signing Lewis off the scrap heap.
- Signing Burkhead.
- Drafting White.

And on and on.

Letting Blount go was fine. The Pats had terrific RBs this year.
Letting Long go was fine. He didn't want to stay anyway.
Trading Chandler Jones...well...I wish he could be here but it was cost prohibitive.

BB the GM is doing just fine.

 

[IllegalContact]

F*ck Blount

He laid the ball down against the falcons.

I’m pissed the defense didn’t pick up on all the runs to the right

 

[IllegalContact]

I think the collective intellect of patriot fandom is in decline

 

[captain stone]

...We've won a Super Bowl and been one 3rd-and-long whiffed tackle from winning another one since CJ was traded...

Are you referring to the Badmostly whiff during the drive that resulted in the Clement (non-)TD? I don't recall that being a long-distance situation, but if they hadn't converted, then Philly still would've almost assuredly punted because they were still deep in their own territory.

And the contract that Akeem Hicks signed with Chicago was only for 2 years/$10M, well within the Pats budget. Another example of Bill the GM failing both Bill the HC and Matt the DC.

 

[libra957]

i don't know about that,Bill the GM builts a competitive team every year.Sure it would be nice to win the superbowl every year but that's not reality. Bill the defensive mastermind, on the other hand, has been lost since our last victory against the eagles in 2005, it would be nice to have him back.

 

[Nikolai]

Say we win the Super Bowl 47-41 in overtime because we got the touchdown and 2 point conversion in regulation, won the coin flip, and drove the field again. Regardless of Brady passing for 650-700 yards in that scenario, that final score is still 41 points allowed by our defense in the most important game of the year. Everyone would be ecstatic about winning the championship, but it wouldn't change the issues that got exposed by Philadelphia and would follow this team around throughout the offseason.

Possibly. I mean, all kinds of things went wrong in SB51; the defense missed tackles, the OL struggled for long periods of the game, Brady even threw a pick six, the worst of the worst sins for a QB. But all we talked about was how he came back and how brilliant it was for us to stick to the game plan, even when it was seemingly not working. All the bad things were relegated to the catalyst for us overcoming adversity.

I agree that the defense was historically bad, but winning cures a lot of ills. Losing...well...just look around

I'm interested to see what happens to this defense with Patricia gone. Does it improve under another coordinator or was Patricia the one band-aid holding an otherwise historically bad defense together throughout most of the season? I hope we get someone with some acuity in there as opposed to a bootlicker who happened to get lucky Patricia was leaving. Belichick needs someone to challenge him for a change rather than another in-house yes man.

I'll be interested to see what happens as well. But, as with any season of late, Hightower's health will be a factor. Let's cross our fingers.

 

[Chris Stevenson]

Possibly. I mean, all kinds of things went wrong in SB51; the defense missed tackles, the OL struggled for long periods of the game, Brady even threw a pick six, the worst of the worst sins for a QB. But all we talked about was how he came back and how brilliant it was for us to stick to the game plan, even when it was seemingly not working. All the bad things were relegated to the catalyst for us overcoming adversity.

I agree that the defense was historically bad, but winning cures a lot of ills. Losing...well...just look around



I'll be interested to see what happens as well. But, as with any season of late, Hightower's health will be a factor. Let's cross our fingers.

did you just say the o line struggled?

did you watch the game? they were very good against the supposed greatest defensive front since the ‘85 bears

 

[Nikolai]

did you just say the o line struggled?

In SB51? Yes.

I've been on the record here saying the OL in this game (SB52) was pretty damned good.

 

[Chris Stevenson]

Are you referring to the Badmostly whiff during the drive that resulted in the Clement (non-)TD? I don't recall that being a long-distance situation, but if they hadn't converted, then Philly still would've almost assuredly punted because they were still deep in their own territory.

And the contract that Akeem Hicks signed with Chicago was only for 2 years/$10M, well within the Pats budget. Another example of Bill the GM failing both Bill the HC and Matt the DC.

lmao

bb called hicks personally and offered more money

perfect 3-4 player,
but bb cannot control egos and lazy players who just want paychecks and to not take orders

hint: hicks is not a winner, wants to
collect paychecks and be a loser. that was the rap on him in new orleans. it is why he openly chose to go to one of the worst franchises
in the nfl

do your homework.