WaPo: "Bill Belichick is unchanged, at the peak of his dynasty and at its end"

[RobertWeathers]

people should go find Kevin Mannix articles from the Herald back when Krafty hired Belichick. Mannix accurately described Belichick as "duplicitous pond scum" based on Kevin's sources in Cleveland and their experiences with Belichick.
Belichick would have been fired by the end of 2002 had **** Rehbein not found Tom Brady.

This post is a joke. As a journalist Mannix was an elitist, entitled douchebag who thought BB owed him a story and he "deserved" answers to his questions. He hated Bill Day 1 for that.

 

[PATSYLICIOUS]

I don’t mind a few down years while we gave him one last run , but it’s important we move on quickly now that we know its over. He either needs to step down at seasons end or be removed

 

[Thelonious]

people should go find Kevin Mannix articles from the Herald back when Krafty hired Belichick. Mannix accurately described Belichick as "duplicitous pond scum" based on Kevin's sources in Cleveland and their experiences with Belichick.
Belichick would have been fired by the end of 2002 had **** Rehbein not found Tom Brady.

"Duplicitous pond scum." Great phrase.

It could be algae; it could be duck weed. Botany is a long-time hobby of mine. Here is a picture of duck weed, the lemnoideae,
a fascinating plant. This photo has not been vetted for duplicity, so exercise caution. The maximum size of Lemna minor, Common Duckweed, is about 1/8".

See the froggie?

 

[RobertWeathers]

Maybe you misinterpreted my post... Maybe you didn't and I misunderstood yours... Let me try to be clearer

You knew what you had in 2000... Same guy you have in 2023... Same guy who kept this franchise humming for 20 years.

Fundamentally BB has not changed the way he coaches... this should not be a surprise to anyone.

Guy is rock solid as far as I am concerned. If he is here next year, I'm good with that. Make a few tweaks in the scoutíng program/player eval, bring Josh back ànd lets roll .

That's my "so?"

I can't say hes changed the way he coaches or not.

What I can say is he is not coaching or running the organization as well as he had in the past.

Sub-optimal personnel moves...lack of discipline...lack of execution, etc.

If i'm looking to make a general statement about BB right now it's he's lost his fastball.

 

[Pape]

You are fine with him being GM going forward?

As I said the front office on the player eval side needs to be tweaked... Interpret that as saying "do your ****ing job well and if you don't we will find someone else who will"

For example - the guy who made the call that JJSS would be an acceptable replacement for Jakobi Meyers should be demoted to head toilet bowl cleaner

 

[Pape]

I can't say hes changed the way he coaches or not.

What I can say is he is not coaching or running the organization as well as he had in the past.

Sub-optimal personnel moves...lack of discipline...lack of execution, etc.

If i'm looking to make a general statement about BB right now it's he's lost his fastball.

Can't argue with any of that.

Steve102 stated in another thread the time honored axiom Players Win. Coaches Lose.

Given the sloppy play, unforced errors and just bad play bears that out.

 

[Thelonious]

As I said the front office on the player eval side needs to be tweaked... Interpret that as saying "do your ****ing job well and if you don't we will find someone else who will"

For example - the guy who made the call that JJSS would be an acceptable replacement for Jakobi Meyers should be demoted to head toilet bowl cleaner

I don't think "tweaking" is at all enough. Over the past few years, Bill has been by any reasonable measure a dismally failed GM. In my view he musty be entirely removed from the roster building work, aside from the input a GM typically gets from an HC, advice which the GM may take or not take at his sole discretion input (if he agrees to be HC only that is,, an unlikely outcome). If (again, unlikely) Bill agrees to giving up the GM in its entirety but staying on as HC, I would hope Krafts would make clear, as tactfully as possible, that he is welcomed back as HC effectively on a probationary basis. It seems to me that there are troubling signs - in the team's on-the-field performance and elsewhere - that Bill is declining in his ability to do that job as well.

I find it all quite sad, in all honesty, but...it is what it is.

 

[Pape]

I don't think "tweaking" is at all enough. Over the past few years, Bill has been by any reasonable measure a dismally failed GM. In my view he musty be entirely removed from the roster building work, aside from the input a GM typically gets from an HC, advice which the GM may take or not take at his sole discretion input (if he agrees to be HC only that is,, an unlikely outcome). If (again, unlikely) Bill agrees to giving up the GM in its entirety but staying on as HC, I would hope Krafts would make clear, as tactfully as possible, that he is welcomed back as HC effectively on a probationary basis. It seems to me that there are troubling signs -in the team's on-the-field performance, that Bill is declining in his ability to do that job as well.

I find it all quite sad, in all honesty, but...it is what it is.

Fair enough criticism.

I was trying to be diplomatic with the term tweaking.

The front office needs to change. How much of a change is needed? I do not know at this point.

Is that better?

 

[Stu Pidassle]

BB has been most effective when he has evangelists in the locker room who have bought in on the direction of the team and lead the players in the locker room. No one has stepped up to replace Brady, McCourty, Hightower or Edelman's leadership in the locker room as part of the rebuild. Slater and Andrews do not have the gravitas to do the job by themselves. With QB being more hit and miss, the team desperately needs an LT to come in to fill the leadership gap.

 

[cmasspatsfan]

I don't think "tweaking" is at all enough. Over the past few years, Bill has been by any reasonable measure a dismally failed GM. In my view he musty be entirely removed from the roster building work, aside from the input a GM typically gets from an HC, advice which the GM may take or not take at his sole discretion input (if he agrees to be HC only that is,, an unlikely outcome). If (again, unlikely) Bill agrees to giving up the GM in its entirety but staying on as HC, I would hope Krafts would make clear, as tactfully as possible, that he is welcomed back as HC effectively on a probationary basis. It seems to me that there are troubling signs - in the team's on-the-field performance and elsewhere - that Bill is declining in his ability to do that job as well.

I find it all quite sad, in all honesty, but...it is what it is.

From some of his statements in the last month or so I'm not sure that's already not happening, I don't know if he still has final say or not but he has guys doing the player evaluations.

 

[raduray]

A defense of Belichik's career as a coach that fails to address his failures as a GM.

"But it seems far more likely that the Patriots are playing inconsistently simply because they have had a cycle of poor drafts that cheap unheralded sweat couldn’t make up for,..."

And who's fault is that?

 

[Steve102]

Innacurate on every level

I think he may be on to something that needs a deeper look. Bill had guys here, the likes of McGinest and Bruschi who laid the foundation of the Patriot way. Bill brought in Cox to give them that eff you attitude, while having playmakers like Law and Milloy. Drafted a natural leader in Seymour. Then they discovered they had Tom Brady and what he became. Later, Tom Brady held everyone accountable to the message, guys like Wilfork and Harrison led the defense, while Gronk became the playmaker, with Jules showing the way of how to turn hard work into success.

All that's gone.

Slate is the voice that harkens all back to that, but who is listening? McCourty carried the message, he's gone. Brady had the 6th round chip on his shoulder, Mac has the first round "my shat lacks aroma" pedigree. Guys are getting benched for what we can assume is freelancing or not "doing their job". Boutte is talking to the media mid week about playing, only to get benched for what likely could be as simple as talking to the media. The best players, Gonzalez, Judon, and Bourne are hurt, the rest are mid level NFLers with no one to take the pressure off.

The story is that Bill is unchanged, but now no one of consequence is carrying the message. It wouldn't take long to have a mutiny on your hands without leadership among the players who carry out Bill's message.

 

[Thelonious]

Fair enough criticism.

I was trying to be diplomatic with the term tweaking.

The front office needs to change. How much of a change is needed? I do not know at this point.

Is that better?

Absolutely. As my wife periodically points out, I am not right nearly as often as I think I am. I'd actually love it if Bill could make a go of it as HC, but I doubt he'd stick around on that basis, and some of his HC work has been pretty suspect lately. I think there's little hope of Bill's being able to show us a renaissance in his GM work, but maybe he could bring that off in his work as HC, particularly if his workload is made more reasonable once he is relieved of his GM responsibilities. I'm in my seventies, retired since I was 74, so I know where Bill is in his working life. You get to a point where you have the same knowledge, but you just don't any longer have the "voltage" or stamina to do what you once did. In my case, at around seventy, I gave up a portion of my teaching responsibilities and stayed on as department head for a few years. Then I chose to give up that position in favor of a younger fella, and resumed teaching a couple of my favorite courses. I think Bill would have to make similar changes to have a shot at remaining effective, but I suspect he's probably too stubborn and prideful to do so. It's all very sad.

 

[raduray]

Here's the article:

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Bill Belichick has never been a pleaser, and he is as slit-eyed and lip-curled in these bitter end days with the New England Patriots as he ever was in his most triumphant ones. If the man is going out — and he may well be — it won’t be with any show of sentiment. He seems intent on doing so as a man of whole drab cloth and dour expression, his stoniness intact.
The swiftness with which Belichick has gone from a candidate for greatest coach ever to a man just trying to coax a 2-7 team into competence has allowed all of his backbiters in the door. Anyone he has ever been rude to or uncooperative with — and the numbers are apparently legion in the press — is now predicting he will be fired by season’s end and maybe before then, given Sunday’s 20-17 loss to an unseasoned Washington Commanders team that committed two turnovers. Gillette Stadium felt like a mansion gone to seed as the once-great Patriots heard scattered boos rain down. Belichick’s demeanor afterward was his perpetual one, that of a druid in a dank cell, his murmurs barely audible and lapsing into silence.
“It was all the way across the board,” he said, his words trailing off.
Here are some other samples of his postgame conversation:
“You should talk to them about it.”
Bill Belichick's empire has fallen
This was a hinge game, a clear flex point for two franchises fighting to find their identities and weighing whether to clean house. The results left Washington feeling far better about its quarterback, Sam Howell, and a host of rookies, while on the other side of the stadium there was a growing sense that a door is about to slam shut on the tenure of Belichick, who at 71 has not led a team to a playoff win in four years and counting, and whose boss, Patriots owner Robert Kraft, has expressed his unhappiness over that fact.
“The Patriot Way is dead,” Mike Florio announced on NBC’s Pro Football Talk on Sunday morning. He proceeded to shred Belichick’s career, positing that Belichick was always overrated and had been saved by Tom Brady and his influence on the league has been “a ****tail of arrogance and dismissiveness.” The New York Post blared, “Bill Belichick’s coaching tree has [an] alarming number of dead branches.” The Athletic jumped in on the pummeling by quoting an unnamed NFL executive calling for Belichick to be relieved sooner rather than later and labeling the Patriots’ descent from perennial contender to missing the playoffs “an indictment.” The theme of all these critiques is that Belichick’s demanding nature no longer works in the modern NFL and that maybe he never really was that good.
This is unjust nonsense. If it’s time to unpack Belichick’s legacy, then it’s also time to observe that the quality Belichick is blamed for now, his unwillingness to compromise and refusal to go with “the theme of the week,” as he once said, is the same one that made him for two decades, right up until 2021, a dynastic overlord whose only historical rivals are Don Shula and George Halas. Whose teams from 2000 through 2019 won a higher percentage of games than any other American franchise and who has racked up a career 31-13 record in the playoffs, along with six Super Bowls. That guy was not a hidden bum, covered up for by great quarterbacking.
One of the reasons Belichick has been such an uncooperative cuss all these years with the press is that he deeply suspects the effect of popularity, finding it … interruptive, corrosive. He’s an ingrained anti-elitist who, yes, has preferred to win with squads of thankless overstriving and underpaid “dependables” rather than superstars. That’s because he has always understood that football has far too many manifold dependencies to rest on one man’s arm or a genius headset.
And he has lived out the consequences of that view of the game, for better and for worse.
Once, at an event, Belichick agreed to have dinner with Peyton Manning. When a limo pulled up at their hotel, Belichick got in the front seat with the driver, leaving Manning alone in the plush back while he chatted up the working man at the wheel.
At his best, Belichick’s teams had a mechanistic, comprehensive excellence that could not be attributed to the virtues of any one player, no matter how great Brady was. Example: During their run of dominance, the Patriots committed fewer penalties than any other team in the league. In 18 playoff games between 2011 and 2017, they were whistled for infractions at about a 25 percent lower rate than their opponents. Think about that. They were fully one-quarter better than their opponents operationally when it counted most.
‘It’s going to be pretty powerful’: Damar Hamlin’s doctors ready for reunion
The one time I talked to Belichick at any length about his philosophy, he said this: “The No. 1 thing is unforced errors. It doesn’t matter who you’re playing. They don’t even have to be out there. If you can’t do things properly without resistance from an opponent, you’re in trouble. Start with that. Once you eliminate things like penalties, turnovers, mental errors, you know, you just go out there and get a play called and run it the way you’re supposed to run it. Until then — until you can do that — there’s not much of a chance to win.”
It’s not a bad diagnosis of what has gone wrong with these Patriots, a team that plays as if its shoelaces aren’t quite pulled tight. No play killed them against the Commanders more than a ticky-tacky offsides call when the Commanders were forced to punt with 2:29 to go, giving Washington a fresh set of downs. “It’s not on one person or one player, at all,” quarterback Mac Jones said later.
Sure, maybe Belichick’s manner is the main problem. But it seems far more likely that the Patriots are playing inconsistently simply because they have had a cycle of poor drafts that cheap unheralded sweat couldn’t make up for, coupled with an extraordinary amount of coaching staff churn. It’s not just that Brady is gone. They have shuffled coaches at several key positions since 2021, and two of their most superb teachers, offensive line coach Dante Scarnecchia and running backs coach Ivan Fears, retired over the past three years. It’s hard to maintain operational excellence with that much change.
Another possibility, of course, and one that can’t be discounted, is that Belichick could simply be more tired than he shows. But if that’s the case, don’t expect him to voice it.

 

[Family]

The real answer is Belichick is a great defensive coach, smart guy, football mind, but a lot of what he does as a pure Head Coach and GM just sadly wouldn't have - and has not - materialized into a long-term successful team.

There were locker room issues in Ckeveland, the first year here in New England, and again now post-Brady.

He went without an Offensive coordinator in his first couple of Cleveland years, and he tried to experiment at offensive coordinator here in 2022 with Matty P.

He alienated Kosar, and now he's alienated Mac.

This isn't even getting into his GMing.

It's not difficult. Bill has some great traits, and built some great defenses for sure. He had some great draft picks. Of course its a team game, of course coaching matters. But his flaws mentioned avove would have cost him earlier without Tom. The Patriot Way isn't- and was never going to be - sustainable without Tom Brady as captain. It's that simple.

The first time I have ever disliked a post because your Cleveland take is mostly fiction.

 

[ctpatsfan77]

Here's the article:

Ian has asked that copyrighted articles not be posted in full here, as that has led to issues in the past. Hence why I did not do so.

 

[Thelonious]

From some of his statements in the last month or so I'm not sure that's already not happening, I don't know if he still has final say or not but he has guys doing the player evaluations.

I think the present group of roster-workers is too beholden to Bill and is too likely to defer to Bill's judgment in the end, even though his judgment on such matters is proven to be dismally bad. We need a complete sweep with a wholly autonomous GM who can establish and maintain clear lines of responsibility which will prevent Bill's meddling. Bill's views should be sought and valued entirely at the new GM's discretion. I would have analogous concerns re Mayo's succeeding Bill as HC and would therefore hope for an HC hiring process which would give Mayo no particular advantage or standing.

 

[Thelonious]

I think he may be on to something that needs a deeper look. Bill had guys here, the likes of McGinest and Bruschi who laid the foundation of the Patriot way. Bill brought in Cox to give them that eff you attitude, while having playmakers like Law and Milloy. Drafted a natural leader in Seymour. Then they discovered they had Tom Brady and what he became. Later, Tom Brady held everyone accountable to the message, guys like Wilfork and Harrison led the defense, while Gronk became the playmaker, with Jules showing the way of how to turn hard work into success.

All that's gone.

Slate is the voice that harkens all back to that, but who is listening? McCourty carried the message, he's gone. Brady had the 6th round chip on his shoulder, Mac has the first round "my shat lacks aroma" pedigree. Guys are getting benched for what we can assume is freelancing or not "doing their job". Boutte is talking to the media mid week about playing, only to get benched for what likely could be as simple as talking to the media. The best players, Gonzalez, Judon, and Bourne are hurt, the rest are mid level NFLers with no one to take the pressure off.

The story is that Bill is unchanged, but now no one of consequence is carrying the message. It wouldn't take long to have a mutiny on your hands without leadership among the players who carry out Bill's message.

Yep. Short version: It's over.

 

[VrabelJr]

This full article breaks down some of it from 1993, below the link I pasted an excerpt

https://vault.si.com/vault/1993/11/22/the-last-straw-the-browns-cold-fish-coach-bill-belichick-is-unpopular-in-cleveland-where-he-did-the-unthinkable-he-cut-bernie-kosar

This is the excerpt:
"
Several recently departed Browns—Brian Brennan, Paul Farren, Webster Slaughter—have blasted their former boss for being an automaton who offers no positive motivation and sees players only as faceless cogs. Last summer defensive tackle Michael Dean Perry finally had enough and briefly boycotted Belichick's practices. Then, last month, receiver Michael Jackson upped the ante by fairly eviscerating Belichick during a meeting of the Ashland County Browns Backers, who are to the Cleveland brass what the UAW is to the Democratic Party. "If you question Bill, you're out of line." Jackson reportedly said. "He can't relate to the players." Tight end Scott Galbraith, cut earlier this season by Belichick and picked up last week by the Cowboys, calls Belichick's coaching "bully-ball" and draws comparisons to Napoleon.
"

I meant sources for this year’s team

 

[archstanton543]

Yep. Short version: It's over.

Ova like Roman egg.