Cool Link Bedard’s magnum opus

[XLIX]

If Bob Kraft fired Belichick as his son advised him to after 2017, he wouldn't have won the 2018 Super Bowl.

If Kraft fired Belichick and kept Brady in 2019, Brady wouldn't have won his 7th Super Bowl on the same rapidly aging Patriots team we saw in 2019. Brady's late career would have finished with a whimper.

Belichick (who was not yet 70) would have gone to another team and Bedard would be writing this same letter in reverse.

If they fired Belichcik and kept Brady, we’d have that 7th Super Bowl and Belichick would, much like today, still be out of the NFL.

 

[Hammer of Thor]

If Bob Kraft fired Belichick as his son advised him to after 2017, he wouldn't have won the 2018 Super Bowl.

If Kraft fired Belichick and kept Brady in 2019, Brady wouldn't have won his 7th Super Bowl on the same rapidly aging Patriots team we saw in 2019. Brady's late career would have finished with a whimper.

Belichick (who was not yet 70) would have gone to another team and Bedard would be writing this same letter in reverse.

You can’t compare Tom Brady the QB to Jerod Mayo the HC.

Yeah, I think reasonable people can disagree on the pre-2023 part of things. I find myself landing more on the side of upstater, although I’m still peeved that all people involved couldn’t set their egos aside to have both Brady and Belichick here post-2019 even if that created cap space and risk later on. Not like the end result would have been worse than 2023 and 2024 which is what they were trying to avoid. Certainly many people took Bedard’s view of the pre-2023 situation but many didn’t.

However, 2023 and 2024 — the Mayo hire and Dynasty stuff — is 100% spot-on. So while I disagree with Bedard’s specifics about the past, I agree with him about the now, and I think most Patriots fans are in that same boat. That article was published before yesterday’s game, I hope he still feels that way today.

 

[Grogan14]

The tone of the letter was moderately condescending. I suspect it might just get Kraft pissed off

 

[maust]

Bedard is just another "nattering nabob of negativity" who makes $$$ off of bashing the Patriots..
For some reason that is well liked among many fans today..

In this open letter he’s pretty much right, though.

Both are true

 

[maust]

The tone of the letter was moderately condescending.

It woudn't be Bedard if it wasn't

 

[Stu Pidassle]

If Bob Kraft fired Belichick as his son advised him to after 2017, he wouldn't have won the 2018 Super Bowl.

If Kraft fired Belichick and kept Brady in 2019, Brady wouldn't have won his 7th Super Bowl on the same rapidly aging Patriots team we saw in 2019. Brady's late career would have finished with a whimper.

Belichick (who was not yet 70) would have gone to another team and Bedard would be writing this same letter in reverse.

The fairytale vision that Brady would retire after winning another SB with the Pats and that BB would hand the team off to his sons when he retired was not based in reality. I agree 100% Brady would have wasted the last years of his career if he stayed. It would have been better for BB and the team if he was fired after Brady before he got too old and his reputation was irreparably damaged. The half considered moves to sign Mayo as the Brutus in waiting and forcing BB to take more input on personnel decisions proved to be like bad patches that ultimately caused the foundation to crumble.

To be fair RKK was in a tough position and likely eager to avoid taking on unpopular decisions while pursuing the HOF. With the addition of Maye now is the time to make the hard decisions necessary to set the teams course for the future and cement RKK's legacy as the accountable leader of the organization. One way or another the team needs to bring in people with NFL experience. In my opinion Wolf has a bad track record and needs to go. If Mayo stays, the best case is that we have a couple more years of growing pains before he becomes a good coach. A strong GM/president of football operations and proven coordinator(s) need to be in place to shepard Mayo along. Without that direction Mayo is extremely like to continue to struggle and will ultimately fail as HC.

 

[h0c2000]

Because there are so many reasons to be positive about this team….

Team is 0.390 post GOAT. This team doesn't have much room for improvement playing at such a high level.

 

[Grogan14]

Next year will be year 6 since Brady left.
Team keeps getting worse.
Time for major course correction

 

[Ross12]

Oh I wasn't.

I was talking about the first half rendition which to me undercuts everything else he has to say

Gotcha. Yes, in my opinion the piece could have done without that. It's not really important to the overarching issue.

 

[Ross12]

The tone of the letter was moderately condescending. I suspect it might just get Kraft pissed off

True, but I think it sort of had to be, right? If it was soft and flowery and catering to ego I doubt the point would come across nearly as well, especially when part of the point of the piece is the fact that such attitudes by others towards the Krafts are what got us here in the first place.

 

[Zuma]

I question some of his articles but this one is good.

 

[upstater1]

The fairytale vision that Brady would retire after winning another SB with the Pats and that BB would hand the team off to his sons when he retired was not based in reality. I agree 100% Brady would have wasted the last years of his career if he stayed. It would have been better for BB and the team if he was fired after Brady before he got too old and his reputation was irreparably damaged. The half considered moves to sign Mayo as the Brutus in waiting and forcing BB to take more input on personnel decisions proved to be like bad patches that ultimately caused the foundation to crumble.

To be fair RKK was in a tough position and likely eager to avoid taking on unpopular decisions while pursuing the HOF. With the addition of Maye now is the time to make the hard decisions necessary to set the teams course for the future and cement RKK's legacy as the accountable leader of the organization. One way or another the team needs to bring in people with NFL experience. In my opinion Wolf has a bad track record and needs to go. If Mayo stays, the best case is that we have a couple more years of growing pains before he becomes a good coach. A strong GM/president of football operations and proven coordinator(s) need to be in place to shepard Mayo along. Without that direction Mayo is extremely like to continue to struggle and will ultimately fail as HC.

If I were Bob Kraft back then, I would understand that the team was in for a much needed overhaul. I would then do everything I could to make sure the team had all the money it could to hire top assistants to avoid the 2022 coaching fiasco.

But this mess all really starts in 2016 with the whole Garoppolo fiasco and Kraft interpreting Belichick's study of old QBs as a slight against Brady, and then it goes back to 2017 and the loss to the Eagles in the Super Bowl which for many fans, including Kraft, is somehow unforgivable, to the point of wanting to fire Belichick after that season, and then of all things, reinstalling Guerrero over Belichick's and all the other coaches objections, something that even noted Belichick-hater Danny Amendola believed was pretty sketchy.

I say all this because there's a pattern, and it stretches from Tuna to Carroll to Belichick's early years, and all that Kraft revealed about himself in the Dynasty shows that he's way too concerned about his public profile. What happened in those previous years explains so much about why we're we are today, but...

My analysis is the complete opposite of Bedard's even if we arrive at the same conclusion, and if you have a totally different analysis that arrives at the same conclusion, then that doesn't really help you if you listen to Bedard. If you operate by learning from Bedard's analysis, you're liable to make the same mistake again. Mayo is NOT the only bad head coach candidate in the NFL. There are plenty of them to go around.

 

[RobertWeathers]

Bedard: Dear Robert and Jonathan, here's a reality check on the state of the Patriots

To cut to the chase: you guys are on a long losing streak with the fanbase, and you are on the precipice of losing all the goodwill you built up for more than 20 years. The choices you make in the next month will determine whether this franchise ascends back to its rightful place as one of the...

www.bostonsportsjournal.com

Titled “Dear Robert and Jonathan, here’s a reality check”…

Great article. Spot on. Might be his best.

 

[Zuma]

So maybe this means somehow Bedard knows or believes that if Vrabel become HC then he may be ok with AVP as OC. Nowhere in the article did he say AVP should be replaced.

“2. Just to make things clear, Mike Vrabel and Josh McDaniels are in no way tied to each other going forward, at least at this point.”

 

[p8ryts]

In this open letter he’s pretty much right, though.

The turning point was when BB wanted to trade TB to SF and stay with Jimmy G. RK had two options then. Agree to the trade or fire BB and keep TB. He tried the band aid approach. That was the beginning of the end.

 

[Brotherblues]

Bedard is just another "nattering nabob of negativity" who makes $$$ off of bashing the Patriots..
For some reason that is well liked among many fans today..

I'm all for waving pom poms and getting drunk on spiked koolaid. It's just impossible at the moment until we cut the ball and chain and do a proper, responsible, professional search for a qualified HC. You'll find that many of us can be quite forgiving about the wins not flooding in immediately if the person in charge is not such a clear ball and chain to the franchise.

It's infuriating because we just got rid of the colossal handicap that was Mac Jones and hit jackpot on his replacement, only to have team brass saddle us with an equally impossible handicap by the name of Jerod Mayo.

 

[Ross12]

So maybe this means somehow Bedard knows or believes that if Vrabel become HC then he may be ok with AVP as OC. Nowhere in the article did he say AVP should be replaced.

“2. Just to make things clear, Mike Vrabel and Josh McDaniels are in no way tied to each other going forward, at least at this point.”

I don't know how important that really is though. I think as long as you're keeping the scheme itself the same (West Coast) then they can change the OC without a big impact. I do question how much of Maye's development is about AVP versus Maye himself just being extremely smart and a fast learner. Certainly AVP had some impact but a lot of the bedrock foundation is set, and there are probably only diminishing returns by keeping him.

 

[signbabybrady]

What a bunch of garbage. Really just a word soup trying to suck up to the talk show callers and message board/social media commentary.

First his rehash was wildly inaccurate and a pile crap.

Second I don't think he has a pulse on the fan base as a whole I think it's more a pulse on the whiniest loudest ones of the group. It's a pulse on the people who call in to talk radio and post on message boards and comment on his articles.

Lastly he doesn't even say fire Mayo so really all he is doing is crying about Krafts process and imploring him not to get it wrong going forward but he says even if that means keeping the current group.

 

[Steve102]

I'm all for waving pom poms and getting drunk on spiked koolaid. It's just impossible at the moment until we cut the ball and chain and do a proper, responsible, professional search for a qualified HC. You'll find that many of us can be quite forgiving about the wins not flooding in immediately if the person in charge is not such a clear ball and chain to the franchise.

It's infuriating because we just got rid of the colossal handicap that was Mac Jones and hit jackpot on his replacement, only to have team brass saddle us with an equally impossible handicap by the name of Jerod Mayo.

I truly feel that ownership is deluded by Mayo and his charm.

 

[patfanken]

Bedard is just another "nattering nabob of negativity" who makes $$$ off of bashing the Patriots..
For some reason that is well liked among many fans today..

what you said is essentially true. Today's media really isn't about sports, it's about the DRAMA, and when the drama isn't apparent, you as the reporter have to create it. Reporters, whose job used to be all about just telling their users what happened on the field, have ALL become columnists, freely interpreting any nuance any way they want to create that much needed drama. Right or wrong doesn't matter, creating a reaction, getting clicks is ALL that matters.

Bedard is no different...except in this one way. Bedard actually knows football. He looks at tape and studies the game. I respect him for that. BUT he has a business to run and for the most part it's all about creating emotions and creating clicks.