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I don’t think anyone is saying that but I think there is a bit of scorched earth thinking. If Brady leaves and Bill is still here then I’d love to see the team crash and burn. Serves them right.
They didn’t really crash and burn but the season without the GOAT did shine a spotlight on a deficient roster that GM Bill helped build and also showed that the all time great QB’s has more to do with the team’s success than a great coach does. Like I said before... Peyton Manning took Jim Caldwell to a SB. Caldwell is not a great or even a good coach. When Manning left... the Colts did crash and burn. Nuff said.
People are certainly saying that. I am not saying it is a majority or even a lot of the people criticizing Belichick, but it is a very vocal group.
But you are giving examples of short term success with a bad coach. A great QB can do that. I don't you could have twenty years of success with just a great QB and a horrible coach. You need both especially before they changed the rules to make this league more QB centric which covers the first part of the Patriots' dynasty.
And I fully admit that Belichick the GM is nowhere the GM that Belichick is as a head coach. There has been periods of time where he has been a genius as a GM, but there has been others when he was awful. I think early in the Belichick era he was a genius, but I think that was in part that he was doing things different. The Pats were one of the only 3-4 defenses left in the early 2000s. He was looking for seasoned veterans who may not be superstars, but were talented, worked hard, were smart, and would put team first. Also the league was more defensive focused so all he really needed to do was build a great defense and an efficient offense which played into his strengths on personnel decisions. He made stars out of casts offs and lower tiered players that many thought were not worth the roster spot or done for their careers.
Once teams started to copy him and other teams took his staff, it made it far harder on him. I think it reflected in at least a lot of his personnel decisions.