Wozzy
Pro Bowl Player
- Joined
- Mar 6, 2018
- Messages
- 15,034
- Reaction score
- 21,271
Bob gave Tom his walking papers, allowed Tom to become a free agent when the Patriots clearly owned his rights. That wasn’t Bill…Daring to respond to the Off-Thread nonsense….
Kraft is the owner, IMHO it’s 50-50%. If Kraft had said: “Bill, Tom is a Patriot for life. I don’t give a **** if I eat 4 years of salary cap with him as the 53d player on roster who can’t even be fit enough to practice. I don’t care if I go in cap hell after he retires. YOU figure it out how to keep him here.” It would have been done.
I am not sure tom would have played along, the outlook for that TBay ring was nowhere near the same as in NE. But they could have got it done before they gave him the no-franchise contract. After that they were on a one-way ALLEY (with no turns).
Also Bob brokered the peace when Bill was going to ship Gronk to Detroit for playing hardball over money. So Bob was involved in personnel and contracts, even if he never held a hardline or told Bill who to draft or sign. That all changed in 2021 when Bob said personnel was becoming a collaboration after just hiring Wolf.
The Krafts wanted better results from the draft, we all did, and that was within their rights to be critical… but pretending it didn’t happen now just so some haters can lay everything that happened personnel wise after 2021 in Bill’s lap is haterade.
Bill had total control from 2000 until 2020.
2021-2024 it was collaboration.
2025 it was Vrabel/Cowden.
This is how it happened, our shared life experience. What Bob said after it crashed and burned or put in a hit piece documentary doesn’t change the timeline.












