Coming off of Sunday’s season-ending loss against the Jets, one thing was obvious on Monday for Patriots head coach Bill Belichick.
It’s business as usual, with Belichick seemingly already starting the process of moving on to 2024.
Despite all the speculation about his future, Belichick appears to be operating as someone who is planning on being here to oversee it. He met with reporters on Monday dressed in the same pinstripe shirt he wore following Sunday’s loss, looking like a guy who has neither slept nor left the building, clearly knowing that there’s plenty of work to be done.
He pointed out during his media appearance that he’s under contract, and that he’s going to continue working hard to help his team improve from where they are as they move forward into the offseason.
“I’m under contract,” said Belichick on Monday. “I’m going to do what I always do, which is every day I come in, work as hard as I can to help the team in whatever way I can, so that’s what I’m going to continue to do. Today was kind of the wrap-up day for us with the players. We’ll have a meeting with them and then go from there.”
Belichick also said that the process this offseason will be similar to what it’s been in the past. He’ll be meeting with Patriots owner Robert Kraft, and from there the staff will go through a “detailed analysis,” beginning what he called a “reconstruction” of their roster.
“I’ll meet with Robert like I always do, meet with the staff, meet with the personnel department, kind of recap the season with the big picture and look at some of the individual situations that are looming, one way or another,” said Belichick. “But that’s obviously a long, long way off from where we are right now. So we’ll start, at the end of the day, putting the pieces back together in terms of setting things up to go through a good detailed analysis and kind of start a reconstruction, if you will.”
Obviously, the biggest issue this season was a serious lack of talent on the offensive side of the football, which ultimately submarined their season. It started with trouble along their offensive line at the beginning of the year, with their lack of depth at tackle a clear problem as they struggled both in the passing game and in running the football.
From there, they clearly lacked any real impact player at receiver, with the offense struggling to replace the production from Jakobi Meyers, who departed over the offseason. Second-year receiver Tyquan Thornton also started the year on injured reserve, and was still not much of a factor after he came back, finishing the season with just 13 catches for 91 yards while closing out the year as inactive during Sunday’s loss against New York.
(PHOTO: David Butler II-USA TODAY Sports)
The problems certainly go a little deeper, but the one thing we know is that the team-building aspect of things ultimately cost them this season, which brings us to where we are now.
Whether or not he’ll be a part of the process moving forward is the big question. As he gets ready to speak to ownership, one thing that was interesting on Monday was the fact Belichick sounded like he was open to relinquishing his personnel duties.
“Look, I’m for whatever collectively we decide as an organization is the best thing to help our football team,” said Belichick when asked if he had given any thoughts of letting go of the personnel and draft duties going forward. “I have multiple roles in that, and I rely on a lot of people to help me in those responsibilities. If somebody’s got to have the final say, I have it. I rely on a lot of other people to help, and whatever that process is, I’m only part of it.”
Belichick was asked heading into last season whether or not he felt the moves they made over the offseason were enough to make them both a playoff contender or potentially even a championship football team. One comment that he made was interesting as he said that they made the best moves they could “given the options” that were available.
“Well, the moves that we made, given the options that we had, I felt like we did what was best for the football team each time,” said Belichick. “Obviously, the results aren’t good. Some of those things were, I think, positive, some of them didn’t work out as well as we hoped they would. Then there were other circumstances in some of the other decisions as well.”
“We’ll go back and look at all of them and again, look forward to working towards solutions and things that will improve our team.”
How much say he’ll have there as it comes to player decisions moving forward is something that will likely be discussed, but that’s ultimately in the event ownership isn’t ready to part with him just yet.
For now, he sounds like a guy who isn’t going anywhere, and that appears to be the plan. That is, of course, unless either Robert or Jonathan Kraft decides otherwise, which is the question everyone in New England will be waiting to learn the answer to in the days to come.
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Ian Logue is a Seacoast native and owner and senior writer for PatsFans.com, an independent media site covering the New England Patriots and has been running this site in one form or another since 1997.
