The Draw Play

When Belichick got fired it was simultaneously a shock and made perfect sense. It was a shock because holy shit, they just fired one of the greatest coaches of all time, how can you do that? It made perfect sense because Belichick’s time in New England had gone far south, his prime was long past, and it genuinely seemed like the right move. I don’t think you can look at what happened to the Patriots over the last few seasons and not understand why it was time to move on.

When Belichick didn’t get hired in the 2024 hiring cycle, it was again a shock and made perfect sense. Probably a bigger shock this time around though. People were trying to predict where he would end up for most of the latter half of the season, myself included. I had the Chargers and Commanders high on the list. Neither team even interviewed him. The Chargers immediately put all their cards on the table for Harbaugh and the Commanders simped for Ben Johnson until he told them to eat shit and then they pouted and pretended Dan Quinn was their guy the whole time. I have a suspicion Bill didn’t have any relationship with the new Washington ownership group and therefore didn’t entertain that position, and they were looking to make a different sort of splash.

On one hand, it was fucking Bill Belichick! The greatest coach of the modern era! He was just sitting there for the taking and nobody hired him? Dan Quinn got a second gig but Belichick didn’t? Hell, only one team even bothered to interview the guy, and it was the Falcons? The Falcons gave Belichick a lengthy interview process and it felt like a done deal until suddenly the Falcons did a big pivot and hired Raheem Morris instead. Coincidentally, in my original speculation post about Billy’s landing spots, this was my quote on the Falcons:

–Falcons – If you put 5 toilets in your bathroom that would still be less of a waste of space than Arthur Smith. The Falcons don’t have a QB but they do have a lot of wasted skill position talent that Bill has gotten good use of before. Bill would actually use Bijan. I don’t see it happening though, Falcons feel due for a hot young McVay acolyte type.

Morris is older now and has already been a head coach twice, once for Tampa and once as Atlanta’s interim after Dan Quinn got axed. But he worked under McVay so I’m going to count this as a Dave win anyway. Don’t agree? This is my website, eat my ass.

After it became clear that Belichick would not coach in 2024 the genuine surprise quickly made way to understanding. The same reason Belichick essentially got fired is the reason Belichick wasn’t the hot commodity for any other position. It’s not his ability to coach a football team. It is his now greatly diminished ability to manage a football team. Bill has spent the last 20 years as the defacto king of New England. He was the coach and had all the personnel power. He was god. It would make sense that he would not want to relinquish any of that power in the same way that the CEO of a major company isn’t going to take a non-CEO position somewhere else should he decide to leave. Belichick has spent 2 decades running the team his way, and he undoubtedly wanted that level of control in Atlanta. Atlanta felt differently. Now our boy is out on the street, sitting alone on a park bench telling uncomfortable passersby about Cover Zero.

What Belichick likely will not admit, to himself or otherwise at least for now, is that General Manager Bill Belichick is bad and doesn’t deserve a job. As longtime steady commenter Stunkei posted in Monday’s comments:

It’s not that Bill was always totally incapable of building a roster, particularly without Brady, it’s that his methods became outdated for the modern game and he was unwilling to adjust. His strategy worked back at a time where teams needed to be more stingy about how they spent money. He was savvy, knew exactly when to let guys go, and especially knew when to pull the trigger for the right player at the right time. It helped NE build some excellent teams before Brady ascended to being GOAT QB and achieve a ton of success at a time where constructing a Dynasty was thought to be near impossible. – Stunkei, cool guy

Belichick was a General Management master for a good long time? He was so good at it that we didn’t notice when he started to slip because we kept assuming his weird moves would work out like always. The annual trade-down out of the first round became a common Billy B Big Brain move. He was very good at picking up excellent second-level free agents for cheap and getting the best out of them, like Wes Welker. It was always infuriating when a mediocre or flawed guy would go to New England and suddenly turn into a baller. It’s easy to forget how much luster had washed off Randy Moss at the time the Patriots traded for him out of Oakland. He was still a star, but people had long started to overlook him after his troubles and mediocre Raiders performances.

Somewhere along the line though, Bill stopped being good at it, and only got worse. His trading down would never result in the hidden gems that it used to result in. His free agency signings were not working out like they used to. They threw a ton of money at guys in 2020 (Hunter Henry, Jonnu Smith, Nelson Agholor, Matthew Judon, Kyle Van Noy, more) and none of them would turn into that classic Patriots Job Doer. The drafts were arguably even worse. Do yourself a favor and look at the draft history of the Pats over the last decade and you will see…a lot of names you rightfully do not recognize. If you do see one you know, chances are they aren’t a Patriot anymore or they suck. You gotta go back to Chandler Jones in 2012 or maybe Jamie Collins in 2013 to see a decent first-round pick. Mac Jones and Belichick’s inability to remotely build around the kid as he turned pumpkin is likely what ultimately sunk him.

But on top of the player mismanagement, there is also the staff mismanagement. None of Belichick’s subordinates ever seemed to turn into good coaches. They almost universally came out of the Belichick system as an egotistical dickweed control freak hardass coach who had all of Belichick’s personality but none of his brains. But it became clear that Belichick also didn’t know what the hell he was doing when he started taking some of these guys back on staff. When he re-hired Matt Patricia, to run the offense, I think that was a big moment for people recognizing that “oh, he’s not smart anymore”. Belichick built a bubble around himself full of devoted yes-men who couldn’t get him back on the tracks after he started to derail. You’d have to assume he’d probably hire a bunch of those guys at a new gig, too.

So Bill the GM is the reason Bill the coach does not have a job in 2024. It may end up the reason Bill never coaches again depending on how things pan out. Belichick is not likely to ever give up the power he demands and spend his twilight years as a plain old coach dealing with a general manager making roster decisions he cannot control. There are open jobs in the NFL every season. Next year will bring a new host of landing spots. We’ll see where this goes.