2023-2024 NFL Season Thread • Page 2955

great read!

 

IN OCTOBER 2021, BRADY returned to New England as a member of the defending champion Buccaneers. Kraft and Belichick both had decided to let Brady go. No matter how much Kraft tried to distance himself from that decision, he approved it.

"He backed Bill," Brady told a friend at the time.

When Brady entered Gillette Stadium, he got a window into life in New England without him there. Kraft and Belichick coordinated to meet him shortly after he arrived. The field seemed like the best place, because one of Brady's rituals was to walk it before games. But when Brady saw a thicket of cameras around, more than for any Patriots game in memory, including cameras for an all-access documentary coming out in February -- which in the words of a Kraft confidant "is an infomercial" and "pitch for Robert to get into the Hall of Fame" -- he stopped. He didn't want to be used in that way. Instead they met in the hallways inside the stadium. A camera crew found them, and Brady asked for some space. He didn't want those conversations to be weaponized in any way.

After the Buccaneers' narrow win, Belichick and Brady met alone near the visitors locker room. When Brady left for Tampa, he seemed to have a visceral reaction whenever someone raised Belichick's name "He doesn't know what he's losing," Brady privately said after he left. But in Foxborough the two men chatted for 20 minutes, and Brady later told friends that Belichick was conciliatory. Belichick didn't blame Brady for leaving: He admitted in the meeting that the Buccaneers were better equipped to win than New England in 2020, a season that required a reset of sorts after Belichick publicly said that the team had "sold out."

It was as close to a concession for how things ended as Belichick was capable of giving. Brady's grudge against Belichick eased, a confidence rooted in assurance that, coming off his recent Super Bowl triumph, he could afford to be magnanimous.


after Brady left -- 7-9 in 2020, 10-7 in 2021, 8-9 in 2022 -- and most of all, the way the team was trending downward, caused the Krafts to assert themselves more in football operations. Three moves during the 2023 offseason show its effects.

One was promoting linebackers coach Jerod Mayo to a vague but favored status last January. The Carolina Panthers wanted to interview Mayo for their head-coach opening in early 2023. Kraft swooped in, as he did with Josh McDaniels in 2018 when he was about to leave for the Indianapolis Colts. The team issued a news release, signed by Belichick, saying that the Patriots were working on an extension for Mayo that would keep him with the team "long term." That type of public declaration of a staff transaction was unprecedented in the Belichick era -- he has been title agnostic with coaches since his days in Cleveland, and often waited until the eve of the season to release basic details about his staff -- and it struck those close to the head coach that the Krafts were sending a message to fans that they were becoming more involved. And that they had a successor picked out. Kraft later told reporters that Mayo was the "heir apparent."

The second was hiring Bill O'Brien as offensive coordinator. Belichick signed off on bringing him on for a second run -- O'Brien was on the Patriots' staff from 2007 to 2011 -- but it was a move heavily influenced by and advocated for by the Krafts. O'Brien had success as a head coach in Houston, more than any other coach from Belichick's New England run. O'Brien reminded other coaches that after 2022's Belichick-designed offensive failings under Matt Patricia and Joe Judge, he was brought in to "fix the offense."


Then, during offseason planning meetings, Belichick later told people in the building, he raised the idea to the Krafts of trading quarterback Mac Jones. The Krafts had embraced Jones after he was drafted in the first round in 2021, hoping to build something close to a Brady-like relationship with him. Jones played well as a rookie under then-coordinator McDaniels, then regressed in 2022 under Belichick's patchwork offensive staff. Ownership argued against trading him, wanting to see what Jones could do with O'Brien calling plays, which this past week they denied saying through a team spokesperson. Belichick technically could have traded Jones, but he ceded to his bosses. Longtime observers of the Patriots noticed a disconnect in training camp, when Belichick in news conferences almost went out of his way to not compliment Jones. It had already been a strange offseason. At one point, Belichick and Kraft publicly needled each other over the team's cash spending. Which Belichick hinted was a reason for the lack of recent success. Kraft made it public that he expected a return to the playoffs. Once again, it was coming down to how each man viewed the game's most vital position.

"I'm going to do what I need to get my quarterback the right people," Kraft told a confidant.

 

KRAFT DECIDED TO MAKE the opening of the 2023 season a celebration of the team's storied past. He invited Brady to return for a halftime ceremony. The night before the game, Brady and his family had dinner at Kraft's Chestnut Hill home. It was clear that Kraft was trying to do more than prepare for a ceremony for Brady the next day. He was trying to make amends for the quarterback's awkward departure. The night at Kraft's house was warm and friendly. Brady's family joked that they were happy that he had retired but were so bored without his football games, their first fall of freedom since he was 14. Kraft had been forgiven by the Bradys in a way Belichick had not. Tom Sr. often jokes that he has "Irish Alzheimer's" with those he believes did his son wrong, such as Roger Goodell and the rest of the league, seared into his brain. The Bradys believe in loyalty in a sport that celebrated it, and from a Patriots franchise that has made emotionless roster decisions part of its ethos. When the San Francisco 49ers traded Brady family hero Joe Montana to the Chiefs in 1993, Tom's mother, Galynn, wrote the team off forever. To this day, she cheers against the Niners.

The afternoon after dinner with Kraft, the Bradys watched the Patriots play the Eagles from the owner's suite. The family never spoke to Belichick during the trip. The crowd seemed most engaged when Brady sprinted down the field at halftime, capped with his signature fist pump. Brady sat next to Kraft as they watched early editions of the hallmarks of the 2023 Patriots: good defense, turnovers on offense, inability to jump to an early lead, which exposed even worse deficiencies. Everyone in the suite knew that Brady could have stepped in at halftime and been the best quarterback on the field. Over the years, those in Kraft's orbit have heard the owner "put down Belichick at every opportunity," a source close to Kraft said. This game was no different. Kraft's open mocking of Belichick -- a common line was "the great, intelligent man" -- was the worst-kept secret in New England. Although he denied saying it through a team spokesperson, Kraft used that line too many times to too many people for it to remain a secret.
EVERY LOSS DURING THE Patriots' 1-5 start added to the running tally of Belichick and Kraft's record without Brady. As the math got worse, the relationship between Kraft and Belichick remained unchanged on the surface -- they were businesslike and distant, two men in an unhappy marriage who couldn't afford a divorce -- and was decaying in private. The relationship between Jonathan Kraft and Belichick, never strong, worsened. Jonathan is protective over his father's legacy and watched for years as Belichick refused to acknowledge him in the hallways and dismissed him as obsessed with optics. In late 2022, according to a first-hand account, which Jonathan denied this week through a team spokesperson, Jonathan was talking to friends when one of them brought up New England's losing season.

"That guy's got to go," he said about Belichick. "He's done."

The losses, combined with the structure Kraft helped set up -- empowering Mayo and O'Brien -- subtly eroded Belichick's authority inside the building. The personnel and coaching staffs, intertwined for most of Belichick's run to avoid the type of back-stabbing common on other teams, started complaining about each other. In years past, Belichick would set a vision and leave it to the staff to execute it, leading to long discussions and creative solutions. That high-level collaborative roundtable was a thing of the past. People in the personnel department privately said that it was "amateur hour" with the coaches on game days; coaches complained that those on the personnel side were incapable of implementing Belichick's ideas. O'Brien, humbled by the inept offensive performance, was invested in finding a solution with Belichick. Mayo sometimes brought a baseball bat to meetings, swinging it around while the rest of the coaches had their heads down, projecting an attitude that he was separate from the rest, a favored son. Jonathan Kraft and the senior vice president of business affairs for the Kraft Group, Robyn Glaser, would chat with staff off to the side, asking why the head coach had made certain decisions. The subtext of the conversations was that life in Gillette Stadium might be different soon.

Belichick, who since the last Super Bowl win had slowly lost the core of his brain trust -- Ernie Adams, McDaniels, Patricia, Jack Easterby, Dante Scarnecchia, Nick Caserio -- had a mostly loyal staff who felt pinched between their boss and ownership. Word leaked around the office that if Belichick were gone in 2024, football operations would be split between Glaser and Jonathan Kraft. Patriots coaches and executives thought that "the Krafts' meddling has got everyone spun around," a source on the personnel side said.

Belichick's missteps on roster construction -- and in games -- had given the Krafts an opening. The offense had no explosive players. Jones looked lost; the alternatives looked worse. Belichick cut backup Bailey Zappe in the preseason, then re-signed him after he cleared waivers. Players thought third-stringer Malik Cunningham could have added a big-play dimension to the offense, but he saw action only in a loss to the Raiders on Oct. 15. He was cut a week later -- and 10 days after Belichick signed him to a three-year contract -- and signed by Baltimore, the type of front-running move the Patriots used to execute. Local reporters asked Belichick and O'Brien whether Jones would be benched; instead, Belichick left him in games, even when it was clear the quarterback was losing confidence.

 

A f--- you to Kraft," a confidant of Belichick's said.

Kraft remained mostly silent publicly, not speaking to reporters at October's league meetings about the state of the team. But his ideas for how to replace Belichick started to leak. Trading for then-Titans coach Mike Vrabel was on the table, even if a long shot, bringing home a former Patriot who'd had success and seemed to be a perfect mix between Belichick's tactical genius and an ability to relate with players. Word of interest in Vrabel found its way to The Boston Globe. After that, there was an NFL Media report -- seemingly from Belichick's side -- that he had signed a "lucrative, multiyear" contract. Both men appeared to be leaking against each other. As the season neared its halfway point -- and New England lost to Dallas and New Orleans in consecutive weeks by a combined score of 72-3 -- Jonathan Kraft was as involved as ever, hammering Belichick behind the scenes about personnel decisions, as if slowly building a case to remove the coach.

"He's been brutal," Belichick told a friend.

THE PATRIOTS' GAME IN Frankfurt, Germany, on Nov. 12 stood out as a window into the dysfunction of 2023. The Krafts told confidants that Belichick was safe until that game, but after that, there were no guarantees. The question was what the Patriots would do if they were to fire Belichick. Would Mayo be the interim coach? Was he ready to be a head coach in 2024? One of the benefits and issues of Belichick's run was that there wasn't a lot of infrastructure in New England. It was mostly Belichick, everything flowing out of his experience and ingenuity. What would the hierarchy of the team look like for Mayo if he were to be the head coach? Nobody could answer it.

The relationship between Mayo and Belichick seemed strained to those inside the building. The Boston Sports Journal later reported that Mayo was rubbing other coaches the wrong way.

The Patriots lost in Germany, this time to the Colts. Jones was so broken that Belichick benched him for Zappe before the final drive of the game, New England's last chance at a comeback. In the coming days, there was no news out of Foxborough. It was business as usual, an unspoken message that Belichick would finish the season. Kraft "didn't want that to be how the relationship ended," a source close to him said. Instead, another source said, Kraft wanted "a soft-landing approach for Bill," where there would be a negotiated settlement. "Money isn't the object here," the source said. "The optics are." Nobody knew more than Belichick how sensitive Kraft could be to public perception.

The two men had spent 25 years together, including the 1996 season, when Belichick was a Patriots assistant under Bill Parcells. Both had a deep understanding of each other's vanities and insecurities, and in the end, they knew how to hit one another where it hurt. Belichick wasn't going to make it easy on Kraft. In quiet moments Belichick over the years has mused about running football operations at another team. The Giants, a team he reveres. Washington, near where he was raised. Even Dallas, because he has a good relationship with the Jones family and it would be a fun way to stick it to Kraft, who has asked voters why Jones is in the Hall of Fame, as a way of asking why he is not. But in the end, Belichick didn't want to be in the executive suite. He wanted to keep coaching. When situations get tense, Belichick has long liked to let them play out. His calm during stressful moments might be his true superpower.

He believes he loses leverage when he moves too fast. As the season went on, there were some whispers around the league and within the Patriots building about what it might be like for him to coach the Panthers, Bills, Bears, Bengals, Cowboys, Commanders or even the Eagles, if their late-season tailspin ends in an early playoff exit. But for most of this year, Belichick seemed most interested in staying put. If Kraft came to him after the season, he would make it clear to confidants that his plan was to say that he had done his best with what ownership wanted, with Mayo, O'Brien and hiring outside on the scouting side. He wanted to force Kraft to decide.

"He's going to have to move first," Belichick said.

 

Typo

thanks @JoshIsMediocre

 

BY DECEMBER, SOMETHING UNEXPECTED happened: People around the league who had spent two decades disliking but respecting Belichick started to feel sorry for him, watching how the Krafts left him to twist under a barrage of reports about his future. As much as other coaches and executives liked to mock the sanctimoniousness of Belichick, nobody believed in the Patriot Way quite like they did. New England offered proof that another road existed if only you had the discipline to follow it, to be ruthless enough to cross lines along the way and fearless enough to rewrite rules. Before New England's 2002 Super Bowl against the Rams, Belichick refused to play along with the ritual player introductions and insisted on taking the field together, as a team, no stars, no egos, just a group of proud, talented men with a shared goal and a willingness to chase that goal with relentlessness. That became the norm. The central enemy of the Patriot Way was all those pesky human emotions: kindness, loyalty, friendship, nostalgia, ego. Rejecting those urges is what led to the success, and the inability to reject them is what proved the other 31 teams unable to replicate the blueprint.

As New England's season started to wind down, and it became clear that the Patriots would again fail to make the playoffs, Kraft groused to his fellow owners, telling them he wished he had a winning team. Ownership told confidants that they felt the game had passed Belichick by. Coaches and players started to rally around their coach in a way last seen during Spygate, angry that their coach's job status -- someone in professional and cultural thin air -- was a constant debate topic. The Patriots beat the Steelers and Broncos, two teams with more at stake than New England, on the road in December. It was clear the team hadn't quit. "I saw no quit in Bill Belichick," special teams star Matthew Slater said at the end of the season. "If you had sat in our team meetings this week, you would've thought we were getting ready for the AFC championship."

"The Krafts should be ashamed of themselves," a Patriots assistant coach told a confidant.

Still, no matter how frustrated Kraft was during the season, he tried to keep options open. He had a vision of getting a draft pick for Belichick. If Kraft fired Belichick and whiffed on a replacement, he would have watched Brady win a Super Bowl as a Buccaneer and Belichick become the NFL's winningest coach ever for another team. Belichick rode the coaches hard down the stretch. His program doesn't allow anyone to quit. Every meeting has a meeting to prepare for it. Every conversation has a conversation before. Every drill has a drill as a prelude. But the building felt different. Belichick spent more time alone in his office. Over the decades he'd give assistant coaches projects toward the end of the season, preparing for the draft or free agency. He didn't do that this year.

In one staff meeting, O'Brien got angry with Belichick during a discussion about running plays. He stormed out. The rest of the coaches were quiet, unsure of what to do. Belichick just let it go, knowing it all would be over soon.

The weather was a mess for Belichick's final game in New England. A dynasty was born in a nor'easter in 2002. The snow that night was almost romantic, Belichick thought, light and strangely warm. There was nothing romantic about the snowstorm that arrived at the end. The field was slush. The stadium was 70% empty. He and Kraft passed on the field and didn't acknowledge each other. Not even a nod. The Jets -- whom Belichick hated so much that for a stretch he didn't list his time there on his official bio -- dominated the entire game and won, ending a fifteen-game losing streak to Belichick. The cameras swarmed as Belichick walked across the field with his face covered by a mask and a hood up. He looked down. Most fans left early to beat the traffic; he gave neither a wave nor a nod to those who stayed to thank him. He had ordered his life and his relationships around the demands and rituals of his craft. He grew up with a dream about what a football team could be if the game were taught well and players and coaches sacrificed celebrity and income for wins. The New England Patriots were the culmination of his life's work. He walked downstairs, ignoring fans clamoring for his attention, and down a hallway, until he was gone.

 

Lmao wtf

 

FOUR DAYS AFTER the loss to the Jets, Robert Kraft and Bill Belichick stood together on a podium, announcing that their run was over. As he did when he was announced as the Patriots' head coach in 2000, Belichick began with a joke. Last time, it was Belichick hoping the news conference would go better than his final one with the Jets. This time, he looked at the assembled media.

"Haven't seen this many cameras since we signed Tebow," he said.

He spoke for a few minutes, with themes of gratitude and appreciation. He thanked Kraft and "his family," not mentioning Jonathan by name. He didn't mention Mayo by name either; less than 24 hours later he would be promoted to head coach. Belichick got choked up only once: when talking about the fan base. He needed no notes. He knew exactly what he wanted to say. He then turned the microphone to his former boss. They shook hands on stage, as awkwardly as they did in 2000. "It's a very emotional day for me," Kraft said.

The statements were brief. Kraft and Belichick embraced at the end of it. A confidant of Kraft's who watched thought it was a virtuoso performance. "Robert's idea, throughout this process, was how can I look the best I can on this thing?" he said. "He got what he wanted. A hug at the end of the press conference. ... Completely amicable. It's an amazing performance because I don't think Bill has given Robert eye contact in a year and a half."

The news conference lasted less than 10 minutes, and it wasn't really a news conference: No questions were allowed, a Belichick show until the end. Brady wasn't mentioned.

THAT WAS IT. The end. Brady, Belichick and Kraft had all gone their separate ways. They had won big games together, and lost them, too, and along the way they had escorted one another through all of life's changes. On the night of Sept. 23, 2001, Brady, Kraft and Belichick were the only Patriots at Mass General, praying Drew Bledsoe would survive. Kraft witnessed Belichick lose both of his parents during the dynastic run, get divorced, and hire both of his sons to the Patriots staff. When Kraft's wife Myra was alive, Belichick used to hug her before and after each game. Both Bill and Tom were in attendance as Robert laid her to rest in 2011. The two older men watched Brady become a father, and Brady was grateful for how Belichick gave him days off during the 2007 season so he could fly to Los Angeles to see his newborn first son. Through so many moments -- when Kraft agreed to send the Jets a first-round pick for Belichick in 2000, during Spygate, during Deflategate -- they had no choice but to stick together until the turmoil passed.

Their shared Super Bowl rings, which grew more elaborate and ornate with each title, were monuments to their successes but also to the fact that they achieved those successes together. Without Kraft's money and patience and instincts, and Belichick's football education and ethic, and Brady's arm and determination and willingness to push the boundaries of achievement, none of these victories would have been possible. They needed each other, which may have been what drove them apart.

Tom Brady is playing a lot of golf and traveling the world these days. People who know him well say they're shocked at how timid he seems right now, starting over personally and professionally. Not long ago his parents caught themselves sitting together binging internet clips of their son's greatest touchdown passes. They like to do that from time to time. All 649. Retirement lands like a death in the life of a competitor. Brady ran sprints at times this fall, just to feel the feeling.
Belichick is now looking for a new team to build, new men to lead. This is the only life he's ever known. He grew up on campus at the Naval Academy, the son of a veteran of Okinawa and Normandy, and the military codes and rituals of his childhood remain hardwired. Before the Patriots' final Super Bowl, when all the rivalries and bitterness had already destroyed so much, Belichick invited a retired admiral to speak to the team. Adm. Thomas C. Lynch, who commanded aircraft carriers in combat, gave a speech familiar to generations of midshipmen. He reminded the Patriots of something their owner, coach and quarterback had taken further than any group of men in modern NFL history yet had somehow forgotten along the way: "Ship, Shipmate, Self." The Patriot Way was always Team, Teammate, Self, until it wasn't.

Belichick made clear in the news conference with Kraft that he isn't done coaching, at least not until he passes Don Shula. Kraft is starting over. At the news conference, he told the room that the coach would be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. He stood next to Belichick as he said it, but he looked alone up there, alone with his choices. He desperately wants to be in Canton, of course. It's one thing his money cannot purchase, beyond his control. There's a list of about 40 candidates that Hall of Fame voters have been paring down over the years, from Mike Shanahan to Mike Holmgren, and Kraft has struggled to break through. He was close years ago, when the dynasty was nearing its end but we still felt its presence, and feared it on Sundays. But time, the virtues of other candidates, some of the Patriots' rule violations over the years, and an issue of his own creation in Florida keep pushing him back. He wasn't among the finalists this year. He will be 83 years old in June.

 

Jesus Christ I didn’t know what I was in for, I’m sorry everyone

 

It’s practically impossible to select and copy text on the app, had to log in on safari

 

whoa

 

I hate Seth wickersham now

 

what even is all that

 

O god

 

Josh fuck off dude

 

That’ll be $20 please @EntryLevelTank

 

Did Josh have a stroke?

 

IM SORRY I WAS TRYING TO BE NICE

 

gifted story tellers are often only recognized posthumously