It takes a truly grounded person to consistently ignore the noise. Sooner or later, you’re going to have enough smoke blown through you that you begin to believe that all the laurels thrown your way make you special.
From outward appearances it would appear that after 18 years, Patriots coach Bill Belichick has succumbed to the worst elements of hubris. And from all outward appearances, it would also seem that owner Robert Kraft — no stranger to artificially-inflated sense of self-worth himself — is growing tired of his coach’s act.
We’ve seen this before. Kraft, then pretty much a rookie owner, messed with Bill Parcells, who turned around and left. This was ego vs. ego too, and Kraft lost.
For the next 20 years, Kraft acted as if he’d learned his lesson. Once it became apparent Pete Carroll was not going to perform the unenviable task of cleaning up the wreckage left from this monumental ego clash (which no one could have), Kraft hired Belichick and stayed out of his way. Until this year, apparently.
There is no definitive timeline on what went down, and how, with the Jimmy Garoppolo trade. It would seem, though, that Belichick had one thing in mind, Kraft had another, and that the owner pulled rank. Jonathan Kraft has gone on record as saying that the family feels Tom Brady has earned the right to decide when he wants to leave.
That would seem noble, but it’s not always in the best interests of the team. The best example is the Green Bay Packers, where the organization finally decided it needed to move on from Brett Favre and let Aaron Rodgers play. Think of Jimmy G. as Aaron Rodgers. The situations aren’t exactly the same. Brady has more gas left in the tank than Favre did at similar junctures of their careers. But age waits for no one, right?
Fast forward to Sunday, when Belichick, for reasons only he knows (and refuses to divulge) decided to bench Malcolm Butler.
Now, ignore all this crazy talk about showing up hungover for the Sunday morning team meeting. This isn’t Paul Hornung or Joe Namath we’re talking about. This is an undrafted cornerback who has worked hard and overachieved in the NFL. Even a smidgen of common sense will tell you that only the glamor boys can get away with that stuff, not guys like Malcolm Butler. And I’m sure Butler is fully aware of that.
The benching forced other players into unfamiliar roles, and the ones who had to take up the slack in Butler’s absence were torched by a backup quarterback (which begs the comment that the only way the Patriots could have possibly lost to a backup quarterback was if they put backup cornerbacks on the field).
One of the few other logical explanations for this is that Belichick truly believed that over the course of about five hours, he could coach these JV players up to the point where they could compete against Nick Foles. He lost that bet with himself.
Enter Josh McDaniels. The Patriots’ offensive coordinator was about to become head coach of the Indianapolis Colts. This must have really stuck in Kraft’s craw. One of the worst periods of his ownership (I’d have to say the Aaron Hernandez trial would be THE worst) occurred when the Colts organization called the Patriots out on allegedly deflated footballs — which ultimately resulted in Brady’s four-game suspension.
Why wouldn’t Kraft be upset that his heir apparent to Belichick was bolting … and for the Colts, of all teams.
There’s that. But if there were ever such a thing as an unspoken message breaking decibel records, this is it. Kraft went out of his way to pull McDaniels back to the organization, and there can only be one reason for that. McDaniels WILL be the next coach. There can be no ambiguity on this. And it’ll be sooner rather than later. The guy can’t wait around forever.
Belichick is 65. There may be a little bit of “get-off-my-lawnism” creeping in here. He was obviously bugged enough with Butler that he let it affect his team’s chances of capturing a very winnable sixth Super Bowl title. And then in an act that even a bad corporate human resources department would condemn, he let Butler twist in the wind for four hours while his defense was getting lit up.
At this point, this isn’t about all Bill’s quirks anymore. This wasn’t answering “today is Friday” when someone asked him for the 112th time whether Brady would play Sunday. This was the Super Bowl, and a decision that Belichick is obviously not comfortable explaining may have cost his team, and more importantly, Kraft’s team, the game.
All of which brings us back to the opening paragraph. Belichick always preaches that his team should ignore the noise.
But sometimes, the noise is a little too loud to ignore. And sometimes there’s so much noise that it penetrates that icy exterior and has an effect on you.
Belichick has had to read about how he’s a genius for 18 years. Could be that he just showed everybody how firmly he’s beginning to believe that. And it could be that Kraft senses that Sunday was the beginning of the end of the delicate balance that has always existed between the two.
