Monday 10/9/23
I think there's some chance--call it ten percent--that Bill Belichick could be fired today, along with his sons, and Bill O'Brien. That's what I'd do. Cut Mac Jones, who isn't only a back-up at best, but a team cancer. I wouldn't even want him around as a second or third-stringer. He's bad for a team, on the field and in the locker room. Make Jerod Mayo the interim head coach. You can't just keep going like this.
Belichick isn't going to get his record. Not in New England, anyway, and I can't see some other organization bringing him in at his age, after this showing going back to 2020. This could end fast for Belichick, with him gone from the league for good, save for documentaries and history-related halftime affairs, etc. Then again, Robert Kraft, as I've said, is a big part of the problem himself. He's not a leader.
One of the issues with the Mac Jones situation is you can't play him, but you don't have anything better than him. Bailey Zappe isn't any kind of an answer or even a spark in the context of this team. Use the rest of the season as early work on next year. In three weeks' time, I think, best case scenario, you're looking at a 2-7 record, but 1-8 is certainly possible. They are the worst team in the league, and, again, if it wasn't for Zach Wilson, they'd be winless. The Bears are bad, but they hung with Kansas City for a while. These Patriots are your pre-Bledsoe, early 1990s Rod Rust/Dick MacPherson Patriots.
The Patriots are at risk of becoming--if they aren't already--a moribund franchise. The Bears are moribund. Every year, they are an after-thought. They don't stack up, they're not going anywhere, and when was the last time it felt like they might do anything?
There's no talent on this Patriots roster. When I say none, I mean none. There isn't a single guy who is above average by the standards of this league. Football is a game of making plays. That means it's a game whose results are often determined by playmakers. Not systems. The Patriots' system is stuck in a bygone era, but more than that, you have an arrogant coach who is divorced from present day reality. You have an owner who enables this coach, who is paying himself twenty million dollars a year. That's where a lot of the money goes. Robert Kraft is cheap, too. They are trying to do things with band-aids and half measures while lining their own pockets.
In any meritocracy, you can't be successful when you make decisions based on cronyism and nepotism. That's what you're seeing. I think it's hilarious that Bill O'Brien is far underperforming the likes of Matt Patricia and Joe Judge--that disastrous duo--from last year as the offensive coordinator. They Patriots have just had 69 unanswered points scored against them. These are beatdowns you rarely see, let alone see in back-to-back weeks. Who's a plus player on this team? And look at these washed-up retreads who were never that good that they bring in. Juju Smith-Schuster? Come on. You are not going anywhere with a guy like that unless he's down your depth chart.
And another pick-six for Mac Jones. I don't like anything about this guy, and one can go back to 2020 in this record to see that I've been saying what is the clear-cut truth about him all along. You needed to move on from Belichick and clean house after the 2020 Cam Newton debacle. How could a rational person make any argument for Newton being the quarterback? That told me everything.
The Patriots have just had two of the worst passers--I'm talking as throwers of the football--in the modern NFL be their last two starting quarterbacks. Newton threw two-hoppers that bounced six feet in front of receivers, and Mac Jones throws pop-ups. And this guy's attitude sucks. He's a locker room lawyer, and he'll never be a leader. He's everything you don't want in terms of a quarterback. Get him off your team and out of your facility.
It's clear to me that Bill O'Brien--a meathead with a totally undeserved reputation who lands one top gig after another--despises Bailey Zappe, so I don't know how those two could work together. Zappe, at best, is a spark plug. A jolt of energy. In a pinch. For a half, a game. In the right situation. This isn't it for that.
I feel like with Jerod Mayo as coach things will just be more honest and on the level, including the effort and the intentions. I don't see that adding up to wins, but this has become a rancid football culture on this team. It's a rotting fish from the head down.
If this was a Shakespeare play, you could say that Belichick's arrogance is his fatal flaw. Like so many entitled people, he doesn't think in terms of consequence. All should just be given to him and everything should keep on keeping on.
The Patriots need to do the football version of a "Great, good luck," and move on.
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