No, Patriots head coach Bill Belichick should not yet be on the hot seat as New England prepares to kick off the 2023 season on Sunday evening against the Eagles at Gillette Stadium.
But to declare that the 71-year-old Belichick should have a job for life in Foxborough thanks to his dynastic past successes is, well, idiotic.
That’s exactly what former NFL MVP QB and current WFAN/CBS analyst Boomer Esiason suggested on Tuesday during his first weekly appearance on “The Greg Hill Show,” pushing back against the idea that “some people” think New England’s coach could be on the hot seat depending on how the new season plays out.
“Those ‘some people’ are idiots,” Esiason said on WEEI. “You see Gillette Stadium. Did you see their new renovations? Do you see all the success that the Patriots have had? Everybody knows who they are because of the success that Bill Belichick has brought to that team. So, anybody that ever even talks about firing Bill Belichick would be idiotic. And the fact is, the question really should be, how much longer does he want to do this? Because I think he has a contract in perpetuity for as long as he wants to coach.”
Two words were quite obviously missing from Esiason’s “idiotic” answer. Tom and Brady. But how could we expect him to understand the importance of quarterback play in regards to success in the NFL, right?
More importantly the answer was disrespectful. Disrespectful to the game of football. To the idea that New England’s two decades of success were built on being the ultimate meritocracy. The long-standing, well-entrenched idea that it didn’t matter how you got to Foxborough, but rather what you did when you got there. Undrafted rookies were just as likely to make major contributions on the field as first-round picks or big-money free agents. It was inherent in the Patriot Way.
Esiason’s comment was disrespectful to the way Belichick handled his business over, as the coach regrettably reminded us this spring, “the last 25 years.”
Every new season Belichick would redouble his efforts to convince us that in the world of New England football everyone has to reestablish themselves, their abilities and their role in the organization.
Didn’t matter whether your name was Belichick. Or Brady. Or Matthew Slater.
Hall of Famers and roster bubble bodies alike.
The past was left in the successful past. The present was all that mattered in Belichick’s world.
And Belichick’s foundational philosophies melded with much heralded on-field talent to create a run that may never be recaptured in professional football, even if Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes are currently asking us to hold their boycotted Bud Lights.
We all know that Belichick guided the Patriots to nine Super Bowls. Won six of them. His teams dominated the AFC East “competition.” The Patriots rolled out of bed and into the AFC title game on an annual basis.
That was then. And boy was it a fun run.
But things haven’t been quite so great since TB12 took his talents and his Lombardi-tossing ways to Tampa Bay.
Over the last three seasons Belichick has a 25-26 recorded, including the postseason. He’s “led” the Patriots to two losing seasons in the last three years. It’s a three-year run of maddening mediocrity that’s worse than the one that Robert Kraft fired Peter Carroll for back in the late 1990s.
He’s overseen a transition that’s yet to gain much traction. His team has been likely to commit a key penalty or make a costly mistake at a critical moment, plays “uncharacteristic” of Belichick teams.
Belichick teams of the past anyway.
Oh, and a year ago Belichick made arguably the worst, most ill-advise decision of his New England tenure with the “experiment” of career-long defensive assistant Matt Patricia running the Patriots’ offense.
The results were predictably putrid. Mac Jones paid for it. The Patriots paid for it. Patricia paid for it. Patriot Nation paid for it.
Yet, according to Esiason, we should ignore the recent results of Belichick’s work and simply live in the glory days gone by at Gillette like this is some Bruce Springsteen concert on a steamy August night?
Sorry, Boomer, but THAT is an idea that’s truly idiotic.
Belichick built a Hall of Fame career, in part, by making tough decisions. He moved on from the likes of Lawyer Milloy, Richard Seymour, Ty Law, Logan Mankins and, yes, Brady, when he thought the time was right. When he believed that it was “in the best interest of the football team.”
If we learned anything in the divorce with Brady a little more than three years ago now, it was that no one is above the team in New England, a place where production, performance and here-and-now results are all that matter.
No one.
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