There's no better person to speak about what is going on in New England than former Patriots outside linebacker Willie McGinest.
After being drafted by the Patriots in 1994, Bill Belichick released McGinest in 2006.
Even though he was Robert Kraft's first draft pick and the two had a really close relationship, even then Kraft didn't step in to try and stop Belichick. This is why McGinest believes Kraft didn't force Belichick to do anything as it relates to the trade of Jimmy Garoppolo.
"[Bill Belichick> is not forced [to do anything>," McGinest said Friday on NFL Network's NFL Total Access. "Bill Belichick, if anybody knows how that works, he is the football operations. He does everything. And even in my situation when I was let go, Mr. Kraft -- I was his first draft pick and we have a really, really close relationship -- he didn't step in on that situation. So Belichick's going to make certain decisions, he's going to go to ownership and he's going to make sure they are OK with those decisions. But make no mistake about it, he runs football operations.
"If you didn't make a deal before the season, if you didn't make a deal before the first deadline, the last deadline -- you had to make a decision or else you were going to be paying Jimmy Garppopolo somewhere north of $25 million."
McGinest also has some good insight as it relates to Alex Guerrero, as he actually brought him to New England and introduced him to Brady. McGinest said working with Guerrero was always seen as extra and a way to gain an edge.
"It was kind of funny because that pressure was created by us when we were there with the Patriots, and Tom Brady was part of that as a younger player," he said. "We created the pressure that if you're not doing way more than enough, then you're [not> doing enough. If the organization required you to do two days of weight training and all these different things, we would double that. So I think first and foremost you had to make sure you went well and beyond the team, the organization required you to do. And then Alex Guerrero was an extension of that which we called getting the edge -- trying to get better, doing more than what everybody else was doing.
"So Alex was an extension of what the Patriots required, and we created that in the locker room because we wanted to compete at a high level. If you weren't doing way more than what everybody else was doing, in our opinion you weren't doing more. So we created that as players."
Here's what @WillieMcGinest thoughts are on the current state of the @Patriots and what's in store for the future. pic.twitter.com/yuv7TfPt4q
— NFL Total Access (@NFLTotalAccess) January 6, 2018
