Bill Belichick claims he isn’t a fan of living in the past.
Unless, of course, it suits the six-time Super Bowl-winning future Hall of Fame coach’s hypocritical point of the moment, as was the case Monday morning at his AFC coaches breakfast with the media at the NFL owners meetings in Phoenix.
“I don’t know, the last 25 years,” was Belichick’s bold response as to why Patriots fans should have optimism regarding their favorite team heading into 2023.
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Yup, Mr. Doesn’t Matter What Happened Last Week, Last Month or Last Year, puffed out his chest and reminded the world of two-plus decades of now-dated New England dynastic dominance.
Bruce Springsteen won’t hit the stage at Gillette Stadium until this coming August, but Belichick might as well have cued up “Glory Days” on this late-March morning at a fancy hotel in the desert.
Get out your DVDs, Yearbooks and Championship hats and t-shirts Patriots fans because those, apparently, are what you should be excited about these days!
Not Mac Jones.
Not free agent wide receiver addition JuJu Smith-Schuster or tight end trade acquisition Mike Gesicki.
Not new/old offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien and what should be a far more competent New England offense, Matt Patricia’s disastrous tenure now a thing of the past.
Not a cast of developing young players like Rhamondre Stevenson, Marcus Jones, Josh Uche, Kyle Dugger, Jack Jones and others who may lay a youthful foundation for success in Foxborough.
Nope, Belichick believes the optimism for a Patriots team facing its longest Super Bowl odds in decades, one many project to finish in dead last in the AFC East for the first time in decades, lies in the fact that back in the dynasty days the team was really, really good on an annual basis.
Ouch. That’s a tough but in many ways brutally honest look at the current lot in life for Belichick, his team and all of Patriot Nation.
Throughout the bulk of Belichick’s nearly 30-minute Q&A with reporters huddled in Arizona, the soon-to-be 71-year-old head coach answered many questions with “not sure,” “I don’t know” and, most frequently, “we’ll see.”
Yes, yes we will. Just as we have seen over the last four years when Belichick’s team has failed to win a playoff game. In fact New England came up short of even reaching the postseason in two of the last three years, losing records in those 2020 and 2022 campaigns led by quarterbacks Cam Newton and Jones, respectively.
The reality is that the post-Tom Brady era in New England has been a struggle. It’s been a competitive but rather unfulfilling grind that oftentimes lacked much in terms of entertainment value. Frankly it’s been maddeningly mediocre.
And to steal a phrase from another Hall of Fame coach, Tom Brady isn’t walking through that door. And if he did he’d be old and … well, maybe kinda good…but you get the point.
No one will argue with Belichick regarding the greatness past Patriots teams. Six Lombardi Trophies landed in nine Super Bowl trips under Belichick’s guidance are a testament to arguably the top dynasty in NFL history.
But none of that matters now, as Belichick has beaten into us media and fans alike over the years.
You can’t live in the past anywhere in this world, certainly not on an NFL field where change is the only constant and the scoreboard tells the tale for all the world to see.
But as Belichick digs in for another NFL season on the New England sideline – chasing Don Shula’s all-time wins record along the way – the legendary coach seems to be more enamored with his own successful past than his current team’s chances to break free from its recent mediocrity.
Most of “the last 25 years” have indeed been great in New England. No one could deny that.
It’s the last few seasons and the most important one, the next one this coming fall of 2023, that are of concern.