6 rings & football things: What should be next for Patriots as New League Year begins?
The final two episodes of The Dynasty: New England Patriots dropped on Apple TV+ on Friday morning, concluding the 10-episode docuseries recapping the greatest run in sports history that took place in Foxborough, Massachusetts.
Here are some rapid reactions, nuggets, and takeaways from Episode Nine: Breaking Point:
– Bill Belichick’s public support of Donald Trump ahead of the 2016 Presidential Election rattled the Patriots locker room.
After years of telling his team to not tell the media anything, Bill Belichick seemingly turned his back on them when publicly supporting Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election. The week of Election Day, the Patriots head coach dropped a letter off to the former president – which he read on stage at a rally in New Hampshire.
The players didn’t like it.
“When the letter came out, I felt kind of like, ‘Man we got kinda bamboozled.’ former Patriots captain Devin McCourty explained. “Bill always said things like: ‘We don’t want to have to be in the media talking about these different things.’ Like, I had some opinions that I might have wanted to share but, out of respect to the team, I didn’t.”
“I personally thought it was very hypocritical.” said Matthew Slater. “‘The Patriot Way’, it starts with respecting the men you work alongside and trying to put the team first. I mean that’s the foundation of this place. I just don’t think he was connected enough with his players at the time to realize that that was going to have an impact on the locker room.”
This was seemingly only the beginning of an eventual shattering in the New England locker room.
– The Tom Brady ‘aura’ takes another step.
After the Patriots’ 34-28 comeback win versus the Falcons in Super Bowl LI, Tom Brady seemingly took the next step in both his football and professional career – as he was widely considered the greatest player in NFL history.
“The building of TB12 business represented a new kind of independence for Tom,” said Robert Kraft. “Tommy was starting to separate from ‘team first all the time.’ As that happened, it created a certain amount of tension with Bill, especially when it came to Tommy’s relationship with Alex Guerrero.”
“We set off on this journey together,” explained Brady of his relationship with his body coach. “A journey of really being proactive about your health. And over that time I really encouraged all my other teammates to do the same.”
– Bill Belichick strips Alex Guerrero of Patriots team privileges.
In the middle of the 2017 season Patriots head coach took away Guerrero’s privileges with the team, essentially cornering him to only work with Brady. Guerrero was not allowed to:
-- Board the Patriots' team jet.
-- Be on the sideline on game day.
-- Treat players other than Brady at his Gillette Stadium office.
Needless to say, Brady was none too pleased:
“The whole situation,” the quarterback said. “It caused a lot of animosity. I mean it was so stupid because Alex is an amazing guy. He kept me healthy. I mean if I look at, there’s no way I play probably 12 years in the NFL without his commitment to me and our team. And then instead of getting credit for it, he got blamed. And I kept going, ‘What the f– is wrong with you people?!’”
“There was a lot of turmoil with Alex and the Patriots and I just didn’t even understand it,” said his teammate, Rob Gronkowski. “I’d be like, ‘Tom why are you getting pounded when you’re 40 years old and you’re putting up numbers like you’re 23 years old? You’re still the best quarterback in the league.’ I just didn’t get it. And he would never have an answer for me. He’d be like, ‘You know, Rob, I don’t know f— either.’”
– Robert Kraft says he never asked Bill Belichick to trade Jimmy Garoppolo.
After drafting him with the 62nd overall pick in the 2014 NFL Draft, the Patriots traded their backup quarterback, Jimmy Garoppolo, to the 49ers in exchange for a second-round pick in the 2018 draft. Many speculated that Bill Belichick, New England de facto general manager, was forced to move him by owner Robert Kraft.
Kraft says that wasn’t the case:
“I never asked him to do it,” he explains. “I just told Bill that we weren’t trading Brady. Ever. So, That made it a little awkward.”
– An answer to why Malcolm Butler was benched in Super Bowl LII? Not exactly.
As Patriots fans know, cornerback Malcolm Butler was infamously benched ahead of Super Bowl LII against the Philadelphia Eagles – a game New England lost 41-33.
To this day, no one truly knows why Belichick decided to not play his starting cornerback, who played 98% of New England’s snaps that season. Devin McCourty calls it, “One of the greatest New England mysteries of all-time.”
“I was very emotional, man,” Butler said of getting benched. “I didn’t feel like I was being treated right. Because I didn’t find out until the game that I wasn’t going to play.”
Josh McDaniels says he has no idea why Butler didnt play: “I don’t have one bit of information about that to this day.”
Neither does McCourty: “I talked to coaches, other players, like none of us ever heard what happened or why it happened.”
“People still ask me that to this day,” Butler himself said. “‘Why you ain’t play in the Super Bowl?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t know, man. Coaches decision.’ But the thing about it– I really don’t know. I really don’t. Just to like leave me watching my team suffer when I know I can help them. Like, not one rep. Not one rep.”
Team owner Robert Kraft, however, says he has a bit of an idea:
“What has been told to me was that there was something personal going on between Bill and Malcolm that was not football related.” Kraft explained. “I always felt that every decision Bill had made had been to put what was in the best interest of the team first and put emotion aside. But with Malcolm, he did just the opposite.”
Wide receiver Danny Amendola was pissed that Butler didn’t play:
“I remember walking off the field that night just really confused. That was the biggest game of our lives at the moment and Malcolm’s not on the field? That sh– kinda pisses me off still today.”
He continued: “I mean we played our asses off. Tom threw for 500+ yards which in a Super Bowl had never been done. We’re out there literally putting our bodies on the line, our heads on the line, for our, you know for our friends, our family, our teammates, and to not get an explanation like– I felt like we got cheated and honestly and I don’t feel bad saying that.”
Make sure to follow Mike on Twitter @mikekadlick, and follow @WEEI for the latest up-to-date Patriots and Boston sports news!
Related
