No one chooses words more wisely or cares more about the message sent in a press conference than Bill Belichick. Hell, White House press briefings are less calculated.
So it was undeniably notable when Belichick created a bit of a palace intrigue buzz in Patriot Nation with the final response during his end-of-season Zoom with the media earlier this week.
The head of all things football in Foxborough was asked a rather simple question about his now two-seasons-old unprecedented free agency spending spree in the spring of 2021 and whether he felt he’d gotten bang for his roster rebuilding buck.
Belichick’s answer was anything but simple. His seemingly well-planned reply, almost like a question he’d prepped for, included his view of the NFL salary cap as something analyzed over a “time frame” rather than a “Polaroid snapshot” of one year, such as 2021 when New England indeed spent a couple hundred million dollars in free agency to attempt to upgrade its roster.
Using his criteria and his focus on cash spending rather than more customary salary cap considerations, Belichick declared that, ”Our spending in 2020, our spending in 2021 and our spending in 2022, the aggregate of that, was we were 27th in the league in cash spending.
“Over a three-year period, we are one of the lowest spending teams in the league.”
Gasp! Oh no he didn’t!
The immediate reaction from objective listeners – or to use the FCC’s barometer for obscene content, the average listener – was that Belichick had made a pretty pointed comment about New England’s investment in its roster, one seemingly pointed at the person responsible for writing the checks, Patriots owner Robert Kraft.
At some point rather quickly, Belichick clearly became aware of the way what he’d said was received and being bandied about the talk-radio and Twitter worlds. In an attempt to seemingly throw water on the brushfire he’d sparked, he clarified his remarks in a comment to the Boston Globe.
Belichick told the Globe the Patriots “spend to the cap every year. What I said has nothing to do with ownership’s commitment to spending fully. To take it as any kind of slight, when Robert and Jonathan [Kraft] have done nothing but support my recommendations on contracts, couldn’t be further from the point.”
Oh, OK. Nothing to see here. Move along like a back-pedaling cornerback in man-to-man coverage.
But before we go, maybe we should just clarify for ourselves, what was the point?
It wasn’t to justify a team that’s 25-25 in the regular season over the last three years and 0-1 in an ugly playoff game in Buffalo? To rationalize the fact that New England is without playoff football dealing with a losing record for the second time in three years? You get what you pay for?
Or could it have been to point out that “reconciliation” has to come in NFL spending, something that the 26 teams ranked ahead of the Patriots in cash spending the last three years must be dealing with? Are all those teams in poor salary cap positioning? Of course at least 14 of those teams are probably OK with that this week as they prepare to play postseason football.
Maybe it’s possible that a man who has deftly and acutely manipulated the reporters and the conversations regarding his team for decades has lost his media mind-bending fastball? Could he actually have delivered remarks about being one of the lowest spending teams in the league and not believed it would be taken by some as a shot at his bosses? If so, that’s an alarming lack of awareness, a tone deafness that’s unlike the man who’s uttered simple “I don’t know” responses to questions he didn’t want to answer over the years more often than a teenage boy asked about his day at school. If Belichick didn’t know how his comments would play that can be added to a growing list of press conference missteps as well as his ongoing on-field failings as reason for concern regarding his aging performance.
It was also interesting that at the end of Belichick’s answer regarding the historic 2021 free agent class of “really good players” he declared that New England is a “much better football team with the players that we added.” Really? The Patriots went 7-9 in 2020 right before adding all those “really good players.” Two years later with those “really good players” the team went 8-9. If the roster is so much more talented, why the lack of increase in the win column?
One of the last things that Belichick said before the season started was that if the situation with Matt Patricia and the offensive coaching staff didn’t work out, we should all blame Belichick.
Now, when it didn’t work out, when Mac Jones and the entire offense regressed for a team that regressed and missed the playoffs, the final thing Belichick chose to point out in his postseason press conference was that “over a three-year period, we are one of the lowest spending teams in the league.”
That doesn’t sound like the words of a man who historically chooses his words wisely accepting that requested blame. It sounds like those of a man pointing fingers, defensively deflecting or at the very least muddying the water with a slight-of-hand distraction to confuse those looking for answers for New England’s continued on-field shortcomings.
But Belichick will probably clarify things again at some point and swear that wasn’t the point.
It’s up to all of us as reasonable observers to decide what to believe.
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