The post-Tom Brady era in New England was not expected to be pretty, especially since the team didn’t adequately build for the future, leading the Patriots to plummet from their throne almost immediately. It led to three seasons of less-than-favorable performances from the team, missing the playoffs twice and going through three quarterbacks.
It ultimately led to Robert Kraft deciding to fire Belichick after 24 seasons as the head coach and general manager, a surprising but not entirely unexpected decision. The legendary coach struggled to bring the team back from the dead and quickly earned their spot at the bottom of the division with seemingly no light at the end of the tunnel.
It also didn’t hurt that reports suggested a deteriorating relationship between Belichick and Kraft behind closed doors, on top of a toxic locker room atmosphere often seen during games or in player interviews.
That was the leading reason for his successor, Jerod Mayo, and the new regime around him to declare a new culture was coming to Foxboro, which seemed to be working quite well during the offseason. Players raved about the vibe change, and it was clear there was more enjoyment on and off the field.
Vice President of Player Personnel Eliot Wolf described it as “more of an open, less hard-a** type (of) vibe in the building,” which was the official start of the anti-Belichick agenda in New England. While that seemed like a good idea at the beginning, it’s already looking like a regrettable decision as the Patriots suffered one of the worst losses of their season so far on Sunday.
Straying too far from Bill Belichick’s coaching style is already biting Jerod Mayo and the Patriots
Things looked promising at the start of their Week 7 matchup with the Jaguars, as the Patriots marched down and scored a touchdown on their first possession. They followed it up with a field goal and essentially went MIA afterward.
Missed opportunities, impactful mistakes, and questionable play-calling are just some of the reasons for the decline in performance, which led to Mayo calling the roster “soft” when speaking to reporters after the game.
They (of course) asked the head coach about how the team had gotten to that point, which Mayo couldn’t explain, but he said he would figure out how to approach making a change to get out of the hole they’re currently in.
“I’m not sure. That’s something that I have to think about. We have a long flight back, and I’m not sure. It’s not like all of a sudden we did something different and now we’re a soft football team. It’s the mentality that we have to get back in the guys.”
No matter what his conclusion might be, something needs to change as the same issues continue every week with little to no change. Whether they have ventured too far from the Belichick-ian coaching style and not being tough enough on the players or something else, it needs to be determined and handled as soon as possible.
Implementing the best parts of how Belichick ran things while introducing some new coaching methods that might be better received by younger players is not a bad idea, but abandoning the solid foundation the head coach created is proving to be a bad idea.
They say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and that could slightly apply to this situation, as the Belichick Way wasn’t thriving in New England anymore. But ridding the locker room of what had worked for nearly a quarter century just for the sake of doing so was not the way to go, and the Patriots are already dealing with the consequences.
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