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New England didn’t just lose to the Colts. They lost a game owner Robert Kraft called “critical” at a fan rally Saturday, and “big” to others at events through the weekend, mostly because of his own efforts to cultivate a fan base in Germany. They lost with their first-round quarterback benched, after throwing as bad a pick as you’ll ever see to precipitate the move. They lost while looking like the kind of team they used to make fun of.
One thing I’ve learned covering the league as long as I have is that billionaires don’t like being embarrassed. And that was another embarrassing three hours for Kraft, who got awfully comfortable being in prime broadcast windows with the A crews calling his team’s games, and more recently has gotten a good long look at how the other half lives.
Again, that it was in Germany made it worse. That it was a stand-alone game made it worse.
So now what?
Well, it’s fair to say that if you divorce Bill Belichick’s last four years from the previous 20, there’s a good chance he’d land back in the States in the wee hours of Monday morning without a job. But that’s the whole thing. As rudderless as the franchise looks now—after losing campaigns in 2020 and ’22, a ’21 season that ended with a 30-point loss in the wild-card round, and the bottom dropping out this year—you can’t simply erase Belichick’s historic two-decade run of dominance when considering, and serving, the here and now.
That leaves Kraft in a tricky spot. I believe he wants to respect the wild success Belichick brought to his franchise. I also think, with his Hall of Fame case being considered, he’s sensitive to being seen as the guy who let both Belichick and Tom Brady go. So my guess would be he’d seek an elegant sort of escape hatch from the Belichick era.
To me, at least, that means you’re not letting the guy go in-season. And a small group of team-president types I polled Sunday night said if they were Kraft, they wouldn’t either.
“What would be the goal of that?” asked one. “Are you making playoffs? Do you want to jump-start the team and get a lower pick? He has earned the right to finish the year. … The Patriots are a great franchise. Great owners. Do the classy thing and let him have a proper send-off. Maybe you announce in December he won’t return and honor him in the final home game. But firing him now would just be ego.”
“It depends on so many factors, but I would have to know what the locker room thought,” said another. “I’m also not sure what they get out of it. Pretty hard to dismiss him during the year given his career record. I would imagine they let him finish it out.”
A third actually said he’d consider firing Belichick , “And I think [Kraft] wants to, but I’m not sure he will. I think he’ll take the GM job away and hire a GM, hoping that’ll make Bill quit.”
That was actually the scenario I figured might play out in 2024, when the Patriots first started to flat-line. I thought Kraft could bring in a member of Belichick’s scouting family, like former Falcons GM Thomas Dimitroff, former Titans GM Jon Robinson or Niners exec Adam Peters, to pair with Jerod Mayo long term, then tell Belichick it was up to him whether he wanted to stay in a new setup with Mayo waiting in the wings.
But things have steadily gotten worse since. There were no-show blowout losses to the Cowboys and Saints. There was a loss to two-time, longtime Patriot assistant Josh McDaniels, just a few weeks before McDaniels’s own in-season firing. There was last week’s defeat at the hands of a retooling Washington franchise that sold off both its defensive ends days before. And then there was Sunday.
That leaves Kraft in a spot where it sure feels like the curtain is dropping, and what’s left is just how to handle Belichick’s exit or a serious restructure of the team’s football ops.
So, this being the bye week, if I’m Kraft, I’d go to Belichick, and ask a simple, direct question—It’s possible, deep down, the coach wants the chance to say goodbye to the fan base, something that an announcement before the end of the season would facilitate. It’s also possible Belichick would just force Kraft to fire him, so he could take his money and go elsewhere. Or maybe the solution is somewhere in between.
Either way, if this is over, and I think it probably is, Belichick deserves a say in how his exit from the organization he transformed is handled. I think Kraft will give it to him.
How Belichick handles it from there is anyone’s guess.
My guess? Whatever it is, it includes him finishing the season out.
