BELICHICK’S REIGN HAS COME TO A COLD END, AS BITTER KRAFT DECIDES WHEN

An owner who tasted six championship toasts is stunned by the implosion of the Patriots, knowing it’s time to slice the head coach who has failed miserably since a disgruntled Brady left New England

     For Bill Belichick’s perusal, his former quarterback just lost 10 pounds. And he revealed it on his new $6 million yacht off Miami Beach, called Tw12ve Angels in an unwieldy nod to his uniform number, with a black wetsuit and vest. This was more a view for his divorced wife and would-be models than his former coach.

     But in his fourth season of wasted time without Tom Brady, Belichick should consider the ocean glance a look-see into his future. An all-time coach doesn’t remain that way forever, as shown in his fourth NFL season with a new QB, when he’s assured of his third losing campaign to accompany a current 26-30 record that could have 11 or 12 tacked to the losses. It was established long ago that Brady won the barstool warfare about who was more important to The Patriot Way, the six championships won between them between 2002 and 2019, after which he chose his next title in Tampa Bay while Belichick crashed along.

     The issue today is why Hoodie stuck around so long. He has allowed his project to turn from first to worst and has no chance of winning 18 games and beating Don Shula’s career record of 347 victories. He works for a man named Robert Kraft, who used to watch in snowstorms as a woeful season-ticket holder and now veers into subliminal territory at 82. At some point, with three months remaining in his ugliest season, he must decide how long he can deal with coaching constipation.

     “Just plain and simply, we've got to find a way to play and coach better than that,” Belichick said Sunday. “So that’s what we are going to do, start all over and get back on a better track than we're on right now.”

     His explanation doesn’t work anymore. After yielding 69 unanswered points in a 34-0 loss to New Orleans and 38-3 loss to Dallas, Belichick cannot answer with a smug, I won-six-Lombardi-trophies complacency. The best coaches these days happen to be Kyle Shanahan assigning Pick No. 262 to address a cadre of playmakers, or Mike McDaniel assembling speed merchants, or Nick Sirianni carrying on. In his range, 65-year-old Andy Reid was wily enough to select Patrick Mahomes and direct him to superstardom. In New England, Belichick errantly opted for Cam Newton, whose dictatorial arrows pointed backwards from All Things Brady, and his personnel and draft selections weren’t any better. In the 2021 draft, he chose Mac Jones with the 15th pick. After another antithetical bust, you wonder where Belichick was in life when he unearthed Brady at No. 199 — and what happened to his brain more than two decades later, meaning he could finish low enough to name Caleb Williams or Drake Maye next April.

     The owner who pays him won’t let that happen. Months ago, when asked if Belichick’s job could be doomed if he posts another losing record, Kraft said the only goal that will satisfy him is winning “number seven.” That would be a seventh championship, which is beyond comical, seeing how his team is a laughingstock. “We’re about winning, and doing whatever we can to win. And that’s what our focus is now,” Kraft said. “And I — it’s very important to me that we make the playoffs, and that’s what I hope happens next year.”

     He has said nothing since. Why bother? We can argue Belichick chose the wrong assistant coaches and lost too many front-office colleagues who left for other teams. More to the point, the game of professional football blurred past him. This is beyond Spygate or Deflategate or the scandals that brought wrath to Belichick and Brady. Once Brady left — and he was disgusted, with too many inward messes — it was up to the coach to prove he could carry on. It’s not happening, nor will it in another town, with no touchdowns in each of the last 10 consecutive quarters. Meanwhile, trimmed down and looking for love, Brady said on his podcast: “I think that he’s got a very consistent approach that he’s always taken and, you know, it’s the right approach. It’s try to prepare the players, give them the best opportunity to succeed. You know, you get out there on the field in the end, the coaches, once the play is called in, the players gotta go do it. And it takes a great coaching staff to win. It takes great players to win. It takes great front office support to win. It’s an organizational win. It’s an organizational loss.”

     It’s up to Kraft to let him down easy. Give him a job upstairs, where he’ll be helped by a young organizational gent. Hand the coaching reigns to Jerod Mayo, already signed as an heir apparent. Or let him go to a crazy idea I have, where he joins the media — I said, media — and is considered by Fox Sports to join Brady next season. Last week, on a radio show, Belichick said of Travis Kelce’s power relationship with Taylor Swift, “Well, I would say that Travis Kelce has had a lot of big catches in his career. This would be the biggest.”

     Deep down, he’s a funnyman with a dry wit. Would any of us ignore his dialogue with Brady? When arguing, it would be a grand hoot, until Brady mentioned he was 219-64 with Belichick and Belichick is what without Brady?

     What cannot work, while waiting for a record he can’t achieve, are these back-and-forths after games.

     “Can’t keep doing it,” he said.

     Are the players hearing the message?

     “We’ll keep working on it,” he said.

     Any big changes?

     “We’ll do what we think is best,” he said.

     In New England, which has no time for sports futility, the fans can’t handle 12 more games in a fourth season. If I’m Kraft, I announce a farewell tour in the dead of winter for the man who once made January and February magical. Otherwise, getting rid of him and saying goodbye is dead cold.

     He put out a statement in the morning, speaking of hundreds dead in Israel, saying, “Our hearts break as we mourn the loss of the many innocent victims of these horrific attacks. We will continue to fight against the hate that feeds this senseless violence.”

     His heart is in the right place. But as a football owner, he must make more difficult decisions than he ever thought. He already has, I assume, with another revelation coming.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.