SAD TO SAY, BILL BELICHICK, BUT HERE COMES THE NEXT PATRIOTS COACH
Stop all discussions with a 71-year-old coach who must move on immediately, despite six championships, now that Mayo or favored-son Vrabel is available without any need to make a trade
Welcome to Robert Kraft’s happiest times since a prostitution case was dropped in Florida, recalling how he was videotaped inside the Orchids of Asia Day spa with Lei Wang and Shen Mingbi. No party with rappers and fanatics folks could be bolder than the brisk news Tuesday, when Mike Vrabel was fired by the Tennessee Titans without any organizational demand to trade for him.
“To get the right head coach,” said Titans controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk, oddly enough, “I was just not willing to go to the back of the line and take a chance of missing out on someone we really wanted.”
Let her settle for a lower rung in a lean pool of candidates, with Jim Harbaugh sorting between several of six NFL franchises and the Titans not among them. All Kraft must do, as he seeks a simplistic way of dumping Bill Belichick, is inform a gleeful group of New England Patriots fans that he’ll be dispatching the 71-year-old head coach who has allowed the sport he once controlled to viciously pass him by. Imagine Vrabel, who has been viewed as the ideal Belichick replacement for years, judged by Strunk as stuck behind the analytics times … at 48? Now, Kraft doesn’t have to give up one draft pick and can pay off Hoodie for the lost times. Or he can appoint Jerod Mayo from within, whose corporate uplift bothered Belichick.
It has been apparent for years, since Tom Brady escaped in 2020, that Belichick cannot function without him in a league where he suffered an 84-103 record while others played quarterback. His offense looks twice as old as he does. Let another team try to gravitate toward the past, when he won six Super Bowls between 2002 and 2019, and realize those days linger behind the pandemic and Bailey Zappe. The Patriots couldn’t possibly slog on with him, even if he brought back Josh McDaniels to coach the offense after he was fired twice as a head coach.
How stunning to hear Strunk, who sided with general manager Ran Carthon and ignored Vrabel’s smart work in his first four seasons, run roughshod over what had been a fine AFC team. First she canned Jon Robinson as GM, now she’s skinflinting her operation and showing how her $1.6-billion net worth falls far beneath the Rob Waltons, Stan Kroenkes and David Teppers of the football ownership world. What Vrabel wanted was a strong measure of control, the same influence he shows as a hard-ass sideline leader. She tossed him.
“As the NFL continues to innovate and evolve, I believe the teams best positioned for sustained success will be those who empower an aligned and collaborative team across all football functions,” Strunk said. “Last year, we began a shift in our approach to football leadership and made several changes to our personnel to advance that plan. As I continued to assess the state of our team, I arrived at the conclusion that the team would also benefit from the fresh approach and perspective of a new coaching staff.”
And why not commence a trade with the Patriots and earn compensation for her rebuilding team? “There's a bit of misconception about a coach's contract, say versus a player's contract. A coach's contract, you can't trade them unless they are a willing partner to that trade,” she said. “So, yes, we thought about it but at the end of the day with league rules the way they are, it would have maybe put us back three weeks.”
While she awaits the man who turns down the Carolina Panthers, this is a thrill for Kraft and son Jonathan. After 24 seasons, Belichick will not leave the Patriots on his own, forcing the family to fire him. He thinks he can coach elsewhere and win the 14 games that would tie Don Shula’s all-time record of 347. Someone will hire Belichick because he brings a previous aura of dominance, but do we really believe it will be the Washington Commanders? New owner Josh Harris hired the former Golden State Warriors boss, Bob Myers, to orchestrate the search — and he’s not thinking old man. They’d like Harbaugh, sure. And while they do have the No. 2 overall draft pick and can select Drake Maye, our new national championship coach — “innocent” of all charges, remember — is clearly thinking Justin Herbert and the Los Angeles Chargers. He doesn’t want to oversee a rookie quarterbacking project. At 60, he wants to win now.
If Belichick insists on coaching again, he could be left with the Atlanta Falcons, who have a solid defense and no quarterback. Will he be lost in the South, where they care about the Georgia Bulldogs and recruiting? They won’t care about him or his team. Yet he must fill himself with the grind, almost begging to keep the New England job. “Look, I’m for whatever, collectively, we decide as an organization is the best thing to help our football team,” Belichick said about giving up his general manager duties. “I have multiple roles in that, and I rely on a lot of people to help me in those responsibilities. If somebody’s got to have the final say, I rely on a lot of other people to help. And, however that process is, I’m only part of it.”
Might he wait for Dallas? If Mike McCarthy falls in the NFC championship game to the San Francisco 49ers, or before that, Jerry Jones might fire him. Belichick would be a curious story, with a built-in team, but could he turn around years of failure? For now, he awaits word from Kraft. “I learned (a) lesson from my dad growing up — you work for the team you're working for and do the best you can for it, until somebody tells you different,” he said. “So that's not going to change.”
The Krafts have no choice but to move on. Mayo has been in place as a potential heir apparent. Vrabel is one of their favorite former players, saying in his red Patriots jacket this season — when they honored him for the team’s Hall of Fame — that “we” have a game to win as he sat in the owner’s box. You wonder if that stayed with Strunk, knowing he won three Super Bowls in Foxborough.
So let the Patriot Way continue as such. Nothing Belichick can say in further discussions should push Kraft away from his good fortune. It’s possible to do this good-naturedly, while allowing a codger to pursue Shula. Let everybody move on. “It’s time to fully achieve our vision,” Strunk said.
Bring in Meek Mill for the big bash. Brady, too?
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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.