We tried to avoid this topic. We really did. However, the ongoing confrontation between Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots, the team he coached for 25 years and won six Super Bowls with, has turned into open warfare and cannot be ignored any longer.
What has happened? The story of the breakup between the two parties in January 2024 has been well-documented, as has been the rather indirect back and forth between Belichick and Patriots owner Robert Kraft ever since. Lately, however, the situation
has escalated to an entirely new level.
The first reports of it came out earlier this week: Belichick’s new team, the North Carolina Tar Heels, has banned Patriots scouts from attending practice. While the school did generally impose stricter restrictions since the coach’s arrival in December, his ex-club was being singled out for reasons that are bordering on embarrassing for the future Hall of Famer.
“It’s clear I’m not welcome there at their facility. So, they’re not welcome at ours. It’s pretty simple,” Belichick said in the aftermath of UNC’s win over Charlotte on Saturday.
Belichick’s statement is a shocker. While he has always been known to hold grudges against certain individuals, he never aired his grievances out in the open like that.
That is a drastic change of course for a coach who built a dynasty on the principle that no one individual was bigger than the team, including himself. And yet, here he is having his personal business inevitably negatively impact on his team.
Sure, the Tar Heels improved to 1-1 on Saturday night, but robbing players of the opportunity to showcase themselves even in as limited a setting as practice seems counterintuitive. There also does not seem to be some 4D chess behind it all: it simply is done out of spite for the Patriots and the Kraft family in particular.
Of course, it goes without saying that this is not a one-way street either. There is still a lot we do not know, and likely never will, about what went down before and after Kraft and Belichick held a press conference to announce their mutual parting of the ways (part of it is due to agenda and neither man appearing to be a particularly reliable narrator).
Believing New England’s ownership to be totally blameless in this affair would also be naive. From all we know, it looks like the Krafts started inserting themselves in the team’s football operations at some point in the early 2020s — as is their right as owners, but it was still a clear departure from the established setup — and were seemingly trying to rewrite the narrative that their coach and quarterback Tom Brady were the primary reasons for the franchise’s success through the years.
However, this latest development is still nothing short of bizarre. Maybe something happened behind the scenes that led up to this escalation, we don’t know. The gist still remains: based on the available evidence, this looks like a childish form of retaliation as well as an unnecessary obstacle for UNC’s players.
Those worthy of being drafted will still get drafted, maybe even by the Patriots. But the overall message is quite different form the one Belichick used to preach when he was at the peak of his coaching powers.
But now, if you excuse us, we will return to more important matters.
To paraphrase a legendary coach whose accomplishments during his tenure with the Patriots and the joy he brought to the entire region for more than two decades should not be overshadowed by recent developments: on to the Raiders.
