Why The Belichick Critics Are Wrong

The 41-14 Patriots loss to the Chiefs has set off an insane campaign of criticism of coach/GM Bill Belichick led by ESPN analysts Steve Young, Trent Dilfer, and Tedy Bruschi and echoed throughout talk radio.   It is an avalanche not seen since the absurd recent smear campaign against Roger Goodell.

The Patriots critics, though, are wrong.


1 - The myth is pushed that the Patriots should not have traded guard Logan Mankins, because he ostensibly would help stabilize a struggling offensive line right now.  The problem is Mankins is one of the most overrated linemen in the league, shown by the Patriots' 10-1 record without him in the 2010-12 period, the eleven sacks he allowed in 2013, and his mediocre play with the Bucs, whose line shows zero improvement with him.  

The Patriots line has begun playing better entering Week Five and will certainly improve down the road.


2 - Another myth is that Belichick did not provide weapons for Brady (an argument examined by Matt Chatham) The fact is that Brady has more than adequate receivers to throw to but he has not read the field properly or engaged other receivers into the offense - he has thrown to Julian Edelman far too often, and periodically by ignoring wide open alternatives such as James Develin.   He finally started engaging Brandon Lafell in the Kansas City game and Lafell produced as a result.  

Danny Amendola is singled out for criticism lately, with the added criticism that the Patriots should not have let go of Wes Welker.   The facts are Amendola in his time with the Patriots took over two game-winning drives (vs. Buffalo and Cleveland) where with Denver Welker is not thrown to when the game is on the line.   Amendola's skill set is not just better than Welker's - it is superior. 

The reality is Brady needs to do what he's done throughout his career - engage the other receivers into the offense and make it work.  Amendola, Tim Wright, Lafell, James Develin, etc. all need Brady to work with them and make them part of the offense.


3 - Belichick is attacked for his roster construction philosophy, yet the criticism is refuted by the sustained success of Belichick's program - a claim that cannot be made of the more slapdash and inconsistent efforts of the Green Bay Packers, the NY Giants, or even the New Orleans Saints and Baltimore Ravens, programs more consistently strong than others.   Roster construction must never fall in love with Names, else they end up like the Colts in 2011 or the Ravens in 2013 - or such perennial also-rans as the NY Jets and the Oakland Raiders.


4 - The lack of Superbowl success since 2004 testifies to the old Buffalo Bills talking point - it really is that hard to win Superbowls.   The Pittsburgh Steelers won two since then and have now all but fallen off the NFL map.   The Colts, NY Giants, Saints, Packers, and Ravens have all won since then and have seen heavy turmoil in their rosters.   Time awaits how the Seahawks handle success.   The Patriots program keeps them in contention without having to blow anything up.

The Belichick era revolutionized NFL championship construction, and the present struggles are no sign of any failure of the program that cannot be corrected.



UPDATE: - Also worth addressing is the related criticism of offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels and his playcalling, for the recent firing of former OC Charlie Weis from the Kansas Jayhawks has led to fan demand that McDaniels be fired and replaced by Weis.   Once again reality gets in the way of fan frustration.   McDaniels' playcalling in 2006-8 and 2012-13 was exemplary and more innovative than that of Weis.   Weis is best known for trick plays his own players knew were stupid ("I guess Charlie's gone crazy again," Brady said before a trick play in New England's October 2001 victory at Indianapolis) and which backfired to a disturbing extent (a David Patten interception against the NY Jets in 2003 and an awful turnover at Arizona in 2004 that nearly got Deion Branch smashed out of the season stand out there).  Weis also was ready to take the ball out of Brady's hand and play for overtime in Superbowl XXXVI in the final minute.  

Weis' coaching career has been defined by incompetence and full-of-himself bluster at every stop - Notre Dame, the Chiefs (where his playcalling was taken away during a playoff game), the Florida Gators, and the Jayhawks.   Nowhere did Weis display anything close to coaching competence.

What it shows is the Patriots won in spite of him, not because he was anything. 

CIA Knew Al Qaeda Involved in Benghazi from 'Get-go'

Obama's excuse about the Benghazi attack continues to collapse.

Week Three's Top Ten

There are always big storylines in the NFL and Week Three had its share -


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1 - Aaron Rodgers Is Proving His Critics Right - Before the 2011 season came two pieces showing that Aaron Rodgers is not capable of comeback wins. Now we see Green Bay's 34-30 loss to the Bengals where the Packers erased a 14-0 gap, led 30-14, and lost.   During that game Rodgers was seen arguing with head coach Mike McCarthy and another player having to step in.   It brings back memory of two former Packers receivers ripping Rodgers' locker room demeanor.

The reality is Rodgers is the a-hole he's been portrayed as being.   He's stuck-up, full of himself, and every bit the dopey gunslinger Brett Favre was.   And the result will be the Packers may win a lot of games but will still lose in the end.



2 - Yes Bill Belichick Should Be Trusted - The Boston Globe Magazine published a piece on Bill Belichick that was mostly a compedium of criticisms and outright mockery. There are some positives portrayed about Belichick but for the most part the piece wants the reader to hate him for being stand-offish, dishonest, etc.

The piece references Spygate several times, and it is obvious a refresher on the facts is needed. Belichick is also criticized for ostensibly poor drafting, and the piece even sees fit to include Wes Welker's self-pitying quote about thinking about Belichick during Broncos pressers.

Here are the hard facts about why Belichick is more trustworthy than the Boston Globe -

Belichick tells the truth.

Belichick has been the best GM in the NFL for 13 years; the Steelers, the Ravens, the Colts, the NY Giants, etc. cannot credibly be portrayed as better.

Belichick understands roster construction because he doesn't fall in love with Names (Wes Welker, Deion Branch, Richard Seymour etc.) and doesn't fall in love with volume stats.

The players let go by Belichick have all proven inferior to the system in Foxboro (yes even Wes Welker, who's been irrelevant to the Broncos despite his volume stats there).

Belichick doesn't play the media game because the media game accomplishes nothing as far as winning goes.



3 - The AFC in not weaker than the NFC
- This past weekend saw eight interconference games and the AFC won six of them.   In all the AFC has won eleven interconference games.


4 - The Browns aren't giving up on the season - Brian Hoyer took over as quarterback and pulled off the most exciting win for the Browns perhaps in the history of the club's present incarnation, this following the unusual early-season trade of Trent Richardson and scuttlebutt that a receiver or two are on the auction block as well.   There are legitimate pieces with the Browns right now.


5 - The AFC South is a three-team race - Indianapolis and Tennessee pulled off quality wins - the Colts pummelled the 49ers at The Stick a week after a bitter loss to the Dolphins, while the Titans defeated the Chargers for the first time since 1992, and did so in comeback style; it showed that Jake Locker can play, and it was a comeback win after he struggled in comeback situations in 2011 and 2012.   This came all amid Houston's ugly loss at Baltimore, putting the Colts, Titans, and Texans at a 2-1 logjam in the division.


6 - The AFC East is becoming a multi-team race - New England and Miami are 3-0 while the Jets are 2-1; the Bills are 1-2 but are 10th in the league in turnover differential and EJ Manuel is looking like a rookie with a solid future.


7 - The AFC West may become a three-team race  - The Broncos have the most explosive offense in the conference but haven't really been tested yet; San Diego is better than last year and Kansas City has vaulted to 3-0 with successful formulae from their past - they used to be 49ers East with quarterbacks (and they still are); now they are also Eagles West with coaches.   Even the Raiders, while not ready for primetime, have some positive energy with Terrelle Pryor.


8 - The AFC North is the weakest division in the conference - The Bengals are the best team in the division and even the Browns look good.   The Ravens are 2-1 but their schedule takes what looks to be a turn for the worse with road games at Miami and Buffalo in the next two weeks.    The Steelers meanwhile have collapsed and their season is staring at their first losing record in ten years.


9 -The NFC South is - for the moment - a New Orleans party - The Bucs are in disarray despite being respectable on defense; the Falcons are good but got exposed as beatable by the Dolphins.   The Saints are 3-0 after two shaky performances, while the Panthers got on the board by destroying the same NY Giants squad that embarrassed them last season.   The Panthers can make a run at the Saints and the Falcons are certainly not out of it.


10 - It's overdue to question the coaching competence of Mike Shanahan - the Redskins are 0-3 and a lot of talk has centered around Robert Griffin, yet questions should be asked of coach Mike Shanahan, who has still not shown he can win a lot since John Elway retired and has shown no answers to Washington's on-field issues.


That's the Top Ten for this week.

Don't Buy Rolling Stone On Belichick.

Rolling Stone magazine took a major hit with its sick, sympathetic piece on "Flashbang," the surviving brother involved in the Boston Marathon bombing. Now it has come out with a piece on former Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, standing trial for the shooting of semipro football player Odin Lloyd. Much has come out about Hernandez since he was caught by police destroying evidence in their investigation of Lloyd's murder, at least some of it self-servingly portrayed to implicitly indict the Patriots over drafting Hernandez in 2010 when other teams ostensibly took him off their draft boards over character concerns - stories that conveniently never came out until his arrest as opposed to in 2012 or earlier; when Hernandez was given a $40 million contract extension by the Patriots in 2012 no one in the Mainstream Sports Media objected.

 The problem with Rolling Stone is it is not and never was a credible journal - it has long engaged in reporting designed to indict people in the name of its deranged leftist ideology. Among myriad examples are its idiotic 2012 attack on Mitt Romney's business history, the magazine's attack claiming the existence of global warming by citing Australia, and an especially preposterous claim that the Army waged psycological war on members of Congress to support the war in Afghanistan.  There were also smears against General Stanley McChrystal and scholar Michael Ledeen in years past.

Now it has its anti-Belichick piece, and was aided in the piece by Ron Borges, whose own malice toward Belichick has long been documented by the Cold Hard Football Facts website.

 The piece also claims Urban Meyer, Hernandez's college coach, actively helped cover up Hernandez's involvement in a drive-by shooting - this right away damages the piece's credibility given the inherent implausibility involved - Meyer's reputation has been heavily pummeled over the years but it stretches credulity to believe a coach would risk indictment for aiding and abetting a murderer by hiding a drive-by shooting.

That once again a piece is attacking Belichick based on allegations only coming out after Hernandez was caught destroying evidence shows how the modern media works - and why the modern media needs to change.

 Belichick didn't aid and abet a murderer. Period.  The Patriots signed - and re-signed - Hernandez because at the time there was no credible reason not to.


UPDATE: Ron Borges as mentioned co-authored the piece, and he may have realized something was askew, for Comcast Sportsnet New England did a telephone interview with him tonight (August 28) and portions were aired on the network's 11:30 PM recap show with Bob Neumeier.  Borges in the clips aired makes a point of noting he is not accusing Bill Belichick or team owner Robert Kraft of malicious action in their handling of Hernandez - he in essence confirms the storyline of Kraft's, that the Patriots "were duped" by Hernandez.  

It is to Mr. Borges' credit that he makes this clear.

UPDATE II: The Krafts are now responding to the piece, providing detailed refutation of pertinent facts alleged in the piece. Mike Petraglia looks at the Krafts' response so far.

Inside the NFL - Colts vs Patriots 2010

NFL Films clip on 2010's edition of the Patriots-Colts rivalry, the bitterest in football. The way the game went explains why.

The Lynching Of A Coach

It's become the latest firestorm pushed by the MSM, in this case the sports edition of the MSM. New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick is being ripped all over the NFL because a videographer for the Patriots was taping the sidelines of the New York Jets during the Patriots' 38-14 massacre of the Jets. Eric Mangini of the Jets had NFL security seize the camera, reportedly coming after a scuffle between the teams' dueling security units.

The camera is the center of a fit of folderol involing "illegal videotaping of defensive signals." The problem with the story is that the NFL rule supposedly forbidding the use of recording devices against opposing sidelines for use during a game is quite vague, and does not particularly forbid recording defensive players or signals for file footage. It is also telling that the NFL, despite repeated warning to the Patriots about this, made no effort to enforce the rule, an indication the league found it vague as well and suggests Belichick was sincere in misinterpreting the rule.

Call it finding and exploiting a loophole, but one strains to find any serious reason to feel the Patriots were engaged in cheating, brazen of otherwise. As former player Keyshawn Johnson has pointed out, this is scouting, legitimate gathering of information for the team - Roger Goodell's press release following the announcement of the fine acknowledged that the videotaping was irrelevent to the Jets game - and the patent absurdity of criticism comes out in the frequent comparisons, by Brett Favre, Frank Deford, and others, with stealing signs in baseball, with sign-stealing frequently defended, notably by Favre and even more notably by Deford, who was quoted calling it legitimate after condemning Belichick for what he did; Deford offered an absurd alibi by claiming it was legitimate if not done with "artificial enhancements" such as binoculars - you can steal signs if you're in the dugout, but you are crossing the line if you're in the grandstands using binoculars. This is idiocy squared and doesn't answer an obvious question - what's so sacrosanct about defensive signals, viewable by the stadium audience and on television, anyway?

But the attack dogs are straining to destroy Bill Belichick, and a fairly typical example is here, though this particular piece includes implausible inference that the Patriots were jamming opposing teams' radio signals between coaches - never mind that the NFL controls radios used during games. Indeed, some of the quotes attributed to coaches such as Charlie Weis are simply not believable, and the piece's extensive use of unnamed sources is troubling - if for no other reason than it has set off some writers/radio hosts such as Michael Felger of ESPN Radio, who spent Thursday on the airwaves with notorious ex-Patriots beat writer Ron Borges peddling self-evident ignorance and mendacity to attack Belichick.

Side note: Felger's lack of credibility on the Patriots stems from unctuous coverage of the Deion Branch contract brouhaha in 2006; Felger ripped the release of Branch and claimed the Patriots' receiver corps was too weak to be competitive, yet as Tom Casale pointed out on Felger's own radio show the day after the Patriots destroyed the San Diego Chargers, Felger flip-flopped when the Patriots went 12-4 and won playoff games with receivers Reche Caldwell and Jabar Gaffney in the 2006 season. Felger of course lied about it in response.

In reading and hearing the varied attacks on Belichick, the theme is repeated about the "arrogance" of the Patriots - how Belichick would not shake the hand of Peyton Manning or Eric Mangini, how the Patriots did a mocking spoof of Shawne Merriman's idiotic sack dance after beating San Diego in the 2006 playoffs, and often includes the ridiculous story (first peddled by the Boston Globe as a hit piece against Belichick) that he threw former player Ted Johnson into full-contact drills even though Johnson had concussions, a story sourced entirely to Johnson, who was trying to explain away several anti-social acts on his part to concussions, and which had neither other corroborating evidence or even basic plausibility.

The problem with the arrogance argument is it inflates the importance of people opposing Belichick higher than they deserve. Peyton Manning may be a good guy, but given the bitterness of the rivalry between the Patriots and the Indianpolis Colts (whose GM Bill Polian, a member of the NFL Rules Committee, manipulated rules discussions to get rules enforced and thus get opposing defenses off his receivers after they were legitimately beaten up in several 2003 games) it isn't particularly relevent that Belichick didn't shake Manning's hand. Eric Mangini did the unthinkable and went to the Jets, a team historically famous for incompetence, interference (it was Jets front office interference that forced Belichick to quit on them despite being named head coach in 2000), and ineptitude - why Belichick should respect that the critics never answer. The "classlessness" of the Patriots' sack dance in San Diego came after a day of bullying by a San Diego squad long on bullying and short on maturity - the Chargers got what they deserved.

Then we get repeated whines about how Belichick doesn't provide good soundbite answers or "act sincere" during press conferences, and how he doesn't provide "good" answers. Yet again, no one explains why he should; it inflates the importance of those questioning Belichick higher than they deserve.

It has also been pointed out how other coaches in the league are not defending Belichick. Here the petty jealousy that exists in the league comes out, for Belichick really is better than virtually all these other coaches and teams. If Andy Reid of the Eagles, for one, is not videotaping Patriots' sidelines and signals, then his staff is not doing their job. And the whole brouhaha about "stealing" signals ignores what bears repeating - signals aree visible to everyone in the stadium and to viewers on television; it is an opposing team's job to decifer defensive signals.

The NFL eventually handed down a fine of $500,000 to Belichick, another $250,000 to the Patriots, and the loss of at least a first-round pick should they make the playoffs - fines that tellingly are not as severe as the $1 million fine plus some forfeited draft picks handed to the Denver Broncos several seasons ago for cheating on the salary cap in their two Superbowl triumphs - an act that earned the Broncos no MSM rebuke nor even serious MSM coverage. That any fine was handed down here at all was more to save face for the Commissioner's office amid disingenuous pressure from other teams.

The Lynching Of A Coach thus reached an end, for now. Hatred of Belichick will no doubt continue because of the mixture of ignorance about the legitimacy of gathering information plus jealous vitriol.