Bedard: Teams are doing due diligence on Bill Belichick
Greg Bedard takes a dive into the interest for Bill Belichick around the league, pending a rumored firing. If Bill does go to another team, would he get full power?
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00:00 Bert Breer, your friend on NBC Sports Boston pregame last weekend, Greg, something jumped
00:05 out at me that Bert said, said that teams that have been doing the due diligence on Belichick,
00:10 thinking of maybe bringing him in, they believe that there's going to have to be a checks and
00:16 balances. They do not believe that Belichick is going to be the guy to run the entire program.
00:25 And I have a couple of questions off of what Bert said. Number one, do you think Belichick
00:30 will get full power if he goes elsewhere?
00:33 Good question. I think that somebody ultimately will give him that. I'm sure he'll sweet talk
00:49 him with my personnel guy. Yes, he's going to be under me and I'm going to have final say,
00:58 but he's largely going to be in charge of picking the personnel. I think somebody at the end of the
01:03 day will give Bill that. The other question, which you're probably about to ask is, should he get
01:10 that? I don't think he should at all. Nope. I would never do that. I would never agree to that
01:17 here. I think that Bill Belichick, in terms of game planning, knowing what the Patriots need to
01:27 do to win that game against that opponent that week, I still think he's on top of his game.
01:32 I think he's one of the best in the league at that. The problem with the Patriots and where
01:37 they have fallen to, it's all personnel. It's all because of Bill's attitude towards personnel,
01:45 his attitude towards offensive personnel, his attitude towards he'd rather have
01:50 48 good solid football players that follow directions than take risks on upper level guys.
02:02 I would never agree to that if I was an owner of an NFL team, but I do think somebody will do that.
02:10 They'll be so desperate for the legitimacy, the name, the momentum that bringing in a Bill
02:18 Belichick, I think somebody will do that. See, if I'm somebody else too, I think of it
02:23 like this. Okay. Belichick having more on his plate at this point in time in his life,
02:29 his in-game decision-making has not been great either. I think we have seen that slide a little
02:35 bit over the past couple of years. If I'm bringing Bill in, I want to put less on his plate. I want
02:41 him fully functioning, fully focused, fully thinking about the operation. Game day execution
02:48 has not been sharp. Fourth down decisions have not been sharp. We've seen that. I would want Bill to
02:54 be fully focused on that and say, "Hey man, delegate more. As far as the front office,
02:59 we're going to put somebody else in charge of that area." Now, here's another question I have for you.
03:04 If Belichick, because we know these conversations are happening, they're already happening. This is
03:08 not like the season ends and then all of a sudden there's a rush of phone calls. Trust me, these
03:13 things are being discussed in some circles. Not saying Belichick's picking up the phone and having
03:18 conversations, but teams are doing due diligence and all that stuff as Bert said. If Belichick
03:23 figures out rather quickly after this season ends that he's not going to get the power that he wants,
03:30 he's not going to have that autonomy. Do you think that makes him more open to the idea of staying
03:36 here in New England saying to himself, "You know what? If I'm not going to get that power elsewhere,
03:41 Robert wants to take the personnel from me, but I might as well just stay here where I'm
03:47 comfortable and let this contract run out and just go through 2024," if Robert is okay with that?
03:56 So, we'll get to that in a second, but I just wanted to go back to something that you said
04:01 about Bill, saving Bill from himself and putting him in a position where he's just coaching. He's
04:09 just worried about that. He's not worrying about X, Y, and Z. That's where I have a little
04:14 trepidation, even though I did say that I still think Bill Belichick, the game planner,
04:22 is at the top of the game. I think he's near the top in the league.
04:27 One thing that your points brought up to me was in training camp, I was watching Bill. Remember,
04:34 when McDaniels was here, McDaniels almost exclusively handled all things offense. It
04:43 sort of allowed Bill to do other things and the things that you talked about. I thought like
04:49 Bill O'Brien, while I knew he wasn't going to have the cache with Belichick that McDaniels did,
04:54 I did think that that was going to be a bonus. We talked about it, that watching him at training
05:00 camp, it just seemed like he was back to throwing different scenarios at the offense and defense.
05:06 He was back to cooking up stuff. I was excited about that for the team.
05:13 That just hasn't come to fruition. It gives me trepidation about exactly where is Bill as an
05:20 in-game coach. He used to be the best. I don't know if he is anymore. If this is allowing him
05:29 to float between offense, defense, and special teams this season, what does that say about where
05:35 he is? The scenario that you lay out, I agree with you. I think that at the end of the day,
05:42 could we get in a situation where Bill looks and he's talking back channels to other teams about
05:47 what might things look like and somebody's not ready to give him either the power and/or the
05:54 money or both that he's expecting. I do think that makes it more likely that he's back.
06:01 This is something that we were going to talk about. We might as well talk about it now.
06:08 I've been told by people close to Bill that when it comes time that when he talks to Robert,
06:14 Bill's going to go in on the offensive. He is going to have a game plan. He's going to have
06:18 an endgame in mind. That could be as you're outlining right now. That could be, "I want to
06:24 stay here, but I'm going to cook the books to how I want it, but give Robert the illusion that we're
06:31 changing things," or "I'm putting Kraft in a corner so he has to fire me and I get to do what
06:37 I want to do. He has to pay me," all that stuff. I do think that it's in the realm of possibility.
06:45 I think it's a good possibility that Bill goes into that meeting with Robert and Robert says,
06:49 "Okay, so Bill, what are we going to do? How do we get here? How do we get out of this? Do you want
06:54 to be here?" That sort of thing. Bill goes in, "You know, Robert, I've thought about it a lot.
06:58 I've realized a lot this season. I messed up the coaching staff last year. I messed it up a little
07:05 bit this year, but really the personnel thing hasn't worked out. I realized that this is what
07:12 I'm going to do. I'm going to put X in charge, but it's somebody who's affiliated with Bill.
07:18 Bill knows he's going to acquiesce to everything that Bill wants. He's going to give Bill the type
07:23 of player that he wants. He's going to be in lockstep. He might be like, "That guy reports
07:29 to you, Robert," but Bill really knows that guy's really going to report to him. He's going to
07:34 report or he's going to propose some sort of sham arrangement like that that makes it that he thinks
07:40 it makes it palatable for Robert to keep him and that it saves face that he can announce, "These
07:45 are the structural changes that we're bringing to the New England Patriots. The head coach and the
07:49 GM are going to report to me. They're going to operate separately, but together and all that
07:53 bull crap." Yeah, I do think that's a possibility and I think it'll be interesting to see what kind
07:59 of market, what information Bill gets before the end of the season that'll shape that meeting with
08:05 Robert Kraft and ultimately what happens here. Fanduel is the exclusive wagering partner of
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08:25 The only thing as we talk about this idea of how this break will happen if it does happen,
08:31 Ian Rappaport over the weekend, and I appreciate Tom Curran's work. I appreciate Ian's work.
08:38 I was a little confused by the semantics games that were being played over the last week or so
08:44 about whether it was a firm decision or a soft decision or whatever the hell kind of,
08:49 I didn't quite get it. But let's just say in that report, Ian Rappaport says that
08:56 there's going to be a period of evaluation and that stood out to me. I wonder, because we've
09:03 talked about this, Greg, and everybody's talked about this, but how would it happen and who has
09:08 the leverage and would Belichick force Kraft's hand, could Kraft trade Belichick? I do wonder
09:14 if Gerard Mayo, and we'll get into him in a little bit, but if Gerard Mayo is the succession
09:20 plan still to this day, does that allow Kraft to drag his feet with Belichick?
09:28 Does that allow Kraft to say, "Hey, Bill, look, you're under contract through 2024.
09:33 I want you as the head coach. We're going to bring somebody else from the outside in
09:38 as far as a personnel guy. You coach the football team. That's the offer. You want to stay. That's
09:44 what you do." Belichick pushes back. Kraft waits it out. Okay, fine, because then Belichick,
09:51 he's missing all of these opportunities that are out there. All these other jobs are drying up.
09:56 And people might say, "Well, Nick, that would limit the field for the Patriots."
10:01 Not if Kraft wants Mayo. If Kraft wants Mayo, that could be the ace in the pocket. He could say,
10:12 "Bill, take your time because I already have your successor. I already know who's going to be the
10:17 guy. So head coach or nothing. And if you want to go elsewhere, I'll be willing to work that out.
10:25 We either work a trade for you or you're staying here as the head coach, or you can sit out a year."
10:30 I think that's the period of evaluation, Greg, makes me wonder if Kraft is going to slow play
10:35 this thinking, "I've got Mayo in the back pocket. Even the GM side of it, I've got Elliot Wolfe.
10:41 I've got guys in that front office that can take over. They've been doing all the homework anyway."
10:45 If Kraft really wants to keep this Bill O'Brien, Gerard Mayo, and he's okay with somebody in the
10:53 front office just being promoted, Kraft could make this pretty difficult for Belichick to give in and
10:59 say, "All right, just trade me and get me the hell out of here." Yeah, he could. I'm getting a
11:10 popsicle headache thinking of this. This whole evaluation period thing,
11:15 the bottom line is it's ridiculous. It's either you want Bill Belichick to be your coach or you
11:26 don't. You're going to go through power struggles. The behind the scenes there right now, not just
11:35 with ownership but on the coaching staff and the front office, it is a bit like Game of Thrones
11:40 there right now. There's a lot going on behind the scenes. By the way, I teased my friend,
11:48 Seth Wickersham, this week. I texted him. I was like, "All right, so when's your Belichick bomb
11:55 going to drop?" He played dumb. He gave me a shrug. I don't know this for a fact, but
12:03 knowing Seth and Van Atta and ESPN and how they like to do things, there's no way. Seth has to
12:11 finish it off. He has to. I think he's already had two bombshell Patriots pieces. I think one
12:19 off of Spygate and the ramifications of that, of course, the Brady-Belichick dynamic. Then he's
12:26 got to finish it off. If this is the end of Belichick, I fully expect a Seth Wickersham
12:32 bomb that will explain a lot of things and a lot of the mechanisms, the Game of Thrones stuff
12:39 that's going on behind the scenes. I fully expect it probably the week of the final game
12:44 that he'll drop it. I just wanted to say that because it just occurred to me the other day.
12:49 I don't want the games to be played. It's either you want Bill or you don't. If you don't want
12:58 him, just say, all right, you're firing him, but flowery press release, whatever.
13:05 We've decided to mutually part ways. We wish Bill Belichick the best of luck. He's the best
13:10 there ever was. He'll always have a home here. Can't wait to unveil the statue of him and have
13:17 a Bill Belichick day down the road. The Patriots are going in another direction. Evaluation period.
13:24 Ian talking about this may take longer than expected. Yes, Nick, you're absolutely right
13:30 to read it as the crafts are laying the groundwork for a leverage game, a power struggle,
13:40 that sort of thing. To me, that would be a humongous mistake. This team, this franchise
13:47 needs to move on as quickly as possible because of what's happened the last five years.
13:54 It's time for a fresh start. Get going, get going in the other direction. If this is dragging out
13:58 until the senior bowl and crap like that, no, come on, get on with it.
14:04 [Music]