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For years, Bill Belichick has been the face of the ruthless New England Patriots run of success in the NFL. Belichick led the Patriots to each of their six Super Bowl victories, and ran the most efficient operation the league has ever seen in an era where building a continuous winner was supposed to be impossible. In the process, Belichick cemented himself as the greatest coach in NFL history.
And while all of that remains true, it's time for the Patriots to move on from Belichick and find a new head coach. If you thought New England's 38-3 loss to the Dallas Cowboys in Week 4 was bad, you probably spent most of their encore to that loss shielding your eyes. Belichick and the Pats managed to one-up themselves by putting together another lifeless performance in their 34-0 loss to the New Orleans Saints in Week 5.
Things have been trending downward in New England for years, but everything is starting to fall apart now, and all signs of blame are pointing to Belichick. The legendary Patriots coach has had a fantastic stint in Foxboro, but all good things must come to an end, and the time is now for New England to get rid of Belichick.
Bill Belichick is no longer the leader the Patriots need
For years, Belichick was viewed as the golden standard for head coaches across the NFL. It surely helped that he had the greatest player of all time in Tom Brady suiting up for him, but Belichick was fantastic at putting together cost-effective rosters, instilling a shrewd game plan for every opponent he faced, and finding every possible way to get a leg up on the rest of his competition.
Ever since Brady left for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Belichick has found himself with a new challenge of building the Patriots roster back up on the fly. In 2021, which was Mac Jones' rookie campaign with the team, it seemed like he had figured things out. But since then, everything has gone wrong for New England, and suffering the two worst losses of his tenure in back-to-back weeks is not exactly a great look.
For the first time during his stint with the Patriots, there's reason to believe that Belichick is not fit to be leading this operation, both from a coaching and front office perspective. Belichick the GM has given Belichick the coach one of the worst rosters in the league, and the result is a team that is getting destroyed by mediocre teams like the Cowboys and Saints (yes, the Cowboys are mediocre until they can beat a legitimately competitive team).
A quick look at New England's roster is jarring. Obviously, the plan was to put together a defense that was good enough to dominate their opponent and allow the offense enough wiggle room to grind out wins. But injuries have decimated the defense, and even if they were healthy, the offense has been so bad that it wouldn't even matter.
The main issue with Belichick's roster construction since Brady's departure is that he doesn't understand Brady is no longer his quarterback. You cannot shortchange a developing quarterback so significantly in terms of his weapons and expect to win games, especially when it's only his third year in the league. Jones has admittedly not been great, but even Brady would struggle to string together wins with this offense.
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Belichick has made a habit of following different trends from the rest of the league in order to put together wins, but his latest moves have all been wrong. In the AFC East alone, the Patriots are witnessing the rise of Josh Allen on the Buffalo Bills and Tua Tagovailoa on the Miami Dolphins because the front office has gone out and surrounded them with playmakers on offense. Belichick went the other way and actually found a way to make Jones' supporting cast worse this past offseason, and well, he's certainly paying the price for it right now.
The most concerning aspect of this all is that Belichick has given himself some bad rosters before, but still managed to keep his team competitive. But on the field, this team just looks lost. Belichick's message to this team, whatever it may be, clearly is not resonating, because if it were, this team wouldn't have gotten throttled in such humiliating fashion by the Saints.
Losing by over 30 points in consecutive weeks is unacceptable, even more so for a coach of Belichick's stature. Remember all the accomplishments we listed off at the beginning of this piece? It's tough to believe that the same guy is sending this blatantly incompetent team out onto the field. What are these guys even practicing in the buildup to these games?
Robert Kraft wants the Patriots to be a playoff contender, but this is the furthest away from the postseason this team has been in decades. Public support for Belichick was already waning, and there's only so many blowout losses you can take before reality must be accepted. Belichick is no longer the right head coach for New England. That may have been true for the past few years in all honesty, and his numerous mistakes since Brady's departure are all beginning to catch up to him.
The chances Belichick would get outright fired after all he has accomplished with the Patriots is pretty slim. But given Kraft's desire to win entering the season, and what has transpired through five weeks, Belichick's already short leash is practically nonexistent, and at this point, there doesn't seem to be any way things get better in New England anytime soon.
Big changes are needed, and they cannot be put off any longer. It's time for the Patriots to move on from Belichick and usher in the next era of leadership for this team after their pitiful start to the 2023 campaign.
