There is no debating that Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots are enduring a rough stretch. In fact, it's the roughest stretch of Belichick's coaching career. But this is the six-time Super Bowl winning head coach we're talking about. Surely The Hoodie has a plan to get this franchise back on track, right?
Well, things are so ugly that even his former players are losing faith. In his role as an analyst for NBC's Sunday Night Football, former Patriots safety Devin McCourty cast doubt on the team's present, as well as its future.
“In New England it comes with a certain kind of pressure to produce, and right now they’re not producing,” McCourty said during halftime of the Dallas Cowboys-San Francisco 49ers game, per ESPN's Mike Reiss. “And I don’t know if it’s going to look any better. That is the scary thing in New England right now.”
The Patriots lost 34-0 at home to the New Orleans Saints on Sunday. That's one week after losing 38-3 to the Dallas Cowboys. Those are the two worst losses of Belichick's head coaching career.
Under Belichick, the Patriots were a model of consistency for nearly two decades. Starting when he took over as head coach in 2000, the team has won double-digits games 19 times in 23 full seasons. The Pats qualified for the playoffs 18 times over that stretch, and ended the season as champs six times. McCourty was on three of those title-winning teams.
But more and more, it's starting to feel like Belichick needed QB Tom Brady operating under center for his team to find success. In the three post-Brady seasons, the Patriots have just one winning season and playoff appearance. They are currently 1-4 and in fourth place in the AFC East.
Worse, it appears that the team whiffed on their post-Brady QB choice. First-round draft choice Mac Jones has been benched in consecutive weeks. He has failed to build on what looked like a promising 2021 rookie season.
Another losing season and Patriots fans will have serious questions about whether Bill Belichick is still the right person to be running the team's football operations.
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