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It’s been a very rough season for the New England Patriots, who have already been eliminated from the playoffs with four games remaining on the schedule. The status of Bill Belichick’s job has been up in the air, but it appears the franchise has already decided his fate.
Bill Belichick may be one of the most celebrated coaches in NFL history, but anyone who argued he owed a good chunk of his success to the talents of the equally legendary Tom Brady was vindicated based on what’s unfolded since the QB headed to Tampa Bay.
The New England Patriots have gone 28-36 in the regular season in the wake of Brady’s departure, and their only postseason appearance was a one-and-done showing against the Bills in 2021. You can certainly credit some of those struggles to their inability to find a QB who can come close to filling that void, but when you consider Belichick is also in charge of roster decisions, it’s pretty hard not to paint him as the primary scapegoat.
The team doesn’t really have anything left to play for this season, as the only real incentive remaining is to lose as many games as possible in order to get the highest pick possible in the draft. However, it sounds like someone other than Belichick will be deciding what player is selected.
On Monday, Patriots insider Tom E. Curran said he spoke with sources who assert the Patriots have already made the decision to move on from Belichick when the current campaign wraps up thanks in no small part to the dismal performance we were treated to when they headed over to Frankfurt.
Here’s what he had to say:
“When they came out of Germany, conversations I had that week made it very clear that a decision was made. They were going to play out the string, and at the end of the year, there would be a parting of the ways for a variety of reasons—the main one being you don’t fire Bill Belichick during the season…
It had gone too far. The Germany game. The Commanders game. The Saints game. All huge, marquee games—and then there was the Chargers game after that.
Just because they won last week in Pittsburgh in primetime, I don’t think it quells anything.”
As Curran notes, Belichick is still under contract for one more year, but it seems like the Patriots will be more than willing to eat his salary in order to get a fresh start sooner rather than later.