The following guest post was written by Gaurav Verma and edited by Cary Krongard.
For nearly 20 years, the New England Patriots were the team to beat in the NFL. With six Super Bowl wins in nine appearances and several more AFC Championship Games, the organization set a standard for success that is unlikely to ever be matched in the NFL, or in team professional sports in general. However, the Patriots of today are a middling team with a bleak future ahead of them unless they make drastic changes to their roster. While it was masked for a few years by the presence of Tom Brady, it has become clear since his departure that the Patriots’ current position is a result of Bill Belichick’s poor decision making as a General Manager; in particular, his tendency to build his support staff like Donald Trump did his administration: hiring yes-men and his family and family friends over the most talented individuals. As a result, the Patriots continue to repeat their mistakes in roster building – something Belichick would never tolerate on the field – as the rest of the league passes them by.
As it currently stands, the Patriots have almost no cap space and need to replace Starting Guard Shaq Mason (assuming Mike Onwenu replaces the recently departed Ted Karras), two starting linebackers (Dont’a Hightower and Kyle Van Noy), and arguably their best defensive player in J.C. Jackson. Although many in New England are excited about the acquisition of DeVante Parker, he is a complementary piece, and not one that meaningfully upgrades an anemic passing attack. The team still needs to find Mac Jones a bona-fide WR1 to increase the explosiveness of the offense. Despite what some homer fans say about the depth at the position, no defenses are scared of covering the Legion of Average.
While the Patriots have long believed in building through the draft, they only have three picks in the top-100 selections in this year’s draft. This will make a talent infusion through this route all the more difficult, which should have resulted in a more aggressive approach in free agency. While many other contending teams—most notably the Los Angeles Rams—have freed up cap space through simple restructures in order to pursue free agents to bolster their rosters, the Patriots have inexplicably refused to do so. Instead, they have cleared cap with puzzling moves that make the team worse, like the Mason trade or the Van Noy release. While restructures do push cap hits to later years, the salary cap is expected to dramatically rise as the NFL puts the effects of the COVID season in the rearview mirror and begins to profit from highly lucrative new media rights deals. This offsets the risk of such maneuvers. With the first wave of free agency behind us, it will be very challenging for the Patriots to put an improved team on the field next year given their limited resources and unwillingness to restructure existing contracts. This inaction is nothing short of a failure in roster building–especially given the rapid improvement of other teams in the AFC this offseason–and an indication that the Patriots might be too stuck in their ways to compete in today’s NFL.
It is important to understand the core reason that the Patriots are in the position they are now. Repeated failures in the NFL Draft required the team to spend big in free agency last year to even put an NFL caliber roster on the field. The blame for this lies on Belichick and his unwavering trust in former General Manager Nick Caserio. The results have been disastrous. Of their 32 picks in the 2016-19 drafts, only four figure to play a key role in the upcoming season (RB Damien Harris, P Jake Bailey, the oft-injured LT Isaiah Wynn, and LB Ja’Whuan Bentley). Of their 25 picks in the top-100 from 2014-20, only Joe Thuney, Tre Flowers, Harris, and Kyle Dugger have produced for the Patriots at a level consistent with their draft position, with Jimmy Garoppolo doing so outside Foxboro as well. Selections of players like Aaron Dobson, Dominique Easley, Cyrus Jones, N’Keal Harry, and Joejuan Williams have come to exemplify the team’s futility in the draft. One needs to look all the way back to 2013 to find the last time the team was able to come away from the draft with three or more non special teams long-term contributors (Jamie Collins, Logan Ryan, Duron Harmon).
Although the team has had some success with later picks such as James White, Ja’Whuan Bentley, Deatrich Wise, and offensive linemen like Shaq Mason, Ted Karras, and Mike Onwenu, it has been abundantly clear that the team needed to change their approach or their decision makers in order to achieve better success in the draft. Yet, that never happened. The Patriots stuck with Caserio as Belichick’s right-hand man until he departed for the Texans following the 2020 season. At that point, team owner Robert Kraft publicly called out Belichick for his poor draft record and demanded changes be made to the approach. As such, the Patriots implemented a more collaborative approach in 2021, with new voices from outside the organization taking on leading roles as in addition to a greater emphasis on the scouting team’s opinion as opposed to those of Belichick’s coach friends in College Football. The results thus far have been good, with Mac Jones, Christian Barmore, and Rhamondre Stevenson all having served as valuable contributors in their rookie seasons. But the infusion of talent was not enough to save the team from the position they currently are in, and it falls on Belichick for failing to make the necessary adjustments until it was too late.
Belichick’s roster management skills over the past year or two have been especially puzzling. He traded the former DPOY in Stephon Gilmore for a paltry 6th round pick, repeated that mistake by letting Pro Bowl CB J.C. Jackson walk for no compensation in return, and recently traded Shaq Mason – who remains one of the better Guards in the NFL and is on a reasonable contract – for a measly 5th round pick. Letting major talent walk has always been the Patriot Way (much to the chagrin of the team’s spoiled fanbase), but the approach this time around has been different. Belichick used to make it a point to let go of players a year too early rather than too late. As such, he was able to recoup 1st or 2nd round draft picks when he traded the likes of Deion Branch, Richard Seymour, and Chandler Jones. In 2009, even with Tom Brady returning, Belichick saw it as integral to getting a return on Matt Cassel after his season as the team’s starting QB and as such tagged and traded him (along with Mike Vrabel) for a pick atop the 2nd round in the 2009 Draft. The point of such moves was to give Belichick the ammo to move up and down the draft board to restock the cupboard and replace these key players with younger and cheaper talent. However, a team that once racked up draft picks and pounced on the opportunity to trade Day 3 picks for talented veterans now lacks that same aggressiveness and seems unable to operate efficiently in the NFL of today. It furthermore is an indication of a lack of coherent strategy: The team is neither aggressive in making themselves better today nor are they stockpiling assets for the future with the idea that their championship window is a year or two down the line (a sensible position given that they’ll again have a lot of cap space after this season). Instead, they seem destined for mediocrity both now and in the future without a meaningful change in strategy.
In summary, Bill Belichick and the Patriots are in the position they are today due to repeated and uncorrected mistakes in roster building–namely in the draft and in player development but also very notably in the evaluation of wide receivers (the trade for Mohammed Sanu, the drafting of N’Keal Harry, and the signing of Nelson Agholor in particular come to mind). But perhaps the most damning decision Belichick has made as of recent is entrusting the development of prized young QB Mac Jones in the hands of Joe Judge–a man with no professional experience coaching Quarterbacks and who is less qualified for the job than Jared Kushner was to lead Middle East peace talks. Belichick should have instead sought out an experienced QB coach to help accelerate Jones’s development, but doing so would require him to go outside the organization, something he seems unwilling to do. Like with the refusal to change his approach to the draft, this again reflects Belichick’s stubbornness, obstinance, and his insistence on working with those who he is close to and who toe the line as opposed to potentially more talented assistants who might challenge his beliefs and views. As the team looks to build through the draft, it is disheartening to see that the young talent will be coached by failed head coaches like Judge and Matt Patricia as well as Belichick’s sons. Granted, the team does have some talented assistants like Jerod Mayo who are respected around the league. But guys like Mayo are far overshadowed by the men who are in key roles on the staff for reasons clearly unrelated to talent.
The time is now for Robert Kraft to realize that the Patriot Way is working no more. While the team was able to overcome mistakes in the draft for a few years with the presence of Tom Brady, as well as the fact that New England was an attractive destination for key free agents willing to take modest deals in order to chase a ring (for example, Darrelle Revis), that is no longer the NFL landscape of today. Whether or not Belichick realizes this, Kraft should require the future Hall of Famer to relinquish some of his power in the organization and bring in a more diverse array of voices for both the front office and the coaching staff. That way, the organization can better build a team that can compete in today’s NFL. If Belichick is unwilling to do this, it might be time to acknowledge that all good things must come to an end and part ways with arguably the greatest coach in NFL history.
About The Author:
Gaurav Verma is a first-year MBA candidate at The MIT Sloan School of Management. At Sloan, he is enrolled in the Finance Track and served on the Organizing Committee for the 2022 Sloan Sports Analytics Conference (SSAC). Prior to Sloan, he spent four years in Investment Banking after graduating from Johns Hopkins University. He was born and raised in the Boston-area, and is an avid sports fan. He can be reached via email at gauravv@mit.edu.
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