Kraft’s all in for Roger
Aligns himself with commish
If Patriots owner Robert Kraft were atop the masthead of any other NFL franchise he’d routinely get eggs tossed at his house by angry, fired-up local football fans.
But he is not the owner of the Jags or Jets, Raiders or Ravens, Packers or Panthers. He is the owner of your New England Patriots.
He is the former season ticket-holder who in 1994 bought this one-time sinkhole of a football club from James Busch Orthwein, thereby providing local ownership and financial stability.
He’s the guy who hired Bill Belichick and then stepped aside and allowed his new coach to do what he wouldn’t let Bill Parcells do, which is shop for the groceries.
After clumsy dalliances with trying get stadiums built in Hartford and Southie, he’s the guy who reached into the Kraft family piggy bank and built what eventually came to be known as Gillette Stadium.
In terms of local legends, he should be treated as though he’s Arthur Fiedler, Red Auerbach, Tip O’Neill, Jack Kennedy, Robert Gould Shaw and the original Boston Patriot, Paul Revere, all rolled into one.
And yet . . . it’s complicated.
Pats fans will cuff you one if you run afoul of In Bill We Trust, or if you attempt to make a case that Tom Brady is not the G.O.A.T. Yet while it’s understood that Kraft is the grown-up former Boston Braves baseball fan who turned the Patriots into the straw that stirs the sports drink around here, there’s an element out there that seethes over Papa Bob’s corporate bromance with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.
Goodell has long since supplanted Ulf Samuelsson, Bucky Dent, Kobe Bryant and any and all Mannings as the biggest villain in Boston sports history. It was Goodell who acted as judge, jury and executioner in the matter of Tom Brady and Deflategate, ultimately forcing Our Tom to sit out the first four games of the 2016 season. Pats fans didn’t care about the fine, and got over the loss of draft picks. But the Brady suspension will never, ever be forgotten, even after the Pats got the last laugh via a history-making, Brady-led comeback against the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl LI, Goodell remains the bad guy.
And yet Kraft is perceived around here as a Goodell good ol’ boy. Because he is. Yes, there was some tough talk just as Deflategate was heating up, but as campaigns go it lasted about as long as “Chris Christie for President.”
This is where we are now. According to Peter King of Sports Illustrated, it is none other than Robert Kraft who is trying to hose down disgruntled Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones in his attempt to round up a posse and run Goodell out of town.
Just as Kraft boiled over during the early stages of Deflategate, now it’s Jones who is going after Goodell. And why? Jones apparently is enraged because of the six-game suspension that was handed down to Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott following a domestic-violence investigation.
King has a source who clued him in to a Nov. 2 conference call by the NFL’s compensation committee. To quote directly from King’s article, with italics included, “. . . the source with knowledge of the call said Patriots owner and committee member Robert Kraft told Jones words to this effect: Jerry, my franchise got killed for a BS incident
with so-called deflated footballs. We lost our quarterback for 25 percent of the season. We got fined a million bucks. We lost first- and fourth-round picks. For hogwash! But I took it. My fans killed me for it, but I try to be a good partner.”
There are Pats fans who still wish Kraft had gone after Goodell and then kept on going after him, rather than re-emerging as the commish’s best fishing buddy. In other words, they wish Kraft had done what Jones is doing now: Fighting back.
It would have been fun, no doubt about that. But while the football foot soldiers (that is, Pats fans) are continuing to go after Goodell by booing the guy and wearing those cool Barstool Sports clown-nose T-shirts, it is an army without a general. The general, Kraft, has made his peace.
There’s a lesson in this, Pats fans. Kraft is the greatest owner in Boston sports history — five Super Bowls, a privately financed stadium, a commitment to philanthropy that is both far-reaching and grassroots — but it’s important to remember he’s just that: an owner of a NFL franchise.
He is a “partner.” His circle of friends includes a collection of billionaires who awaken each Monday morning to the roar of a Brinks truck pulling up at the house.
Deep down, we all knew Deflategate was never about Goodell. He’s nothing more than the bestcompensated bag man in the history of the planet.
And here we go again. Another owner is angry at Goodell, and he’s trying to do something about it. And the other owners are stepping up and saying, “Easy there, fella, calm down.”
I’m not sure those are Robert Kraft’s exact words, but you get the idea.
It doesn’t mean he’s forgotten the heartache of losing the ol’ Boston Braves, or forgotten the pinch of sitting on aluminum benches as a season ticketholder at Schaefer Stadium. It doesn’t mean he’ll stop showing up unannounced at local charity events.
But he’s an owner — a partner. And this partner has Roger Goodell’s back.
It is what it is.