Something to the story
ESPN or no, report’s not mere hyperbole
If you don’t think things are messy with the Patriots these days, you’re, like, not very smart.
And to borrow a line from the horror-movie industry, the calls are coming from inside Gillette Stadium.
That’s what’s so crazy about all this. Feel free to blame the bubbling BradyBelichick-Kraft crisis on the evildoers from ESPN if it’ll make you sleep better and keep your focus on the Patriots’ Gillette Stadium playoff showdown against Tennessee on Saturday night, but a couple of basic facts illustrate otherwise.
Fact No.1: Jimmy Garoppolo stopped being a back-up quarterback a long time ago. He entered this season as a starting quarterback in waiting. And nobody’s sources — key word: nobody’s — had the Patriots dealing him to the 49ers at the trade deadline for a second-round draft pick and Brian Hoyer’s cellphone number. Right?
Fact No. 2: Alex Guerrero may be Tom Brady’s fitness guru/dietician/business partner/life counselor, as well as godfather to his son, but it can’t get him a sideline pass at Gillette Stadium. It can’t get him on the team charter. It can’t get him a room inside the stadium to work with players not named Tom Brady. There’s a term for this: Bum’s rush.
So the best quarterback in history’s best buddy gets tossed off the team plane and the starting quarterback in waiting gets giftwrapped and sent to eternally thankful 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan.
And, what, we’re supposed to believe there’s no internal strife going on inside Gillette Stadium? Are you nuts?
For a team that prides itself in ignoring outside distractions, keeping things in-house and avoiding the “noise” of sports talk radio and whatever the sportswriters are churning out, the Patriots have created all their current controversies as though working from a Bill Belichick-designed game plan.
This isn’t to say the Patriots haven’t battled inner turmoil through the years. Of course they have. There’s no doubt things have happened, that dramas have played out, that grudges have formed and then held. One of which made print. And that’s Bill Belichick at his best: Keeping stuff in-house keeps it out of the hands of the media, which then creates the noise, which creates buzz . . . which creates stress for those players unwilling or unable to ignore it all.
Pay close attention here: If Belichick didn’t truly believe that gossip, rumors, spats and other forms of locker room strife can get in the way of getting things done, then he wouldn’t work so hard to make sure his employees give you little more than the time and temperature, if that.
For years, we’ve been hearing that Belichick is a fun-loving guy, a regular laugh riot, when he’s not doing these league-mandated media sessions. So let’s assume that’s the case, that in his private time he’s a loud, funny, goofball. Why, then, does he perform at press conferences as though at gunpoint? Easy: He doesn’t want anybody to know anything about anything.
And yet here we are. Everybody’s yapping. Either Belichick is behind it or it’s being done in defiance of long-held Belichick mandates.
Either way, it’s not a good look.
Does anybody honestly believe ESPN’s Seth Wickersham sat around his kitchen one morning and wholly invented the sources and anecdotes that helped form his troublein-paradise piece on the Patriots? Is that what it is? He just, you know, made it all up?
If he did, others have made up similar stuff as well.
We need to separate ourselves from the absurd belief that a media clown car has pulled into the arena, and that all these sportswriters are emerging with hit pieces on our beloved Patriots.
Something’s out of whack at 1 Patriot Place. Yes, the Pats were 13-3 during the regular season. Tom Brady will likely be named Most Valuable Player. New England will likely slice-anddice the Titans this weekend, setting up a showdown against Pittsburgh or Jacksonville in the AFC Championship Game.
And then, maybe, it’s on to Minneapolis for Super Bowl LII.
It’s what comes next that should scare you.
But not to worry: There’s absolutely no chance Belichick will get out of his arrangement with the Patriots and move back to New York to run the Giants.
Just as there was absolutely no chance the Patriots would give away Jimmy Garoppolo to the 49ers at the trade deadline.