CRAZY LIKE A FOX?
Strange off-season has many questioning Belichick
It has been a few days since the NFL draft was completed, long enough for the dopamine rush to fade and the consensus grades to emerge.
And the thing I keep wondering: Is Bill Belichick up to something?
I mean that earnestly. Belichick's draft was in keeping with the whole of the New England Patriots off-season, which seems like a rebuke of NFL orthodoxy and, indeed, common sense.
It is as though Belichick has stopped trying. Which, given his unimpeachable credentials as the most successful coach in the modern era of North American sports, gets back to the question posed a few sentences ago. Has he figured out something that no one else yet knows? Is the new market inefficiency acting like you do not give a crap?
Let us review. At the draft, Belichick selected Cole Strange, a guard out of UT-Chattanooga, with the 29th pick in the first round, which set off a series of `Strange Pick'-related puns.
Because there are about one zillion NFL draft analyses, it was quickly evident that this was a player expected to go somewhere in the third round. Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay and his GM, Les Snead, were doing press when the Strange pick was made and they were surprised enough to burst into giggles.
Strange could, obviously, end up a longtime stalwart of the Patriots offensive line, plenty worthy of his selection, but that would still make this an odd choice.
Belichick is a longtime proponent of turning one pick into two later picks, and this was the perfect chance for something like that.
When the guy you want is rated in the 70s, there's lot of room to move back from 29 and be confident he will still be there. Instead, he scooped up Strange early, to replace, incidentally, the veteran guard Shaq Mason, whom the Pats recently traded.
In the second round, Belichick did it again, taking Baylor wideout Tyquan Thornton with the 50th pick, even though the consensus draft boards expected him to go as many as 100 picks later. Again, the chance to move back, collect picks, and still get that guy seemed very much available, and again Belichick didn't bother.
Was his phone out of battery and he left the charging cable in his car? We've all been there.
A curious draft in isolation would be one thing, but it comes amid a stretch in which much of the NFL has been in frenzied chaos while Belichick has exuded nothing but chill vibes.
The Miami Dolphins traded for Tyreek Hill and the Las Vegas Raiders traded for Davante Adams, arguably the two best wide receivers in the game changing teams. ProBowl receivers A.J. Brown and Amari Cooper were also moved, and still other pass catchers like Christian Kirk received big money as free agents.
New England's biggest hole last year was a lack of receiving talent to help young quarterback Mac Jones, and with all those stars moving around, the Pats' big splash was to trade for DaVante Parker, who the Dolphins didn't want anymore and who was hurt for most of last season.
Some of this inactivity is salary-cap related, and the Patriots did spend big in free agency, uncharacteristically, in the 2021 off-season, so Belichick deciding to cool his jets this year is not exactly shocking.
But the AFC is full of teams that have decided to muscle up, from the Raiders and Dolphins to the Bills (Von Miller), Chargers (Khalil Mack) and Broncos (Russell Wilson).
The Patriots lost by 30 points to the Bills in the first round of the playoffs last year, and all these teams around them are improving. It is a curious time for Belichick to, ahem, stand pat.
Add in the fact that longtime offensive co-ordinator Josh McDaniels left for the head-coaching job in Vegas and has seemingly not been replaced, and Belichick appears intent on heading into next season with holes in his roster and with significantly less coaching help than someone in his position would normally have. He doesn't have a formal defensive co-ordinator, either.
Instead of moving to the chief executive phase of his career, where you might have expected him to let co-ordinators do most of the work while he fiddles around when the mood strikes, Belichick appears to be taking on more of the workload as he passes 70 years old.
Belichick, it does not need saying, can do whatever he pleases at this point. He has long made weird picks and trades, but also won six
Super Bowls, 78 AFC East titles (fine, 17) and did all of it in the one league that is supposed to make that kind of elite longevity impossible.
He's the ultimate check the-score board guy. If he wants to eschew proven draft strategies, trade useful veterans, fill his roster with players from Army and Navy and give all of the play-calling duties to his kids, there remains a decent chance that he still could go 9-8.
But this just seems like a curious way to wind down his career, especially with noted frenemy Tom Brady having found immediate success elsewhere.
Maybe Belichick wants to try 1970s football, running the ball 50 times and throwing it twice. Maybe he's just bored and setting the degree to expert-difficulty this season just to see if he can win the division again.
If it was any other team, you'd chalk up the New England off-season to incompetence. But this is Bill Belichick, so it has to be something else. Doesn't it?