The Nick Caserio War is Over, and the Patriots Won. Looks Like Old Balls Was Right Again
You have to really appreciate the irony of Ben Volin being the one to break this story. That is to say, this story. About Nick Caserio's contract extension today. Because I've been saying all along he was staying. And Volin has been more consistently wrong on this than, to steal Belichick's line about Charlie Casserly, the weatherman.
This is what I wrote last June, when the Texans first tried to lure Caserio away. While he was under contract to New England. At the Super Bowl ring party at Mr. Kraft's house, no less. And the invited guest who was there trying to steal my personal friend RKK's player personnel director right out from under his nose like he was the silverware, was Patriots former team chaplain, Jack Easterby:
Tampering is as illegal AF. You don’t come into another man’s rented tent, eat his food, drink his champagne and accept his Super Bowl ring and then try to steal his contractually committed employees away. Hell, when someone shows me hospitality, I don’t help myself to a beer in his fridge without asking. Hiring away someone’s Director of Player Personnel in his own home is worse than trying to bang his wife.
Me again:
[We're] guilty of underestimating the Boston media’s ability to turn a nothingburger into a full-on, five-alarm, panic-in-the-streets crisis in which the Patriots are suffering from:
A) Tension
B) Dissension
C) A “rift”
D) A tense, dissension-filled “rift”First it was Ben Volin, who did his best to start The Purge with a Globe article that went with “A) Tension,” using no less than four variations on “Nick Caserio wants out.”
Which was his reporting for a few hours anyway. Which is how long it took him to backtrack and call those very specific, declarative sentences his “opinion”:
So I answered back and figured that the whole issue, while fun, was pretty much over. Time to move onto the next False Flag manufactured crisis. But every time I think I’m out, they pull me back in:
Nevertheless, intelligentsia in the Boston media insisted Caserio-to-Houston was fated to happen. There was no escaping it. With the subtext that he was miserable in Foxboro. Being held against his will and forced into player personnel servitude like the slave laborers doing construction work for the Qatar World Cup. And would probably do irreparable damage to the organization from within until he was able to get out. Jump cut now to October, when this report dropped in the middle of the season:
My only problem with this report has nothing to do with whether it's true or not. I'm sure it is. At least for now. At least until we see how this plays out and if Caserio gets offered too many Kraftbucks to leave, which has happened before.
So while I stopped short of saying LaCanfora's report was a flat out lie - I have no reason to believe he wasn't told that and it probably came from the Texans - I was the only voice in this market willing to doubt he was leaving. To go back some, here's what I was saying as everyone assumed Caserio was trying to go over the wire and would be a pain in the ass to the whole organization if he was forced to remain through the 2019 season:
[Mr. Kraft] knows how to hang onto the people who are most valuable to him. From Belichick and Brady to Dante Scarnecchia and Josh McDaniels and now to Caserio. He’ll pay for talent.
So the Patriots get to keep Belichick's closest, most trusted advisor when it comes to roster-building. The man who's been in this position through five trips to the Super Bowl and three championships will be at the helm as they retool to get to the next one. The Texans get the alleged man of God who goes into the home of the man who hired him to be a spiritual advisor to his team and commits the sin of coveting his neighbor's player personnel director. I'll make that trade any day.
Although it's been said, many times, many ways, repeat after me: "Right again, Thornton." Hearing that never gets old. Neither does saying it.