Belichick is Already Getting to Work on 2024. And Doesn't Rule Out the Idea of Giving Up His GM Duties.

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Paradoxical though it may sound, truly great men don't let a little thing like possibly no longer having a job stop them from getting the job done. Whether it's George Costanza showing up to work Monday morning pretending like he didn't just storm out the door and quit Friday afternoon, or Milton from Initech continuing to report his desk unaware he'd been fired because his paychecks had never been stopped, some people just possess that inner drive, that work ethic, that keeps them going regardless of their employment status. 

And so it is with Bill Belichick. Yes, the rest of the world has him kneeling in unemployment's On Deck circle. But that's not about to deter him from doing business as business is done. Which is to say, how he's always approached things. By out working everybody else:

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Source - Speaking to reporters on Monday morning, Belichick outlined what that process will look like for him and the organization. Unsurprisingly, though, he did not entertain any hypotheticals about what may or may not happen as a result of that.

What he did say, however, is that he is still under contract with the team — a rarity for Belichick.

“I’m under contract, do what I always do, which is every day I come in work as hard as I can to work the team in whatever way I can. So, that’s what I’m going to continue to do” Belichick said during his opening statement. …

“End-of-the-year process, I don’t think, will be fundamentally any different from the standpoint of how it’s done. The decisions, that’s a whole other conversation. How it’s done, I’ll meet with Robert like I always do, meet with the staff, meet with the personnel department, kind of recap the season from the big picture, and then some of the individual situations that are looming one way or another. But that’s obviously a long, long way off from where we are right now.”

There's no reason that any of us would expect anything less from the man who turned these three words into a semi-awkward rallying cry:

But as business as usual as it would be for him to be conducting … well, business as usual, there was one answer he gave that was highly unusual. For him anyway:

I've been asked a 100 million times if I thought this was a possibility. The question being a reasonable one from Patriots fans frustrated with seeing, for example, a comparison between the Patriots 50th overall pick in 2022 and the Rams' 177th pick in 2023:

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I could cite dozens of other examples, but that would just belabor the point. I think we all get that while the drafts have not been completely barren these last few years, they've failed to yield the kind of crops that could keep the Kraft Family Ranch from going under. 

And any time the subject's been brought up, I reject it out of hand. After all, getting final say on personnel moves - even draft day decisions - is a demotion, any way you slice it. Just for an apples-to-apples comparison, look at what happened in 1996 when Mr. Kraft overruled Bill Parcells, went with what his personnel staff including Bobby Grier recommended, and drafted Ohio State wideout Terry Glenn with the 6th pick instead of one of the D-linemen (Duane Clemsons out of California or Texas' Tony Brackens) Parcells wanted. Parcells later said, "I was mad as hell. I said, 'OK. If thats' the way you want it, you got it.'" But made up his mind right then and there it would be his last season working for the Krafts. And he had 33% of Belichick's Super Bowls to his credit at the time. 

So it seemed ludicrous to me that Belichick would ever accept such an arrangement. Just wishful thinking on the part of Pats fans who are at once frustrated by the lack of talent on the roster and appreciative of how great a coach they have.

Which means this would be a huge deal, if true. 

It might be nothing more than Belichick refusing to give any red meat to the media at his contractually mandated press availability. He might have just given the blandest, least controversial answer he could come up with. After all, why start helping them with their pageviews now? And might have just decided the prudent thing to do is keep his options open before his post-season meeting with the boss. Which makes sense. 

But it could be much more than that. This could be a tacit acknowledgement that too many picks have gone bust for this to be sustainable. That the reason his team was last in the league in points was because Bill O'Brien was being asked to cook with and empty refridgerator and a bare cupboard. Or possibly just a realization that he's going to be 72 by the time of the next draft. And that's too much heavy lifting for any man. Particularly one who famously said he didn't want to be coaching at the age of 70 the way Marv Levy did.

For sure, he's made it clear he's still got a lot of coaching in him. That he enjoys that part of the job. He as much as said it in the postgame last night and implied it with everything he's said and done so far today. But anyone who goes to practices and sees him walking the field, chatting it up with players, giving individual instruction, bitching out guys for mental errors, and grabassing with whichever Jersey rockers and assorted VIPs are visting, that he was born to coach tackle football and still loves every part of that experience. 

Honestly, I think this would be the ideal solution. Give HC Bill input into college and pro scouting decisions. Let GM Bill quietly retire. Give someone else who is more directly answerable to ownership the final say so that they - and the fans - can feel that serious changes have been made to the process which has clearly not been working. 

That is the best of all possible outcomes as things stand. From HC Bill's lips to Mr. Kraft's ears. Let's do this thing.