Trent Brown Goes Scorched Earth on the Patriots and All Their Terrible Decisions, but Says He Has No Beef With Belichick and is Willing to Re-Sign
To say that left tackle/threesome tattoo enthusiast Trent Brown's two tours of duty through New England have been a long, strange trip would be a massive understatement.
Brown came to Foxboro via a draft day trade with San Francisco. Ostensibly to either play right tackle or back up rookie 1st rounder Isaiah Wynn on the left. Until Wynn tore his Achilles in a preseason game, at which point Brown took over the Patriots LT spot and never relinquished it, all the way to the Super Bowl LIII title. I've argued that it's the single best season by a Pats LT I've ever seen, and I go back as far as Bruce Armstrong and even Leon Gray. The Raiders obviously agreed, because Mike Mayock and Jon Gruden signed him for 4 years and $66 million, with $36 million guaranteed. Then due to a combination of injuries and ineffectiveness, the Raiders traded him back to New England for a handful of magic beans after just two seasons.
Since then, things between Brown and the Patriots has been ... complicated. Like Harry & Megan and the Royal Family levels of complicated. In 2022, he started all 17 games and was second on the team in snaps with 1,030. He also gave up 8 sacks, 8 QB hits, 23 pressures and was tied for second among tackles in the league with 13 penalties. Then 2023 was plagued with injuries and illnesses. As well as anonymous reports dumping on his work ethic. Which led to a less than ideal end of his season, as Dante explained:
The good news for Brown is that when you're hitting free in a league that is desperate for left tackle help, you're free to speak you mind. And as it does in any other field of endeavor, when you're 6-foot-8 and 370 pounds, you get to say whatever the fudge you want because no one's going to tell you to pipe down. And saying what he wants is exactly how Brown is spending the first couple of days of his offseason.
Here he describes a chaotic situation inside Gillette, his resentment toward things that have been said in the press, major mistakes he thinks the organization made, but also his feelings toward Bill Belichick and what it would take for him to come back to Foxboro:
Taking this by topics, here is Brown on what's been said about him:
Source - A lot’s been said and written about Trent Brown over the last two months, and most of it is unflattering.
One report indicated the Patriots struggled to motivate Brown, who’ll be a free agent in March, throughout a 4-13 season. Another suggested he was “habitually late” to meetings. A recent exposé from the Boston Herald claimed Brown openly discussed plans to play for another team while in the locker room after a Week 14 road win over the Steelers.
Now, the 30-year-old tackle has told his side of the story. …
Brown was dismayed over what he felt were “bulls–t” and inaccurate leaks to reporters about a supposed unwillingness to battle through injuries.
“It’s been a rough year,” he said. …“It’s been tough to even go in the building every day knowing that there’s somebody that I probably look at every day, or smiles in my face every day, that is running a smear campaign.”
On reports he was talking about where he'd like to play in 2024 while the season was still going:
“That never came out of my mouth,” Brown said. “I would never say that after a win. If anything, I was more pissed off about my performance in the Pittsburgh game. But I was happy that we got a win. I would never take away from what just happened for the group to talk about anything. … I’ve never openly said anything about any NFC team or anything like that. It’s always been about me being wherever God wants me to be, and me handling my current situation. … I never put the cart before the horse.”
Describing how he played through a concussion in Week 1, stayed in the win over the Bills despite an ankle swollen like a basketball and played every snap against Miami despite aggravating that same ankle injury:
“I wasn’t happy with my performance at all,” Brown said. “I was really just out there. … I could feel it swelling in my cleat the whole time.”
Brown added: “To think that people are saying I was unwilling to fight through injuries due to future possible earnings… that’s crazy. I’ve always put the team first.”
On the tackle rotation he found himself a part of:
“You can ask Vederian Lowe,” Brown said. “You can ask Conor [McDermott]. I was their biggest fan and trying to help them succeed as well. And I would even tell my coach, Billy (Yates), ‘Man, this rotation, if they’re playing well, there’s no need to rotate. Let them get in this groove and stay in this groove.’ “ …
“I 100% agree with that,” Lowe said when asked about Brown being his advocate. “One thing Trent has definitely done, for me personally, he’s always tried to coach me up and give me pointers. He’s been doing that the whole season since I first got here."
On his willingness to keep playing for Belichick:
“I’m not opposed to it,” said Brown, who added he doesn’t hold any grudges against head coach Bill Belichick. “I think before that would take place, some things would need to be hashed out and understood."
What needs to be "hashed out and understood" exactly? He describes some dysfunction on Belichick's staff that sounds clinically insane:
“Because I’ve even heard from coaches how they’ll sit in staff meetings and they’ll be talking about how they can f–k with me. Like, I guess trying to get me out of character or whatever. It’s really crazy to think that we’re spending time talking about that instead of getting better.” …
Brown said he was present early in the offseason program because the Patriots wanted him and Strange to get reps together. But when Brown reported, he was greeted by a curveball.
“When I come, you got me running with the twos,” Brown said. “Why am I here? That makes no sense. So, I left.”
Finally, Brown shows no mercy when it comes to how the Patriots treat players and mistakes they've made building the roster. Particularly the unit he plays on:
“There just needs to be more attention on signing and drafting good players,” he said. “And also understanding that Foxboro is not a vacation spot. You’ve gotta spend some money to get good players, and you’ve gotta spend money to keep your good players in-house. And once they’re in-house, you’ve gotta treat them with some respect and common decency as a human being.” …
Many believe [Mac] Jones was set up to fail behind an inexperienced and mismanaged O-line, and Brown agrees.
“I don’t think you can rebuild the quarterback and the O-line at the same time,” he said.
Brown highlighted two decisions from the 2022 offseason.
“If you pay Ted Karras, who played a hell of a season at left guard before he left to go to Cincinnati, I think that solves an issue,” Brown said. “I think if you don’t trade Shaq Mason, who’s an All-Pro guard, that solves an issue. I don’t think it was necessary for those moves to be made. And then to not really replace them with guys of their caliber.”
I know that's a lot of excerpting by me. But I barely threw a flat rock across the surface of this long article. I left out a lot of stuff about how the team waits until the last minute to give players their work schedules. Why he thinks both Jones and Matt Patricia were done dirty. And most important of all, because it speaks to the future of the franchise, how he thinks that if the Pats don't clean up the way they operate, than drafting a franchise quarterback with the No. 3 pick is just going to leave them in the same mess they're in now.
Which makes what he has to say all the more interesting. In a much more benign way, hearing this from Brown is like that documentary that came out last year where people smuggled video cameras around North Korea and got a glimpse behind the iron curtain the outside world isn't entitled to.
Even conceding that Brown, like every other human being who's ever lived, makes himself the hero of his own story, it's hard not to conclude that Belichick's staff is still operating off of a playbook that worked great when your roster was stacked with physically talented, uber-serious, hyper-competitive Alphas who responded well to undue pressure. Even to the point they were being mentally and emotionally fucked with at times, as he was in those position meetings.
Guys like Tom Brady, Rodney Harrison, Tedy Bruschi, Wes Welker, Vince Wilfork, just to cite a few examples, responded positively to that grind. That Spartan life of self-denial. And taught younger guys how to handle it. Which worked for everyone because they won that way. Consistently. Always, as a matter of fact. But when you're trying to rebuild after five years without a postseason win, it calls for a different approach. At least in the opinion of a very opinionated guy who's been around the league some in Trent Brown.
Think of him what you will. And I'm venture to guess most Pats fans are anxious to see a true franchise left tackle protecting whoever will be under center next year and not him. But I don't hate hearing his inside dope on what we've been witnessing the past two years. And given we don't even know who'll be in charge 24 hours from now, never mind next season, his timing couldn't be better. Any insight we get should be taken as constructive criticism as the Krafts and Belichick work out a way to do what's in the best interest of the team and the fan base.
So thanks, Trent Brown. For saying these things when you did, you've done a public service. And you deserve to make that tattoo come true.