The Patriots Offseason is Off to a Bizarro Start as it's Reported They Won't Hire a New GM Until Maybe After the Draft
MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty Images. Getty Images.So much for a regime change.
Mr. Kraft made the toughest decision in the history of decisions when he fired parted ways with the most successful personnel hire any mogul in any industry has ever made. Difficult as that decision was, and as hard as it's been on those Patriots fans who have been psychologically and emotionally invested in Bill Belichick (my hand is up) all these years, there is a certain logic to it. His team has been trending in the wrong direction. A series of bad moves in the draft and free agency has drained the talent pool, offensively at least. And while nobody questions Belichick ability to get the most out of his players, that most simply hasn't been enough. And his failure on the player procurement side was ultimately his undoing:
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Agree or disagree with the decision, you can at least understand it. The Krafts have seen Jerod Mayo as the heir apparent to Belichick since at least this time last year, and so he was placed upon the Iron Throne.
So then the biggest decision left is the obvious one. Now that HC Bill's replacement is in place, who replaces GM Bill? And the answer reportedly is … no one.
Surreal as this sounds, at least not for a few months:
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This franchise is at a historic crossroads. It's future hangs in the balance. The Krafts have the most draft capital at their disposal since RKK bought the team (Drew Bledsoe was the No. 1 overall pick when the previous ownership was here), and more cap money available over the next two years than any other team. The choices that get made in the next two offseasons could either put this team back into contention or plunge us further into darkness. So the plan is to put those decisions in the hands of the guys who were by GM Bill's side as he made the last decisions? The seconds-in-command as Capt. Belichick ran into the iceberg?
That is a bold move, to say the very least.
Just to clarify, Matt Groh has been moving up the ranks in the Pats front office for 13 years. And has spent the last few as Director of Player Personnel. Elliot Wolf is the offspring of legendary Packers GM Ron Wolf. He's been in Green Bay and Cleveland, then was brought into Foxboro in 2022 and given at title that never existed before, Director of Scouting. Meaning that presumably both were involved in the decision-making process when the Pats drafted Tyquan Thornton, replaced Jakobi Meyers with Juju Smith-Schuster, ignore the gaping hole in the roster at tackle, move on from Nick Folk and draft Chad Ryland with his Imperial Stormtrooper accuracy. And Groh's time here includes such hits as N'Keal Harry, Devin Asiasi, Dalton Keene, Justin Rohrwasser, the Mohamed Sanu trade, the decision not to re-sign Joe Thuney or Shaq Mason and all the free agent busts of the last several years.
I've been at this long enough to know what the reflexive reaction to that paragraph will be. Because it's always the same. The bad decisions are always Belichick's. His scouts and the rest of his personnel department begged and pleaded with him to make other, smarter, better moves. But like the Scientist Who Was Right All Along in every disaster movie when the world is ending says, "You just … wouldn't … listen!!!"
And it may be true. Perhaps every single wrongheaded judgement call that has blown up in this team's face was all Belichick. Maybe it was all due to moral failings on his part. Character flaws. He's too rigid. Too stubborn. Unwilling to listen to the brilliant minds he was surrounded with who were never wrong with a player evaluation, college or pro. Which is something we've been hearing for years. Always from anonymous sources trying to distance themselves from the busts. As recently as a couple of days ago in Sports Illustrated:
The draft was at the heart of the issue, and 2019 provided a flash point for folks on the personnel side. Before that draft, Patriots scouts were high on the South Carolina Gamecocks’ Deebo Samuel and Ole Miss Rebels’ A.J. Brown. The two came to Foxborough together on a visit and had been traveling together all week. As such, they had a good, jovial ability to poke at each other and laugh together, and Belichick was leery that they weren’t taking the visit seriously enough.
Conversely, Arizona State’s N’Keal Harry had crushed his visit and, combined with recommendations from confidants—Sun Devils coaches Todd Graham and Herm Edwards—Belichick started to veer from his own scout’s recommendations. It was—to the scouts—another example that they weren’t being heard and that Belichick was taking the information he’d gathered instead of what they’d spent months and months compiling.
I say again, this might be true. But it has always struck me as way too convenient an excuse. You're working for a head guy who never shied away from taking responsibilies for the mistakes and who never let the buck stop at any desk but his own. And in doing so, made himself the perfect fall guy for an entire department when it screwed up. And I have a hard time swallowing it as an excuse.
Personally, I'd feel more confident if the Kraft would simply clean out their personnel department the way Hercules did the Augean Stables. But it's obvious from the way they're keeping Groh and Wolf, they buy the narrative that they had a hand in the right decisions - and to be fair, there have been many, such as Christian Gonzalez, Demario Douglas, Christian Barmore, Jahlani Tavai - and the wrong ones were all on the guy who just got fired for them. Let's hope they're right. They have to be.
For me, it's just hard to process that things have gotten so bad that you had to fire the best ever to do this job. Just not so bad that you didn't have to fire anybody else. In Kraft We Trust, I guess.