Bill Belichick might be gearing up for a new season with a new football program, but the longtime Patriots head coach isn’t done with his former boss.
The North Carolina Tar Heels head coach took a not-so-subtle shot at Patriots owner Robert Kraft — and his son, Jonathan Kraft — while speaking with The Boston Globe’s Ben Volin for a story Thursday.
“There’s no owner, there’s no owner’s son, there’s no cap, everything that goes with the marketing and everything else, which I’m all for that. But it’s way less of what it was at that level,” Belichick told Volin, referencing differences between college and the pros.
“Generic NFL teams, you have the owner, president, general manager, personnel director, college director, pro director, cap guy, some other consultant, then head coach. I’d say when we had our best years in New England, we had fewer people and more of a direct vision. And as that expanded, it became harder to be successful.”
The 72-year-old, who always tried to steer his players away from distractions, now gets to focus on “a lot of football.” Unless, of course, you consider his well-documented relationship with Jordon Hudson.
Anyway, it’s not the first time Belichick has sent a slight in Kraft’s direction. In his defense, there’s an argument to be made Kraft escalated things when he said he “fired” Belichick, rather than continuing the farce it was a mutual parting.
The continuous nature has irked Patriots insider Tom E. Curran.
Curran believes Belichick is trying to rewrite history with his latest commentary about Kraft’s involvement. He unleashed on the future Hall of Famer before the Patriots faced the Giants in their preseason finale Thursday.
“In 2017, Bill got into a pissing contest with the greatest player of all-time (Tom Brady) that extended all the way through the season, and he extended it to the Super Bowl with a player named Malcolm Butler,” Curran said on Early Edition. “The team lost 41-33 despite Brady throwing for 500. The next year he tried to trade the greatest tight end of all-time (Rob Gronkowski), arguably. That didn’t work. They were able to win a Super Bowl thanks to him. The next year he was able to piss off the greatest quarterback of all-time to an extent that the player wanted to leave. And in 2020, after that player left, he went and won a Super Bowl.
“In 2021, they said, ‘Bill, we’re gonna get some people around you because you’re really effing things up left and right,'” Curran said, referring to Robert and Jonathan Kraft. “Things went a little bit better, but then the next year, he decided to put two of his pals in charge of the entire offense and just wandered along all offseason ambiguously saying, ‘We got it. You people sit there.’ They didn’t got it. Then they pissed away the first-round pick of Mac Jones.
“So Bill, making $25 million a year, is mad now that he didn’t get to treat an NFL franchise like his personal sandbox with no checks and no balances for the extent of his career until he got sick of coaching,” Curran continued. “To me, that is the height of entitlements.”
Got all that?
It’s unlikely this will be the last of the Belichick-Kraft feud. Neither seemingly can let the other have the last word, and it’s no sure thing that will change anytime soon.
