New England Patriots: Bob Kraft, the 2021 offseason, and future of team

How New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft fumbled the ball

Mr. Kraft, as the team owner, bears the lion’s share of the responsibility by either countenancing that no-franchise provision (less likely), or acquiescing to it (more likely).

Whatever the posture of the owner, he missed the boat in two ways.

First, he should have stepped in, conducted a three (or four, if including son Jonathan) person meeting with Brady and Belichick to clear the air, and end any thought of Brady leaving right then and there.

It’s called laying down the law and the sheriff in town should have done just that. It has never been made known (could be wrong about this) if Kraft ever convened such a meeting.

Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. He probably didn’t or the whole mess would have been over. But who knows?

If not, he was delinquent in his duty as an owner to ensure that his franchise’s all-time greatest player/asset would never wear another NFL jersey. Ever. Yet, he allowed the unthinkable to occur.

He whiffed on that as he would have on three of Pedro Martinez’s fastballs. Strike one, two, three and you’re out.

And, subsequently, in what may have been an even worse immediate lack of judgment and monumental faux pas, by allowing that unthinkable and nonsensical no-franchise clause to be included in Brady’s sham supposed new “two-year” contract.

And that was that. End of story. We all knew it, but well, they always seemed to work it out, didn’t they? But not this time.

Brady was gone then and there and his unusually surly attitude during the 2019 season made it crystal clear that he was not a happy camper at all. The era of good feeling and winning was over.

And the rest, as they say, was history for the New England Patriots unprecedented success. And, as an ongoing painful reminder, that old No. 12 who supposedly was “washed up” went on to win his seventh Super Bowl title in the uniform of a former loser franchise in Tampa.

Conversely, the Patriots took a nosedive in 2020 and in a massive role reversal assumed the posture of the pre-Brady Tampa Bay Buccaneers, as losers.

As a result, Kraft has to cover $150M in massive free agency expenditures to try to recoup what was lost. A winning team. Sorry, Mr. Kraft, that loss is non-unrecoverable.

There just isn’t anyone else like Tom Brady and may never be again.