Bad decisions by the New England Patriots over the past 2 years including by owner Robert Kraft have seemingly led to a major refocus of the team’s strategy.
They also have cost him a winner and a huge chunk of change to boot.
Mr. Kraft was used to sitting in his plush owner’s box at Gillette Stadium and enjoying watching Tom Brady carve up any and all NFL opponents like a juicy Thanksgiving turkey late in November.
But in 2020, he was served with a cold, week-old chicken salad on stale bread as his team went to Hull in a Handbasket for the first time in over a decade failing to make the playoffs.
Mr. Kraft is clearly not happy with the loss of the greatest player in the history of the NFL due to suspected poor personal relations between said player and coach, Bill Belichick.
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Yet, Kraft himself also has to bear a major share of the blame as he allowed that terrible personal interrelationship to fester to the point of divorce.
It deteriorated to the point that the franchise’s and the NFL’s all-time best player for 20 years took a powder, and the New England Patriots, in essence, let him do just that.
How is that?
The Patriots signed a contract with Tom Brady in 2019 that did not contain a franchise option on the player for the club after that season.
Some looked at this as a positive development. Others, not so much. The others were spot on.
In essence, the marriage that had been such a tremendous success was frankly over right then and there. Game, set, match. Patriots career over for Tom Brady.
They’d have one more dissatisfying year together and that would be that. And, yes, it was that foolhardy agreement agreed to by the New England Patriots that allowed that to transpire.
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.
New England Patriots sheriff Bob Kraft has now laid down the law
Yet, there is a quid-pro-quo for the team on-field management and support staff. Kraft has set down what may just be an ultimatum in three major mandates with one implied if not stated.
Mandate One, Kraft wants the future quarterback situation sorted. Now. This week most likely.
That means getting a young guy in the draft, no sleeper picks need apply. That’s done and done now thanks to the very astute selection of one Mac Jones from Alabama.
Mandate Two, Kraft has made it quite clear that he wants a totally good draft for a change. Enough with the numerous blown high picks. (Like four out of five top-three-round picks in 2020 who contributed little at all to that lackluster team.)
There, a major score would have helped a bit (if they’d made the playoffs at least) but not very much to ameliorate the sting of the whole Brady fiasco. It didn’t.
And Mandate Three, yet unspoken, is what happens if Mandates one and two aren’t successfully achieved. On that, we can only speculate, But Mandate one is in the bank.
A really good investment. let’s see how Mandate two eventuates. A great draft could just propel the New England Patriots back into NFL prominence. Now wouldn’t that be nice!