FOXBORO — Bill Belichick took his remaining steps into the Patriots’ crew auditorium Thursday with Robert Kraft shut behind.
He climbed a brief, makeshift stage on the entrance of the room. Then, at Kraft’s invitation, he approached a well-recognized brown podium to command the room one final time.
This was goodbye.
So together with his first phrases, as he set eyes on a combined crowd of almost 100 reporters, crew staffers and cameramen, Belichick began within the apparent place.
Tim Tebow.
“I haven’t seen this many cameras since we signed Tebow,” he cracked.
I received’t lie. I laughed. Belichick’s quip caught me off-guard, false-starting from the entrance row. Over the subsequent four-plus minutes, he spoke off the cuff; smiling and candid, reflective and grateful. He even acknowledged the media, twice volunteering his respect for his or her work, simply as he did his assistant coaches, front-office evaluators and extra.
Why?
“For me, this is a day of gratitude and celebration,” he mentioned.
If this model of Belichick shocked you, you don’t know the person fairly in addition to you thought you probably did. Belichick has lengthy met probably the most vital moments together with his most honest self; from Super Bowl weeks to press conferences following the Aaron Hernandez saga and November’s journey to Germany. After 24 years, standing within the place he established himself as the best coach of all time, he was not going to dodge or deflect at goodbye.
Belichick may, nevertheless, have stopped in need of giving Kraft the breakup he needed. But did he? No.
Belichick as an alternative declared they’d “mutually agreed to part ways” within the first sentence of his assertion; a distinction that stops Kraft from taking successful because the proprietor who allowed the best coach and quarterback to go away in the identical four-year span. This could be a peaceable, well timed and tidy cut up, not a messy divorce; an ending all concerned and watching ought to root for.
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But let’s hit pause. What would inspire Belichick to half methods?
Changing groups means uprooting his household. Not simply him, however his sons, Steve and Brian, who double as key teaching assistants, plus their wives and youngsters. Staying put, at 71, in a spot the place he is loved nearly full energy over 24 years, would have marked the straightforward route for Belichick.
Furthermore, Belichick’s feedback on Monday — volunteering that he is underneath contract — indicated he needed to remain. Perhaps his public reminder was strictly a message to the Krafts he would dig his heels in on the first signal of being proven the door. Then once more, he and the Krafts perceive how teaching enterprise is performed within the NFL.
If you are fired, you are paid out. And that is that.
Plus, a minimum of one individual near Belichick sensed uncertainty about his future as just lately as Wednesday. On Thursday, a number of different staffers discovered of Belichick’s departure by way of social media, because the Herald’s Doug Kyed reported. There was a way of denial concerning the constructing.
One staffer described their emotions to me as “struggling” with the burden of what had occurred. Again, this could not shock. The finish is tough.
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And Belichick, lengthy the solar of the Patriots’ galaxy, was now amicably collapsing on himself to permit one other to take his place with out discover. No doubt, he and Kraft negotiated this exit, therefore the additional couple days of conferences after possession reportedly determined to maneuver on after the Patriots’ loss in Germany in early November.
So what did they negotiate? And what does Belichick need subsequent? Did he have any regrets? How for much longer does he plan on teaching?
None of these questions had been answered as a result of Belichick left with out taking a single one. Which, after all, is what he needed. What’s clear, nevertheless, is regardless of how they landed at this resolution and messaging, Belichick and Kraft arrived collectively.
They spoke glowingly of each other, and their achievements. They smiled and embraced. They, to used Belichick’s phrase, celebrated, as a result of all the nice that got here from the primary 20 years deserved to overshadow the final 4; a time Kraft later cited as the rationale he needed to half methods.
“Our family is the custodian of this asset – the New England Patriots – and we know how important it is to the psyche of the community. And, what’s gone on here the last three, four years isn’t what we want,” Kraft mentioned. “So we have a responsibility to do what we can to fix it to the best of our ability.”
Thursday marked the beginning of that repair. Belichick is gone, abandoning a 4-13 crew starved of blue-chip roster expertise with an infrastructure that wants modernizing. Belichick will coach once more, and the Patriots will re-discover life with out him.
The Patriot Way is now not a promise of the previous. It is the previous; gone with Belichick as he walked out of the auditorium Thursday, leaving solely thanks in his wake.
Source: www.bostonherald.com