INDIANAPOLIS — From wherever his workplace contained in the Patriots’ facility final season, Eliot Wolf should have gazed out his window and shook his head.
There was the talent-starved roster. The overworked, politicking teaching workers. The tradition that grated members as a substitute of constructing them up.
How do I do know Wolf felt this manner?
Well, setting apart the 4-13 document, he stated as a lot Tuesday.
The Patriots’ previous tradition? Too punishing.
“Certainly,” he stated on the NFL Scouting Combine, “there’s more of an open, less hard-ass type vibe in the building that we can move forward with.”
The offense? Not harmful sufficient.
“We need to weaponize the offense,” Wolf stated.
The protection? Too sluggish.
“We need to be faster and more explosive on defense,” he added.
Credit to him. The Patriots’ de facto GM is just not working from the reality, nor the duty at hand, nor the lengthy, Bill Belichick-shaped shadow over his upcoming rebuild. That shadow, ultimately, fostered an surroundings that accelerated the Patriots’ downfall after their aggressive margins shrank to just about nothing.
The teaching workers fractured, and the quarterback broke, whereas his personal protection pointed fingers from throughout the locker room. Wolf noticed it, and so did Mayo. That’s why they’re publicly shining a light-weight on the darkness and searching forward.
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Now earlier than the Belichick defenders cost over the hill, swords out and shields able to defend the best coach of all time, do not forget that Belichick earned the nickname “Doom” greater than a decade earlier than he took over in New England. Belichick’s greatness, his genius, was inseparable from the doom persona that birthed a hardline, thankless work surroundings in Foxboro. That surroundings labored as a result of it was genuine to Belichick, and perpetuated by proficient inferiors who believed in him, together with the best quarterback to ever play.
Then, the quarterback left, extra expertise adopted him out the door, the beatings continued, morale did not enhance, and Belichick was gone, too.
The Krafts clearly consider Belichick was on the coronary heart of their issues, and seen Wolf as a part of the answer.
Wolf is an outsider the workforce adopted in 2020, a 20-year veteran of NFL entrance places of work who understands their soccer operations intimately however has maintained knowledgeable id and perception system separate from The Patriot Way. Or, as director of participant personnel Matt Groh as soon as described Patriot lifers, he hasn’t been “institutionalized.”
Wolf started to free his colleagues in current weeks, encouraging them to talk extra overtly in a current sequence of conferences that launched a brand new scouting system and grading scale that he is applied from Green Bay.
“I was actually really encouraged by everybody willing to just say their opinion, even if it was different from the previous person,” Wolf stated. “Having those open, honest meetings and working together to determine the best outcome is definitely what’s important.”
He later added: “This process is a lot more collaborative. We hear from the scouts more. We’re going to be able to determine together what’s the best thing for the team at the end of the day.”
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That final line ought to ring acquainted. It was a Belichick go-to, the middle sq. in his press convention bingo card. But so far as Belichick’s scouting processes? Those are getting ripped out by the roots.
More from Wolf: “The earlier Patriots system was extra, ‘This is what the position is,’ and that is extra value-based. I believe it makes it so much simpler for scouts to price guys and put them in a stack of, ‘This man’s one of the best, this man’s the worst,’ and all the things in between falls into place.
“Rather than more nuanced approaches. I just think it accounts for value better, and it also makes it easier for the scouts in the fall, as well as in the spring, where guys are going to be drafted.”
Naturally, such sweeping change is being met with pockets of resistance. Wolf’s acknowledged aim of returning the Patriots to “respectability” additionally irked some. But not these contained in the constructing.
One Patriots personnel evaluator later admitted to the Herald that the entrance workplace feels a lack of respect throughout the league. Player brokers have insisted privately the Patriots should pay prime greenback to signal their purchasers this offseason, a tax for being a dropping workforce in a small market. Wolf didn’t decide to a free-agent spending spree, however shared a part of his pitch to these gamers.
“This is a new program,” he stated. “We’re heading in the right direction. It’s a new era.”
A brand new period based on previous concepts from Green Bay, the place Wolf contributed to a Super Bowl-winning workforce in 2010. During that point, Wolf realized what a championship workforce seems like, appears like, performs like. Wolf described The Packer Way as a perception system rooted in drafting and improvement, honesty and respect.
It’s a sluggish construct, with a long-term payoff. Though Wolf did not sidestep expectations for 2024. He met them head-on, like each different side of his job thus far.
What will a profitable season appear to be for the Patriots?
“Really just showing good progress and turning the culture around,” he stated. “And competing for the playoffs is something we’re not going to shy away from.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com