How Belichick helped patriots go from Laughingstock to economic powerhouse

It’s hard to imagine now, after six Super Bowl titles and twenty years at the top of the NFL, but for most of their existence, the New England Patriots were terrible.

The team had no permanent home for its first decade, then left Boston in 1971 for windswept Schaefer Stadium in Foxborough. The owners fought and fell into debt. Brief moments of winning, including two Super Bowl appearances last century, were punctuated by years of losing.

The franchise’s fortunes began to change in 1994 when Robert K. Kraft, a local businessman and former Patriots season ticket holder, purchased the team. His first years in charge were difficult, but in 2000 he hired Bill Belichick, a coach who also served as de facto general manager and selected quarterback Tom Brady in the sixth round of the draft.

The triumvirate created one of the most successful dynasties in sports and the third most valuable franchise in the world an estimated $7 billion. They joined the rarefied company of teams like the New York Yankees and the Dallas Cowboys, internationally recognized brands synonymous with American success. While it would once have been rare to catch a glimpse of the team’s Pat the Patriot logo south of Hartford, Brady jerseys became a common sight in countries around the world. Kraft, in turn, became one of the NFL’s most influential owners.

“They were a joke,” said Upton Bell, general manager of the ill-fated Patriots teams in the 1970s and a longtime radio host in Boston. “As much as I like to think I can look far ahead, I could never have imagined so much success.”

Between 2001 and 2019, the Patriots won a whopping 76 percent of their regular season games and went to nine Super Bowls, winning six of them. The surprising series had three constants: a dedicated owner in Kraft, a generational quarterback in Brady and a master tactician in the taciturn Belichick.

In many ways, the era ended after the 2019 season, when Brady left for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Patriots are 29-38 in the regular season over the four seasons since Brady left, a winning percentage of .433.

But the dynasty truly came to an end Thursday when the team confirmed it had parted ways with Belichick, 71, the second-winningest coach in NFL history. The Patriots will now have to prove that they can reach the same heights on and off the field without Brady and Belichick.

Although Belichick’s tenure in New England ended unceremoniously, he will be remembered more for the victories he, Brady and Kraft piled up and the way they elevated the Patriots brand to the sport’s highest echelons.

It was especially notable that they achieved this in the NFL, where teams operate under a salary cap, which puts an annual cap on players’ payrolls, with stiff penalties for those who exceed it. That restriction forces teams to continually rebuild their rosters in order to compete.

None of the dynasty’s leaders acted alone. Kraft realized he had to step aside when it came to managing the roster. Brady was a team leader on the field and was willing to restructure his contract to leave enough money to sign other players.

Yet Belichick mastered the economics of the salary cap like no other, clinically forgoing fan favorites and older, expensive stalwarts in his never-ending search for what he called “value.”

Scott Pioli, the Patriots’ top personnel executive during the team’s first three Super Bowl titles, said: “We made some decisions and did some things that we didn’t want to do, but those decisions were made because we were obligated to do that to do. the 52 other players” and the rest of the organization.

“We were going to make what we felt was the best decisions to have the most success,” he said.

Every team has operated under the same restrictions since NFL owners introduced free agency and team salary caps three decades ago, ending years of labor disputes but also forcing teams to rethink how they build their rosters. Al Davis, the maverick owner of the Los Angeles Raiders, predicted at the time that many of his brethren, accustomed to having the most influence in contract negotiations, would find this new world disorienting.

“It will be like the Russians learning about the free market,” Davis said of the owners and the new system.

The salary cap undid the dynasties in major market cities like Dallas, San Francisco and Washington. However, Belichick and his staff seemed to have a knack for finding players who are underrated by others and the moxie to walk away from proven stars in a sport with very high injury rates that can rock even the most solidly constructed teams .

Belichick kept the Patriots together using a utilitarian approach to finding talented players while keeping salaries low. Kraft gave him the freedom to do this after learning from his experience with former Patriots coach Bill Parcells, who was Belichick’s mentor. Parcells famously blasted Kraft’s interference in 1996 on his way out, saying, “If they want you to cook dinner, they should at least let you do some shopping.”

Belichick’s values-driven approach began his first year in Foxborough when he selected the unheralded Brady in the sixth round of the 2000 draft, even though Kraft had a crush on quarterback Drew Bledsoe and helped negotiate a 10-year-old, $103 million contract extension with him in early 2001.

After Bledsoe was injured early that season, Belichick quickly switched to Brady, who led the Patriots to their first Super Bowl victory in 2002. Bledsoe and his massive contract were gone the next year. In 2003, Belichick cut defensive attorney Milloy, a team captain, days before the season opener after he refused to take a pay cut. The message was crystal clear: everyone was replaceable.

The NFL’s salary cap was introduced during Belichick’s first stint as head coach with the Cleveland Browns, but his mastery of it took time. After Belichick arrived in New England, he asked Pioli and Ernie Adams, the team’s director of football research, to create a new player scouting rating scale that included the relative value of each position and took into account a player’s versatility . They also began tying incentives in player contracts not only to individual statistics, but also to team success.

The Patriots’ first championship roster was built with the help of a good draft and the signings of numerous undervalued free agents. Pioli recalls that in 2001 he committed a relatively paltry sum, about $2.5 million, in bonuses to attract nearly two dozen experienced players.

“We signed all these guys who we knew were good players, but no one else really wanted to,” he said. “If you go back to the articles, people made fun of us in the media, saying we were in a bargain basement, where we could shop at a discount.”

After a brief lull in 2008, when Brady was injured and the Patriots missed the playoffs, Belichick’s teams renewed their dominance and won three more Super Bowls. Belichick continued to leave players before their skills started to diminish or they were due a big payday. He stunned the league by trading defensive lineman Richard Seymour in 2009 and offensive guard Logan Mankins in 2013. He also recognized the potential of undersized and unknown players like Wes Welker and Julian Edelman, who became star receivers by playing primarily out of the lower-rated slots. position.

“I’ve never in my entire life been around anyone in football who had that unique, rare combination of both insight and foresight,” said Charlie Weis, the former Notre Dame and Kansas head coach who served as the offensive coordinator of Belichick served. 2000-4.

The insight emerged in the way he coached his team each week, creating tailor-made game plans that took advantage of an opponent’s specific weaknesses. The foresight was building his team with not only the current season in mind, but also the future, realizing that this was what the salary cap era required.

“How many teams are one-year wonders?” Wies said. “They go all in for a year and soon after they fall off the cliff very quickly. Well, that wasn’t what he did. He has built a team that will stand the test of time.”

As Belichick’s teams have regressed without Brady, critics have minimized the coach’s role in the team’s success. But wins don’t lie, and Belichick delivered them, making the once moribund Patriots a valuable franchise to be reckoned with both on and off the field.