Cam Newton soared like Superman until he had his cape clipped in Sunday’s pivotal divisional showdown with the Buffalo Bills.
A fourth-quarter, red-zone fumble sung the New England Patriots’ lullaby with 0:31 seconds left on the clock. It was in that moment that every judgmental finger pointed in the direction of the quarterback that did everything he could to put one of the league’s worst offenses on his back—all while the architect of the greatest dynasty in NFL history, coach Bill Belichick, continued to go unquestioned.
Trust me, I get it.
Who is anyone to question Belichick? This is the man with more rings than Thanos. He’s the man that went 11-5 with some guy named Matt Cassel as his starting quarterback in 2008. This is the coach that made winning the norm for a team that hadn’t won a Super Bowl before his arrival.
Six Super Bowls, nine conference championships and 17 divisional titles—a simple search of the words “NFL coaching GOAT” would turn up the name Belichick, along with an early Black Friday clearance sale on sleeveless hoodies.
But Belichick also isn’t above reproach.
Other coaches in the league are consistently lambasted for the bad decisions they’ve made that have ultimately cost their team games, while Belichick’s pitfalls are typically summed up in only four words: in Bill we trust.
That couldn’t have been more apparent than watching Newton be turned into the scapegoat for the Patriots falling to 2-5 on the season. Sure, we can pile onto the quarterback for not living up to the impossible standards set by Tom Brady. Fans are surely nauseated from the seesawing inconsistencies from a Patriots offense that looks downright repugnant one week and somewhat serviceable the next.
But Newton merely inherited the same mess that lingered from last season. It’s the same offensive catastrophe that forced Brady to run for the beaches in Tampa Bay, effectively ending a near 20-year dynasty for the Patriots.
The sad reality is that Jakobi Meyers, an undrafted second-year player out of NC State, is Newton’s best receiver. Julian Edelman is a banged-up shell of his former self, while N’Keal Harry clearly hasn’t lived up to his first-round draft status.
That has essentially left Newton with a bunch of bodies that can’t get separation. The hope was that his exit from Carolina would finally put him in a position where he no longer had to turn himself into a human battering ram to carry a flailing offense. Fast forward to 2020, and he’s forced to do exactly that for the Patriots.
Meanwhile, his successor for the Panthers, Teddy Bridgewater, is throwing to Robby Anderson and DJ Moore with All-Pro running back Christian McCaffrey coming out of the backfield.
If you want to blame Newton for anything, blame him for being unlucky.
Imagine being dumped on the streets by the team that drafted you in the same year as the Coronavirus pandemic. He essentially arrived in Foxborough with no preseason and limited work with his new teammates. No, it wasn’t similar to Brady landing in a spot with two Pro Bowlers at receiver and the greatest tight end to ever play football. Newton was thrown onto a sinking ship with an offensive unit bereft of weapons.
You want to blame someone? Blame Captain Belichick for this mess.
The Patriots coach has pointed to the dire cap situation as the reasoning behind the team’s struggles in acquiring and even keeping talent.
“Look, we paid Cam Newton $1 million. It’s obvious that we didn’t have any money,” Belichick said during his weekly radio interview with WEEI. “It’s nobody’s fault. That’s what we did the last five years. We sold out and won three Super Bowls, played in a fourth and played in an AFC Championship Game.”
Never mind the fact that none of those Super Bowls were won with a true No. 1 option at receiver. We can just close our eyes and pretend like Brady wasn’t taking perennial pay cuts to help keep the organization out of the same financial hellhole other teams with elite quarterbacks typically find themselves in. It still never changed the fact that he was dropping dimes to Edelman, Danny Amendola and Chris Hogan, while other quarterbacks were throwing to Davante Adams, DeAndre Hopkins, Julio Jones and Odell Beckham Jr.
A simple reason for the Patriots’ struggles is the fact that Belichick hasn’t drafted well, particularly at the offensive skilled positions. N’Keal Harry is the only receiver drafted within the last decade by Belichick that’s still on the roster.
Speaking of the last 10 years, no receiver drafted by the Patriots in that time span has eclipsed 519 receiving yards in a single season. The total combined career receiving yards by all of those players within the decade, while in a Patriots uniform, sits at 1,538 yards.
To put that number into perspective, New Orleans Saints star wideout Michael Thomas led the league with 1,725 receiving yards in 2019 alone.
It isn’t like the Patriots haven’t had opportunities to land key talent, either. Belichick opted to take Harry and cornerback Joejuan Williams in the first and second round of the 2019 NFL Draft, while passing on players like DK Metcalf, A.J. Brown, Deebo Samuel and Terry McLaurin.
The harsh truth is the Patriots haven’t even drafted a Pro Bowler at any position on the field since Jamie Collins back in 2013.
Granted, there have been a couple diamonds in the rough like defensive end Trey Flowers and right tackle Shaq Mason, but there have clearly been too many misses and not enough hits.
Belichick has to do a better job of drafting talent, but more importantly, he has to be more open about spending at the skilled positions on offense. And no, I’m not talking about throwing away a second-round draft pick to acquire a rapidly declining Mohamed Sanu sort of openness.
Brady was the perfect deodorant that disguised the stench for so many bad decisions for the Patriots. With that guy no longer walking through the door, the spotlight is solely on Belichick. This is the version of the coach fans haven’t seen in nearly 20 years—the guy that’s 51-66 as opposed to 224-66 when fielding the greatest quarterback in NFL history. It’s the version of the man that has never won a Super Bowl as a head coach without No. 12 behind center.
The question has always been how good is Brady without Belichick? One look at Tampa Bay tearing up the league and that answer is made abundantly clear. Now, surprisingly, we’re left to ponder the real question we should have been asking all along.
How good is Bill Belichick without Tom Brady?