Former New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick doesn’t subscribe to the idea of resting starters at the end of the season. He made that clear during an appearance on the “Let’s Go!” podcast.
Team mentality and perception were two of the reasons why Belichick didn’t like resting starters. It was all about treating players equally across the board. No one player is more important than another in Belichick’s mind.
His way of doing things helped foster a great team culture and led to success for nearly 20 years with the New England Patriots.
“I mean, you can only have seven inactive guys,” Belichick said, as transcribed by Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio. “Who are they? And it’s tough to go to your team and say, ‘Well, we’re not gonna play you guys over here, but the rest of you get out there. We don’t really care about you. If you get hurt, that doesn’t matter, but these six or seven guys we’re going to protect.’
“You can’t say that to the team. That doesn’t resonate well at all, nor should it. So I always had a hard time with that one. Now, if a guy was fighting an injury and everybody understood that the guy was fighting an injury, OK, that’s one thing. But to just say, ‘Well, you guys are important, but you other guys aren’t, we don’t care what happens to you. Get out there and play.’ That’s not a message I could ever send to the team. Even though there were people in the organization that wanted me to send that, I just couldn’t do it.”
Teams across the league are pondering whether to play their starters or rest them in the season finale. The Patriots are expected to play their starters, including rookie quarterback Drake Maye, if they’re healthy enough to be on the field.
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