Fall of an Empire? Letting Tom Brady walk will come back to haunt Bill Belichick

Bill Belichick could face some heat if the Patriots fall flat without Tom Brady.

Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s the New England Patriots’ dynasty crumbling and crashing back down to Earth. Beneath the smoldering remains of the 20-year-old destroyer is coach Bill Belichick with his finger on the self-destruct button.

Tom Brady is gone.

The sting from those words hasn’t lessened for a spoiled Patriots fan-base that has enjoyed six Super Bowl victories in a span of two decades. How’s this for perspective? The Patriots have competed in nearly half of all Super Bowls held within that timeframe. So you can understand why opposing fans across the league won’t be shedding a tear for the impending funeral.

Belichick would do well to trade in his sleeveless hoodie for a two-piece suit because the burial is coming two years ahead of schedule. It would have come four years early if owner Robert Kraft didn’t usurp the decision-making power when Brady was nearly replaced with Jimmy Garoppolo.

The legendary quarterback went on to repay him by taking the team to three more Super Bowls, and Belichick went on with the business of winning as if nothing ever happened. The “Do Your Job” mantra wasn’t exclusive to the players. Yet, deep within the complex mind of the greatest coach that ever lived, the gears continued to turn on an eventual split with his winning lottery ticket—a sixth-round draft pick that somehow morphed into the greatest quarterback of all time.

And then it happened.

After receiving no long-term commitment from the team that drafted him, Brady opted to take his talents to Florida to join the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Belichick finally got his wish: A real opportunity to wipe the slate clean and rebuild his empire untethered from Brady. He made sure he was the last GOAT standing in Foxborough.

But he may have simultaneously set himself up for failure by doing so. There is no Garoppolo waiting in the wings to pass the torch to at quarterback. The Patriots don’t even have a Jacoby Brissett. There’s an unproven, second-year former fourth-round draft pick in Jarrett Stidham, along with a couple journeymen backups in Brian Hoyer and Cody Kessler—a cliff far steeper than Max Kellerman’s analogy for Brady’s “declining career.”

Not even the clichéd “in Bill we trust” aphorism can make sense of Belichick’s thinking this time around. Two more years of Brady would have given the Patriots at least a couple more shots at winning a seventh Super Bowl, assuming the team put the requisite offensive weapons around their aging quarterback. But the offensive skilled positions are even more barren than they were last season, coupled with the now uncertain quarterback situation.

Championship-starved players are now flocking to Tampa Bay instead of New England. There isn’t the same eagerness to take less money and play under Belichick without Brady riding shotgun. The aura and mystique has been lifted for a team that isn’t even the best in their division, much less a championship contender. Coach Sean McDermott and the Buffalo Bills turned into a playoff contender last year, and they’ll likely turn into a division winner in 2020. They are putting the pieces together on offense to accompany one of the league’s most ferocious defenses.

Meanwhile, the Patriots are hanging on like a hair on a biscuit with expensive defensive contracts and virtually no shot at competing. Nothing short of a historic trade for Houston Texans disgruntled quarterback Deshaun Watson or moving up in the draft to acquire a young gunslinger like Tua Tagovailoa could save the team at this point.

Belichick is a smart enough coach to get the team to eight or nine wins, but there is no getting over the hump without a franchise quarterback at the helm. If anything, keeping Brady might have bought him a couple more years to find a suitable successor, along with giving the team a chance to compete. Now, he’s thrown the organization in the same desperate scramble to find a franchise quarterback as nearly every other team in the league.

Players at that position don’t grow on trees.

Look at all of the darts the Kansas City Chiefs threw at the board to finally find Patrick Mahomes. Before landing on Watson, the Houston Texans swapped out starting quarterbacks like outfits at a Gisele Bundchen runway show. The Cleveland Browns spent a No. 1 overall draft pick on Baker Mayfield, and they are still unsure about the future of their franchise. Finding the right fit behind center is a needle in a haystack kind of search.

Winning six Super Bowls as a head coach might earn Belichick the benefit of the doubt, but it won’t buy him immunity from excoriation if the Patriots fall flat on their faces and Brady does well in Tampa Bay.

“I don’t know what’s going on inside there, but somebody made a mistake,” Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana recently said in a phone interview, when talking about Brady’s exit from New England.

There’s no need in beating around the bush of that somebody being Bill Belichick.

He opted to bet against Brady by not extending his contract to ensure he retired a Patriot at age 45. It’s the same quarterback that engineered the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history to beat the Atlanta Falcons; the same player that smashed passing records and led the Patriots to an undefeated 2007 regular season; the same guy that went on to become the oldest player to ever win the prestigious NFL MVP award.

Brady once told Kraft drafting him was the best decision the Patriots organization ever made. It’s ironic to think that letting go might end up being the worst.