23 March 2020
2:47am, Lewiston Maine
A heavy drizzle and sporadic fog blankets the ghost town tonight, gloom on top of gloom as the world deals with a naturally-occurring biological attack and the residents have all but hunkered down for what might be a lot longer than the two weeks that the talking heads initially preached.
I just got back from a drive in the weather, a brief but needed respite in the middle of bad craziness. Other than a small crowd gathered in a vacant lot on the corner of Bartlett and Walnut, who appeared to be drinking heavily and doing that vampire dance from The Lost Boys, the streets were bare...
...except for a few persistent, desperate-looking hookers who are discovering the hard way that there's not much job security in times like these when people know that sex could lead to death.
It's a life-altering event for every soul on the planet, and everything has changed. Everything, that is, except the well-meaning loons that run the National Football League, whose decision to open their free agency period as scheduled has proven to be a powerful respite from the nasty little bugs floating around right outside my window. Business as usual, says the league, and all while observing the social distancing mandate from the CDC.
Of course, the fact that New England's favorite son has defected for the warm climes of Florida has many football fans in the region feeling like they've been kicked in the gut while they were already down - but Tom Brady's departure and the media attention it's getting is masking the real story, that being their defense is being stripped down to bare bones, with only the essential core players remaining.
NFL Network rubs it in by showing every single Super Bowl appearance by Brady in their entirety, all while scrolling his name constantly across the bottom of the screen. It's nothing personal. Just the biggest news story during a period when it is needed most, even if the distraction is for a few seconds of anger, it's worth it. It was inevitable, Brady leaving. In fact, in my estimation, it came three years too late.
But that is for another time, very soon, but not now because it doesn't matter anymore. With Brady hogging the headlines, the story of how head coach Bill Belichick is going to have to build his 2020 incarnation of the Patriots has been overlooked. The roster has been stripped of so many core players that the offseason philosophy has been reduced to that of what almost all other teams have endured during the past two decades.
Because during that span, the Patriots haven't had to make wholesale personnel moves in so many different positions as they are faced with this season, what with both of their Pro Bowl quality outside linebackers and their Big Nickel safety gone to other teams.
In fact, the Patriots have lost so many impact players in the initial phases of free agency that it reminds me of a quote by the late, great Hunter S. Thompson, who once documented a trip to a doctor years back about excessive sweating, but when he told the doctor about his normal intake of illicit drugs and alcohol, the doctor responded by telling Thompson that they would wait for him to break down, then work with what was left.
That's what Belichick is faced with: Working with what's left and trying to add some pieces to at least be competitive - and maybe that's what Belichick really wanted to do in the first place. Maybe he wants to get away from the eternal chatter about how his success was not only tied to the head start he inherited from previous Patriots' coaches, but also the questions surrounding whether that success was tied in large part to Brady.
But it's not good enough to just go forward with a new quarterback surrounded by the same supporting cast, Belichick wants to build his team from the ground up. If he is successful and the Patriots somehow make the playoffs, maybe that would add to his already cemented in stone legacy.
Is that important? You bet, considering that, with six Super Bowl titles under their belts making him them winningest head coach and quarterback combination in football history, each has an opportunity to break away from the generation-old question as to whether the Patriots' dynasty was the result of Belichick's coaching or Brady's play. Really, it's a combination of both, but now that Brady is with another team with a chance to make that argument go in his favor.
It's a dumb argument, but when gearing down to the end of two certain Hall-of-Fame careers, neither man want's the question to go unanswered.
Brady will have the easier route to success, going to a Tampa Bay team that is loaded on offense and with an improving defense, while Belichick has to build off a core roster that is the most aged in the league and has lost several key players.
That is not a recipe for success, at least not short-term, but defying the odds with innovative game plans is exactly what Belichick does, and exactly the challenge he wants. Brady wanted elite weapons to throw to, and that's exactly what Tampa provides him.
There are some that felt like Belichick was limiting Brady last season by surrounding him with rookies and cast-offs, and maybe he was. He certainly did very little to replace retired tight end Rob Gronkowski, while letting proven talent at receiver leave in free agency. He did bring in Antonio Brown to catch passes from Brady, but the troubled Brown lasted only two weeks in Foxborough before being released.
Still, Brady was certainly good enough to win with the cast that he had, but injuries along the offensive line doomed the offense. That wasn't Belichick's doing, but it made Brady look ordinary and even below par - and it didn't help that Brady bitched and bristled about the anemic offense and essentially shut down the passing game by hesitating to throw to the aforementioned rookies and cast-offs.
So Brady whined and Belichick became even more tight-lipped than ever, and all the while team owner Bob Kraft, already hiding from the media due to being implicated in a massage parlor sting, said nothing. Certainly there were private conversations between all parties and all had plenty to say - but we'll never know the level of animosity.
In the interim, fans and media around the country are looking for someone to blame for Brady packing up and leaving Foxborough.
Some blame Belichick for not appeasing Brady with weapons. Some blame Brady for his publicly negative attitude and dour expressions. But the real culprit is Kraft, who considers Brady as one of his kids, and refused to allow Belichick to trade Brady three years ago and keep the one-time heir apparent, Jimmy Garoppolo.
Had Belichick been allowed to deal Brady to San Francisco instead of Garoppolo, it goes to figure that Brady would have garnered at least a first round draft pick, and the Patriots would be rolling forward with no questions about the quarterback position and with a roster that played to his strengths.
Some would argue that the Patriots wouldn't have their sixth Super Bowl title in that scenario - which is the goal, after all - but who's to say that Garoppolo wouldn't have been able to pull that off?
We'll never know, but what we know now is that the Patriots have to move forward without either, leaving second-year, seldom-played Jarrett Stidham as the quarterback and, due to Belichick's desperate wheeling and dealing last season to provide Brady with targets he would actually throw to, a significantly reduced stock of draft picks...
...not to mention (though I will), that Brady's defection carries a $13.5 million dead money hit on the Patriots' salary cap - not crippling, but almost. The result has been a mass exodus of core players in free agency, as the Patriots just cannot afford to offer them the contracts that other teams can, and have.
The only way that Belichick could respond to this significant handicap was to start dealing players to other teams, sending Big Nickel safety Duron Harmon to Detroit for a mid-round draft pick, and there is probably more players on the way out in the same manner.
That process is still in it's infancy, and it will interesting to see how it turns out. But one thing is for sure: The Patriots will look much different this season.
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