I simply cannot believe I’m typing this, but: Bill Belichick cost the Patriots a Super Bowl. Not singlehandedly, but damn near.
The special teams unit royally pooped themselves on the biggest stage in sports, easily the best and most well-rounded special teams unit professional football has seen in a long while. The entire defense pretty much forgot to show up to the stadium besides Stephon Gilmore and James Harrison. Most importantly, the greatest coach in the history of any sport f’ed his team over in the championship game by benching arguably their best cornerback.
I’m confident in saying that every logical Patriots fan knew something was up the moment the camera panned to Butler crying on the sideline during the National Anthem. My mind immediately went to: “well, this is obviously his last game in a Patriots uniform, he’s an emotional and extremely competitive player, his emotions are just getting the best of him right now”. The moment I saw that he wasn’t on the field as a starter, I knew it was way bigger than that.
There’s tons of rumors flying around about what Butler did or didn’t do to cause his Super Bowl benching, expectedly. One person says he got caught with weed after a night of partying during the week. Perhaps he showed up late to a meeting or got into an argument with a coach. Ian Rapoport says it was “a perfect storm of issues” that led to his benching, including “sickness, a rough week of practice, and a minor rule violation believed to be related to curfew”. If any of those scenarios are true, from Belichick’s point of view, he did what he was supposed to do as a coach and enforced the team’s rules. No game is “too big” to allow team rules to be violated, some would say.
I’ve seen people say that Butler was only to be used in an “emergency” situation. You know what I have to say to all of that? Put it behind you for three hours, Bill. Please. The Super Bowl, I would say, qualifies as an emergency situation. Coming from a coach who says he “does what’s best for the team”, I call bullshit. No single person on this planet can look me in the eyes and tell me that putting Marquis Flowers in coverage, Johnson Bademosi and Jordan Richards out there over Malcolm Butler is “doing what’s best for the team”.
Eric Rowe came out and said that Belichick told Butler and the rest of the defense “last minute” that Butler wouldn’t be seeing the field. In my eyes, that pretty much goes to show why Matt Patricia and his men looked like they spent their two weeks watching film of any team but the Philadelphia Eagles. Did he tell Patricia in advance that Butler wouldn’t be playing? We don’t know, but it sure feels as if he didn’t and everyone found out just moments before they took the field for the pregame festivities.
Rowe, Bademosi, Chung, McCourty and Richards all looked like hot trash in all aspects of this game, and it kind of makes sense. They obviously didn’t prepare to play this game without Malcolm Butler. Rowe didn’t prepare to be the starting, number two corner in this game. Bademosi didn’t prepare to be the third corner, Marquis Flowers didn’t prepare to be thrown into coverage and neither of the safeties expected their roles to be what they were until minutes before kickoff. Every single defender was thrown off mentally and physically by the sudden announcement. It sure feels like Patricia was unaware of Belichick’s plan, too. We’re all quick to jump on Patricia; I’m guilty as charged, but this is on Bill.
Who knows if we’ll ever get the full truth to what Butler really did to tick Belichick off as much as he did. What I do know is that he didn’t do something worthy of a Super Bowl benching, minus one whole special teams snap, after playing 98 percent of regular season defensive snaps. Not only did Coach do his best cornerback dirty, but he punished the other 52 players on the roster by benching him. Again, it’s the opposite of doing what’s best for the team. Out of every coach this pathetic football league has seen, you would think that Belichick would be the one to put something petty like this behind him for a few hours, especially when the player is as good as gone once March 14th rolls around. Sacrificing a Super Bowl because of a minor personal issue is so un-Belichickian, it hurts.
The most frustrating part about this from a football standpoint is that if Butler were out there for any of those given series, particularly late in the game, to get a stop, let alone make a tackle, the Patriots almost certainly would have won. I mean, the overall tackling in this game was atrocious, on both sides. If even a couple of those missed tackles were made by Butler, which I guarantee he would have, the game goes in the total opposite direction. McCourty and Chung, two pretty elite tacklers, looked lost out there. I’m pretty certain now that Butler is one of the best tacklers on this current defense. I’d bet everything I own that Philly does not score 41 if Butler plays in that game.
Why Belichick even bothered to dress Butler for this game instead of making him inactive/sending him home during the week is beyond my comprehension. He just about embarrassed his own player on international television as he cried on multiple occasions on the sideline and embarrassing his entire defense in the process. Don’t even bring him along with the rest of the team if whatever he did was so heinous.
Butler really did deserve better not only in this game, but this season and his Patriots tenure in general. Without Butler, you don’t win Super Bowl XLIX and who knows if you are where you are as a franchise today. Sure, he hit some bumps in the road along the way. I could rattle off ten other players like him on this team who have been in slumps over the last three-plus seasons, too. If this were an early regular season game or a situation in which you actually had solid secondary depth, I’d tell Belichick to have a field day. The thing is, this is the god damn Super Bowl, not a meaningless game in September. This sort of stuff probably flies in any other sports city in the country, but certainly not here where all of us have been spoiled rotten since day one and have grown accustomed to integrity and winning.
I know many Patriots fans aren’t fond of him, but I’m sure as hell going to root for Butler wherever he does go. He’s earned a big payday and deserves to play for a team where he’s treated much, much better.
I’m not one to question Bill Belichick. I was essentially raised to put my trust in this man, and I probably will until I go to my grave. But this? This move he pulled deserves eternal questioning. Does it tarnish his legacy, per se? Maybe a bit, sure. It certainly isn’t a good look. All of New England is pissed off at him. Would I take anyone else over him, despite this? No. Not in a million years. Albeit, I’d have preferred this particular coach to be in a stable state of mind before and during the Super Bowl and to recognize that Nick freaking Foles is tearing apart his defense and some fairly simple adjustments would have quite literally flipped the script. The moment I saw Jordan Richards take the field, I knew there was no going back and that Bill was back on his bullshit. I need answers, and we deserve answers.
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