Let me know if this sounds familiar.
An iconic public figure seems months away from the culmination of a celebrated, decades-long career.
While many have begun to question whether he still has the sound judgment he built his reputation on.
When suddenly, after years of struggles and missteps, he finds himself removed.
Publicly lauded for all he’s achieved and given an honorable farewell.
But stripped of power nevertheless.
Replaced with someone he chose to be his assistant in 2019.
Making it difficult for those who continue to work for the organization.
Undermining their efforts to make the new leader a winner.
And things just seem to keep getting worse.
Of course we could only be talking about the 2024 New England Patriots.
Whose former Commander-in-Chief finds himself free to speak his mind.
And doesn’t much care for his former subordinate running down the empire he built:
Shots fired!
you’ve got the option to just hear the pride in his voice here.
Even though they were carrying the worst offense in football on their back.
This year, they’re 21st, with 4.6 YPA.
Worse still, they’ve given up an average of 167.7 yards per game over the past five weeks.
This despite having largely the same cast of characters.
Plus Deatrich Wise, Davon Godchaux, Keion White, Marte Mapu, Jonathan Jones.
There’s simply no other way to interpret it.
And this is a sentiment he doubled down on Monday night.
Now they spend more time on camera together than the harpies onThe View.
“I think when you criticize your publicly like that, it doesn’t always go well.
Ultimately I always felt like when the team played bad, that was my responsibility.
We might have had bad playing, but we had bad coaching that led to bad playing.
And if you have constructive criticism as a coach, that’s your job.”
But I think it’s fair to read more than that into it.
That this was regicide and he was the usurper.
So it follows logically so does Belichick.
Personally, I cannot wait to see how Mayo’s players respond to the challenge he issued.
An ex-player understanding the psychology of how athletes think.
If not, and they play like they did in London, the noise will only get louder.
And Belichick’s voice will be the one we hear above all the others.
I get the feeling he has not yet begun to dunk on the man who replaced him.
We’re in for a wild couple of weeks.
