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Henry McKenna
AFC East Reporter
The end of the New England Patriots’ 27-17 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday felt like a cryptic message about Bill Belichick’s future.
Will the Patriots fire (or, euphemistically, part ways with) the greatest coach of all time?
The answer grew more complicated in Week 15.
Even with the game still in reach, Belichick elected to punt the ball in the fourth quarter despite opportunities to go for it on fourth-and-3 (down 17 points with 14 minutes left in the game) and fourth-and 4 (still down 17 with nine minutes left). In the final four minutes, the Patriots were backed up against their own end zone but elected to run the ball on one of their four downs. They didn’t call a timeout afterward.
Every one of these decisions felt like a white flag. Game over.
Now, if Belichick were still the mastermind fresh off his endless list of Super Bowl appearances, I might give him some credit. Maybe Belichick thought his defense had a better chance of scoring than his offense, which was why the Patriots were OK punting. Let the defense try to put up some points against a sloppy Patrick Mahomes. (And it actually worked, with the Patriots intercepting Mahomes in the fourth quarter and getting the offense into good enough field position to score a touchdown.) It’s crazy to think Belichick actually saw his defense as more competent at scoring than the offense — but have you seen the offense? It does make a Belichickian sort of sense.
But maybe that’s giving too much credit to Belichick, who is not the mastermind that he once was. No, this team is 3-11, and that brutal record, second-worst in the NFL, is due almost entirely to decisions made by — who else? — Belichick. Poor drafts, poor free agency decisions, poor personnel management and poor in-game management. It all comes back to Belichick. It adds up (so far) to 11 losses.
The end of the Chiefs game featured such bad game management…
Source link : https://www.foxsports.com/stories/nfl/examining-whats-next-for-the-patriots-with-and-without-bill-belichick
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Publish date : 2023-12-19 20:49:37
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