Who had Bill Belichick taking shots at Robert Kraft in July of 2025 on their bingo card?
Is there still some bitterness there? Of course, but given that Belichick will be starting training camp down in North Carolina next week and RKK has his new problem solver in Mike Vrabel after the debacle that was Jerod Mayo, it felt like this was over until Belichick retired and eventually released the tell all book or whatever he chose to do.
Instead, crap hit the fan again on Thursday morning when a brief piece from Don Van Natta Jr. surfaced.
Van Natta had reached out to Belichick looking for a response to comments made by RKK on the ‘Dudes on Dudes’ podcast with Edelman and Gronk a month ago, saying hiring Bill Belichick back in the day was a “risk.” It’s a narrative that’s been around for quite a while.
“As I told Robert multiple times through the years, I took a big risk by taking the New England Patriots head coaching job,” Belichick told Van Natta. “I already had an opportunity to be the Head Coach of the New York Jets, but the ownership situation was unstable.
“I had been warned by multiple previous Patriots’ coaches, as well as other members of other NFL organizations and the media, that the New England job was going to come with many internal obstacles. I made it clear that we would have to change the way the team was managed to regain the previously attained success.”
Belichick also made it a point to go back and remind folks where the Jets were at the time of his hire compared to the Patriots.
“The Jets were a solid team after three years of rebuilding under Bill Parcells, which included an AFC Championship Game appearance in [January] 1999,” Belichick said. “Meanwhile, the Patriots organization had dismantled their 1996 AFC Championship team and became one of the worst in the AFC. It didn’t help that they were $10 million over the cap heading into my first season as Head Coach in 2000.”
Ok, let’s work our way backwards here.
‘Dismantled’ is awfully strong and frankly disingenuous from Belichick, given the fact that Drew Bledsoe, Troy Brown, Adam Vinatieri, Willie McGinest, Ted Johnson, Tedy Bruschi, Ty Law, Otis Smith and Lawyer Milloy were all on the 2001 team that won the franchise’s first Super Bowl. It’s also not like they were a four-win team under Pete Carroll, it wasn’t pretty, but it was respectable each year.
On the flip side, that Jets team at the time probably should have gone to the Super Bowl, but ran into the John Elway, Terrell Davis Broncos in that AFC title game.
When it comes to ‘being warned’ about internal things he’d have to deal with, what could he have meant? Well, whether it was having to answer to certain people or financial restrictions (that he had to deal with throughout his tenure here), this one can probably go to Team Bill. We don’t need to go through all the spending numbers over the years, but everyone knows where New England has ranked in cash spending for the last 25 years.
The most jaw-dropping part of this little piece was the first line for Bill, where Belichick says ‘as I told Robert multiple times through the years…’
So, this conversation was clearly had many times between the two. We all knew that there was always some tension – more so on the back nine of Belichick’s tenure here – but, it’s hard not to envision these two just screaming at each other behind closed doors when reading that, particularly when things really got tight around the building in the final few seasons.
Overall, the biggest takeaway from this for Patriots fans should just be a feeling of sadness. It’s sad that we couldn’t just quietly close the book on the greatest dynasty in North American sports history. Instead, legacies are now being dragged through the mud again on both sides.
The arrows are being slung from both castles still and the fan base that just wants to move on and remember the glory years for what they were is stuck in the middle, forced to pick sides. The best case scenario for all parties involved right now would be for Belichick’s Tar Heels to open the season on a tear, while Vrabel’s Patriots bring winning football back to Foxborough.
This discussion of ‘who deserves more credit’ (thank God Brady hasn’t chimed in yet) will never fully go away, but positive stories to talk about for both organizations would certainly help end some of this ugliness that will linger until Belichick or Kraft retires from the spotlight.