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Why do patriots always win? Excellent question. If you ask 10 people from the NFL – and I asked for more than that – you may get different answers. A general manager told me a few months ago that nothing Imported except head coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady. Hmm. Others evoke a much larger picture in New England: file management and ruthless long-term planning. Some executives or coaches emphasize the team's game planning and the flexibility to change their game from week to week.
It is difficult to reproduce all that the patriots do to succeed because no one can agree on what they do to win. The answer is that all the above is correct: the Patriots win because they have Belichick and Brady, they excel in the management of the lineup, they play the draft well and their game plan is better than everyone else. They find tiny edges in almost every facet of the game, and then stack these edges on top of each other to get a huge advantage. There are hundreds of reasons that can be stated, but the teams have not replicated these as they do not seem to know where to start. The Patriots do not have a system. The only thing they are extremely good at is being the Patriots. In short, they are really smart. The "Patriot Way" does not really exist, but smart teams do exist.
The Patriots are among the best football teams – or best – of all seasons for nearly two decades. The last time they had a lost record was under the Clinton administration. In a sport where teams tend to exhaust themselves after cycles of four to five years, the Patriots have never done it. In a sport where wickets are increasingly interested in maximizing windows, theirs seem to be open forever.
I asked a simple question during my visit to training camp last month: why are not more teams acting like the Patriots? The answer is as nuanced as anything else with this organization. Some teams simply do not have the time to play the long game in the same way that the Patriots play it; others want to do things differently. Some teams may be desperate. Others might have a more rigid system.
To better understand, I asked the question to NFL decision makers who have already worked for the Patriots. Their answers were informative: they say that there is a lot to learn from the Patriots, but trying to to be Belichick It's a bad idea.
"Bill is the greatest football coach of all time. There is only one of them, "said Jon Robinson, chief executive of the Titans, who served as head of the New England office from 2002 to 2013 and hired the former linebacker of the Patriots, Mike Vrabel, as head coach. "I definitely want to take everything I've learned from him – in a fundamental, philosophical way – and incorporate it into our program and put it on my own, comment on it himself, talk about the Titans and make what is best for our teams.Many of these fundamentals are deeply rooted in New England, but we do not try to be Bill because no one can. Mr. Robinson said that one of the things he had learned from his experience with the Patriots was to focus on the team-oriented details, the guys who have the strength and a work ethic.
It is difficult to paint Belichick's disciples with a wide brush because they are all very different. Several have been successful away from New England: the Titans have reached the playoffs under Robinson's leadership and Vrabel had a winning record in his first season in 2018. Falcons general manager Thomas Dimitroff, former scout of the Patriots, built six playoff teams in Atlanta, including an NFC champion two years ago. Bob Quinn was a member of the Patriotes for 15 years before becoming general manager in Detroit. Quinn and head coach Matt Patricia, former assistant of Belichick, have had little success so far. The Buccaneers have not qualified for the playoffs for five years under the leadership of Jason Licht, former leader of the Patriots.
Texan head coach Bill O'Brien, de facto chief executive of the team, does not follow the Patriots' booklet. Former Belichick assistant traded to Jadeveon Clowney's defense in Seattle this weekend and sent two picks in the first round and a second round to Miami for the Laremy Tunsil tackle.
I asked Dimitroff, despite his success in Atlanta, why he thought the Patriots were irreplaceable.
"Nobody can do what Bill does. Categorically, I believe that. Incredibly intelligent, incredibly straightforward, incredibly creative – the right people around him. I think people learned from those who tried to look like Bill and they struggled because it was not so natural, "he said. "When I left in 2008, I looked at what [former VP of player personnel Scott] Pioli and Bill did it in New England, and we could never do it as a budding team. People who leave New England have learned some great lessons about creating a foundation, but they have also learned that they will have to be different. "
It is not worth considering the last 20 years and extrapolating each benefit acquired by the Patriots. But I was curious to know which ones they again for the team they built in 2019. These are the lessons that, for whatever reason, the other NFL teams have not learned.
"When people say," The Patriot Way, "they think about" Do Your Job, "but when I think about it, it's about getting rid of a player too early that too late" said Joel Corry, an expert on wage ceilings. and former agent. "Whether it's because of his salary, his age or his performance. It is extremely clinical.
The list of players that the Patriots let go is long, but some of the best examples of this decade include Chandler Jones, a star passer, who was released for a second-round pick in 2016 before moving on to free agency. Jamie Collins was sent to Cleveland for a third round in the middle of the 2016 season before getting expensive (Collins has since returned to the Patriots with a cheap deal). Corry said the Texan trade was a perfect example: Belichick would have acted decisively before ending up in the same situation as Houston against Clowney – a valuable unfortunate player without a long-term contract.
"Bill O'Brien did not do what Belichick did," said Corry. "O'Brien did not say," OK, we will have what we can. "Belichick had a second for Chandler Jones, never had to worry about the franchise brand or these negotiations."
Corry explains that part of this is simple: "Extreme job security," he said. "A lot of coaches trading a star would face a fan revolt. Coaches and CEOs plan to keep their jobs in the short term, not the long term. Belichick does not need to think like that. He points out that two The followers of Belichick wanted the Patriot star to pass closer to Trey Flowers this season. Detroit, led by Quinn and Patricia, outbid former New England assistant and Dolphins head coach Brian Flores on a $ 90 million five-year deal.
The Patriots have lost Flowers because they usually leave the expensive free agents walking if they do not sign a contract inferior to the market. Corry thinks New England goalkeeper Shaq Mason could have been the highest paid player in his job, but signed a five-year $ 50 million extension last August. To strengthen their lead of seven after the loss of Flowers, the Patriots mined the market and acquired the veteran Michael Bennett's pass in an exchange of choice with Philadelphia; Michael's brother, Martellus Bennett, was introduced with a similar job in 2016.
These types of transactions are almost always more favorable to the team that gets the player. The initial team of the player pays the bonus money pro rata and the team that receives the player is charged for his base salary. Again, the Patriots do not do anything extraordinary – the Chiefs, Eagles and other smart teams use the market to bring in veterans whose costs are controlled – but all of these things together mean that the Patriots have almost always a favorable environment. cap situation. They do not pay expensive veterans, and they replace the holes left by their departures with a low-risk trade. Belichick was literally on a boat during the first wave of free agency this year.
This management of staff is reflected in the balanced composition of the team: after a pay cut, Brady now earns 10.7% of the salary cap of the team. No other member of the team represents more than 7%. Even Stephon Gilmore, the agency's major asset for the team's free agency two years ago, achieves 4.6% of the limit, though he is one of the best defenders of the game. Brady is still very important to take less resources – Lions and Falcons both have a quarter on the mega – but there are other ways to save money on players.
J.I. Halsell, a former Redskins payroll analyst and current agent, said the Patriots knew more about the rules of the 2011 collective agreement than anyone else. He reports a weird episode of 2017 in which the Patriots were using a little-used bidding call on LaGarrette Blount, which meant his rights would return to the Patriots if he had not signed with a new team in July. "They are more sought after and know this stuff better than anyone," said Halsell.
The conversations I've had with the NFL referees over the years have reminded me that the Patriots knew the rules and penalties better than anyone else in the league. These are examples of the kinds of breakthroughs the Patriots still have, and it's not logical that other teams do not replicate them.
The project is important too. The Patriots are not particularly good at writing. It's a place where they are positively deadly. Belichick has its blind spots: the list of defensive backs he took at the first two rounds It's not really exciting. But the Patriots do some things very well – and they have the players they need to, um, go to the Super Bowl every year. They accumulate as many draft picks as possible, which very few teams have figured out, and they recruit and develop players that exactly match what they want to do.
Jim Nagy tells me that there are two things that Patriots are looking for in their players: intelligence and position flexibility. Nagy, a former Patriots scout and current Executive Director of the Senior Bowl, cited the example of Jakobi Meyers, the unrepentant sleeper of the Patriots, as an example of his typical values gathering: "I thought it would be a fourth round choice when we invited him. [to the Senior Bowl]. I was shocked that he was not chosen, said Nagy. "But he's so smart. He finds the angles. He moves very well in traffic. Patriots love players who know how to adjust routes and who really like football players. "
Nagy said the Patriots' open-mindedness helped them in the drafting process. He said that New England and Seattle, where he worked, excelled at looking at a player's past to see what roles he could play. "In a lot of [draft] rooms, there is a tunnel vision. But the Patriots and Seattle are adept at saying, "Hey, this guy is a player apart, but he has had 20 interceptions in high school and can attack on special teams." : Meyers is a former quarterback who went to the catcher position at North Carolina State. Julian Edelman is a former college quarterback who plays wide receiver, throws touchdowns, and played back defensive. Legends of patriots Troy Brown and Vrabel created cameos on both sides of the ball. The team changes their system if there is a value to find in a new one. Playing different positions on the offensive line and in the defensive field is a priority.
The search for information, Nagy Nagy added, ensures that Patriots can continue their game planning at the elite level, through which they can develop an entirely new plan every week as their smart players can adapt to it. We saw this just recently in the last significant game played by the team: the Super Bowl win against the Rams. Intelligence is harder to identify in the screening process than position flexibility, which often depends on athleticism and track record. It's more a question of gathering information on the team side. "I think Bill Belichick is helping," said Nagy. "Bill's status is so high that if you're a college coach and Bill is calling you, a lot of guys are marveling and giving up the stuff." He also thinks technology has helped, as teams can now watch movies. Anywhere on an iPad and can dive deep into film criticism with prospects, unlike the good old days (of 2013, for example), where teams simply drew pieces on a whiteboard with prospects.
Dan Hatman, a former NFL scout who founded the Scouting Academy, said the Patriots were one of the few teams not to subscribe to one of the two scouting services gathering information about the candidates of the teams. the NFL. This usually means that the Patriots are exploring much earlier than other teams to get all the information they need, which, he tells them, allows them to get a quicker idea of what the class will look like. next year. "This allows them to play better on the market, and they play the project like a market," Hatman said. "They find the advantage in everything because they created the market. They do not react. If you focus on the Patriots for a year and say, "We will make 11 people work" or "We will make 12 people work," or if the power works, everyone will catch up, and the Patriots go somewhere go elsewhere. It's a game of cat and mouse. They define the terms of the game and everyone starts playing according to these terms. "
The advantage of the Patriots will remain so. They will likely have a schematic innovation that other teams will pursue in 2019. Twelve years ago, it was the slot machine receiver; seven years ago, it was the tight end of the athlete; This season, this could be the way they use their backs. The teams will see the Patriots with envy, but as we know, they will not learn to be Patriots. Nobody, apparently, can.
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