Bye, Bill
Welp. The day finally came. Pete Carroll is out as the Seahawks coach. That is the news everyone is talking about. Right? Am I missing anything else? Lmk.
Jk kidding. A lot more has happened in the last 37 hours. Most importantly to the folks at howiehottakes.com LLC., Bill Belichick is OUT as the Head Football Coach of the New England Patriots. *Please disregard the prediction I made on this topic just days ago* This is a shocking event no matter the swirling headlines that surrounded the season that just ended. Even if you are a part of the growing school of Pats fans who hate the guy and think he should kick rocks, you are feeling something today. Those cynical folks all have smug looks on their faces as they contemplate the irrelevant what if’s in life, “What if I had been a GM in the NFL? I could have built a better roster than Bill.” Moot, you fools.
The news slapped me in the face this morning. I found out like most grizzled Patriots fans. ESPN’s Patriots insider Mike Reiss often tweets very early in the morning. It’s usually about how Offensive Tackle Trent Brown is absent from practice. But today was different. Mike is one of three folks on twitter that I have notifications on for. So when I saw that noti pop up I was excited to see what he had on a Thursday morning in the young offseason. A nondescript tweet at 7:05am kept the news simple, “Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots are expected to part ways today after a remarkable 24 seasons together, ending an unmatched run in NFL history that included six Super Bowl titles, league sources tell me and @AdamSchefter.” I was knocking cobwebs out of my skull and slowly plunging my french pressed coffee when I read this tweet 7 times before I knew what was going on.
It was difficult to imagine what this would look like when it did happen. Would he get fired? Would he quit? Well, as of now the answer seems to be behind door number 3. They have “mutually agreed to part ways, amicably,” said Patriots owner and Chairman Robert Kraft in the joint press conference held at noon on Thursday. Bob went on to say, “Like a good marriage, a successful head coach and owner relationship requires a lot of hard work, and I’m very glad that our partnership lasted for 24 years.”
We’re going to tease this marriage analogy out a little further.
Bill and Bob. Bill and the Pats. Bill and Tom. However you define the two sides, they will always love each other because of what they shared for so many years even though it got bitter at the end and they will co-parent the kids to preserve what they built together and they will each get a month at the vacation house on Nantucket and there will probably be rumors of a reunion and they will see each other at their kids weddings and you can’t erase the relationship because of the family pictures that are framed all over the house and they might even buy each other gifts of affection as the years go by and they will congratulate each other on their beautiful new partners and they will cry by themselves sometimes while they rewatch the 2002 Super Bowl tape and eat ice cream on the couch and they will wonder what the other is up to on Sunday afternoons and they might even run into each other at a professional convention where they are wearing their different company logos and introduce one another to their new and fun coworkers and people will snap flash photographs of them shaking hands in public and they will wonder what would have happened if they didn’t come back from 28-3 and people will still argue about who was the better parent and others will say they couldn’t have done it without each other. All of these things will happen, but maybe with a more footbally spin.
Now back to reality. Deep Breath. Bill’s out. We’ll be alright. This is good. This is not like the time during covid when I woke up in a cold sweat and was blinded by a photo of Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers logo which sent me in a 24 hour tailspin akin to Antonio Brown’s entire life. It’s looking like Jerrod Mayo will be the guy, and I am feeling optimistic about Mr. Mayo. We need something new. Mike Vrabel should go coach his alma mater Buckeyes and see how that goes, lol.
Let’s be honest. Things had gotten stale. The spark wasn’t there anymore. They were fighting too much. People were starting to ask questions.
This is a sad day, but not a bad day. Through the darkness will come sunshine and the overlord that cast an influential shadow across New England has been lifted of their burden, thus releasing all the plebes of their present worries. But, the worries will never end, of course not, this is the NFL, this is The Machine. The Machine runs and runs until it crushes too many in its path and only then the machinist will bend down to pick out the clog allowing the machine to run ceaselessly.
Bill is The Machine.
