Bill Belichick is suddenly suspect No. 1.
As in the guy whose talents are now the focus of constant suspicion.
“In Bill We Trust” has long been the mantra around Patriots Nation. But when Tom Brady took his talents to Tompa Bay, that trust evaporated faster than a puddle in the Florida heat.
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Talk shows are dominated by callers and hosts questioning every Belichick decision and method of madness he’s employed over 20-plus years in Foxboro.
Some of the criticism is warranted. As our own Tom E. Curran has pointed out in columns and conference calls that Belichick hasn’t exactly hit the draft jackpot in recent years.
Especially when it comes to guys taken in the second round.
But this is still a guy who led the Patriots to nine Super Bowls, winning six. This is a guy with a .689 career winning percentage. In the postseason, he wins 72 percent of the time.
Yet almost as swiftly as he brought a sixth Lombardi to New England, the region has cast him an apprehensive eye.
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I’m perplexed by as to why.
Do fans think the team’s success was more about Brady than Belichick? Is this how people deal with the grief and anger of losing their quarterback? Have the doubts always been there beneath the surface and now there is a reason for fans to air their grievances?
IMHO (in my humble opinion) Belichick deserves more than a season’s chance to prove he earned the genius title we all bestowed upon him.
It’s easy to forget that it takes time to build a winner. When your team does nothing but win for two decades, it’s natural to lose sight of… well… losing as a natural part of the process.
We may live in cancel culture, but I wouldn’t be so quick to count Belichick out.