Yes, Patriots owner Robert Kraft apparently wants to have his cake and eat it when it comes to coach Bill Belichick.
Kraft is moving toward moving on, but he’s apparently hoping to get someone to trade for the coach who remains under contract through 2024. And he’s potentially trying to corner the market in offers for the coach.
Via Sports Business Journal, Tom Curran of NBC Sports Boston said Tuesday that Kraft might try to “make a bidding war emerge” for Belichick if the Patriots part ways with the coach who was hired in 2000, and who has delivered six Super Bowl wins.
As Curran notes, it could take multiple weeks for it all to unfold. And he’s right, if it doesn’t start until after the regular season ends. Other teams would have to go through the motions of a search before picking up the phone and calling the Patriots with the intent of striking a compensation deal that would allow someone to hire Belichick.
Along the way, the Patriots’ search for a new coach would be delayed.
“That’s three weeks less that the new coach has to prepare the team,” Curran said. “Three weeks less that there is a personnel department with a clearly defined vision for 2024.”
Thus, Curran rightly concludes that “foot dragging for compensation is not the way to go.”
He’s right. That’s why, if a trade is going to happen (and if a bidding war is going to break out), it’s more likely to be happening now, quietly and discreetly and fully and completely behind the scenes.
All that said, Belichick has no reason to go along with any of it. He could have left as a free agent after the 2022 season. He didn’t. His position, with one year under contract, could/should be simple: Keep me or fire me.
Why would he want his next team to be on the short end of a bidding war? The more a team gives up to get Belichick, the less a team has for Belichick to succeed as quickly as he can.
That’s why the best solution continues to include both sides walking away from each other after the regular season ends. No trade. No buyout. Mutual parting. Termination of contract. Patriots go their way, Belichick goes his way.
The question becomes whether Kraft and Belichick can get to that outcome without it turning ugly, or whether he’ll have to re-hire NFL nemesis Jeffrey Kessler. That’s what Belichick did back in 2000, suing both the Jets and the NFL to get to New England in the first place. It would be in everyone’s best interests if it does.
