How does making the playoffs 18 times in 24 seasons sound to you (we can assume no postseason this year)? Or being by far the most successful NFL franchise since 2000? You would take that in a minute, right?
Well, hello, New England Patriots fan! That is exactly what you have gotten since Bill Belichick became the Patriots head coach in 2000.
The question is whether you take what you have seen recently and transition that in your brain to come up with the following resolution: "It's time for a change at the head coaching position for my Patriots!" The question one should ask when there is a significant change of leadership (or quarterback) is whether the replacement for your current position is any better.
Maybe New England has struggled in 2023, but is Bill Belichick the problem?
Maybe you want Josh McDaniels to take over as HC? OK< that was a joke. No one wants that. But here is the good and bad from potentially replacing Belichick in 2024.
Pro No. 1 - Bill Belichick has too much control in New England
The only way of getting true change is to remove Belichick completely. Leaving him as general manager means he still has a lot of roster control, which appears to be the majority of New England's problems. Belichick can coach; we know that. He might have had Tom Brady at quarterback, making him look good for many years offensively, but Belichick always came up with new looks on defense - and for seemingly every game - unlike any coach ever.
The team has obviously regressed since Tom Brady left before the 2020 season, yet the team still made the playoffs in 2021 with rookie quarterback Mac Jones. Jones wasn't the reason the Patriots were winning football games, however. Bill Belichick was. And still, while the team has had enough money to spend in free agency, Belichick has rarely done a good job in NFL drafts.
Even if New England hires a new head coach, will Belichick let that coach run the on-field part of the team? Or will the new coach just be a coach in name while Belichick pulls the strings?
I would try to ask Belichick myself, but all I would get is a grumble.
Con No. 1 - The grass is not always greener
So, let's say you are one of the Patriots fans who just think there needs to be a change at both GM and HC in New England. That is fine as long as whoever the Patriots replace Belichick with is actually better than Coach Bill. Because otherwise, what is the point? Just replacing a GM and head coach doesn't truly fix things.
How many teams in different sports have made changes, and then those changes turned out to be for the worse? Much worse. Just ask current Patriots linebackers coach Jerod Mayo. He played at the University of Tennessee under long-time coach Phil Fulmer but Vols fans wanted Fulmer gone and eventually, he was. Tennessee then struggled for more than a decade. The same could happen to the Patriots if Belichick is let go.
Pros No. 2 - Sometimes a fresh set of eyes are needed
Let's forget about the above for a minute. We can assume that replacing Bill Belichick actually does work out. For whatever reason, maybe just a lack of seeing the bigger picture of overall changes needing to be made and seeing things from only one point of view for decades, an NFL team can become shunted from adjusting to an ever-changing league.
Heck, when Bill Belichick became the Patriots' head coach, Seattle Seahawks 14-year head coach Pete Carroll (Patriots fans remember him, right?) was in his year off from coaching (after being let go in New England) before he became the head coach at USC.
Now Carroll is the oldest coach in the league, and Belichick is the second-oldest. This is not an agist bit, but Belichick is not your guy if a team wants to have a coach, general manager, or a combination of the two for the next ten years. Neither is Carroll. Maybe a Sean McVay-type would do the trick in New England.
Con No. 2 - Belichick is not really the issue
This part is only about Bill Belichick the head coach. In fact, how great must Belichick be as a coach when he clearly has been the reason the Patriots have been so successful over two decades (other than Saint Tom) while other teams want to hire his assistant coaches, those assistants don't really become good head coaches in the NFL. Maybe Belichick is really a control freak, but that makes his assistants look better because they are attached to his name.
No matter what, Belichick is coaching the team and not trying to execute plays on the field. In 2023, the offensive line has generally been a mess leaving whoever is behind center not to have much time to execute whatever game plan Bill O'Brien was trying to operate. No blocking equals no running game and no efficient passing game, and that has been New England's main problem, not Belichick.
Pro No. 3 - A young team needs to grow old with a young coach
The New England Patriots need a rebuild of some kind. Every team that starts the season 3-10 with little hope of winning more than one more game - the Patriots finish with the Chiefs, Broncos, Bills, and then the Jets - is going to need to start over some unless that team has a rookie quarterback with a ton of promise that the Patriots simply do not have. Yet. And the yet is essential.
The Patriots had the seventh-oldest roster to start 2023, and that ranking needs to drop a lot in 2024. Maybe that means another year or two of not being good, but are Patriots fans really thinking this roster can win a Super Bowl within a few seasons? Unlikely. A change-over of the roster should mean a change-over of the head coach, and a young head coach can grow and learn with his young team. Just ask the Los Angeles Rams how that has worked out.