However Sunday’s Patriots-Raiders game turns out, the postgame meeting between Bill Belichick and Josh McDaniels is going to be interesting.
Belichick is the embattled coach of the New England Patriots, who have been outscored 72-3 over the past two weeks. McDaniels is the former long-time Belichick assistant and current embattled coach of the Las Vegas Raiders who leads the league in the little-known category of Head-Scratching Calls.
Advertisement
The two men have been on opposite sides of the field before, most recently last season when McDaniels’ Raiders defeated Belichick’s Patriots on a crazy lateral from Rhamondre Stevenson to Jakobi Meyers, who then attempted a backward pass that former Patriot (and, now, former Raider) Chandler Jones intercepted and returned for a walk-off touchdown. It may have been a goofy game between two going-nowhere teams, but even under those circumstances we can agree that most fans, be they from New England or Raider Land, were holding back on the fire-the-coach talk.
McDaniels, after all, was in the first season of the Raiders’ latest rebuild.
Belichick, after all, still possessed a Lake Kariba-sized reservoir of goodwill, what with his six Super Bowl championships as a head coach, plus the two he won with the Giants when he was running the defense, plus his overall rating of Greatest Coach of All Time by many of the gridiron intelligentsia.
And now? Fans in both markets are burning up the phone lines to express talk-radio outrage, as well as their belief that (fill in name of coach here) must go.
And then there are the owners. Mark Davis, who owns the Raiders, may or may not have been directing a cuss word at his coach on Monday Night Football when, with 2:38 remaining in the second quarter, fourth-and-goal at the Green Bay 8, McDaniels opted for a 26-yard Daniel Carlson field goal. Davis was later observed jawing back at fans who’d very much like to see a coaching change, so who knows? What we do know is that every eye twitch from Davis, every scratch of the nose, every indiscernible utterance, is going to send everyone reaching for their secret decoder rings.
@JordanDajani)
pic.twitter.com/7P3TcOfbFR— JPAFootball (@jasrifootball) October 10, 2023
Patriots owner Robert Kraft has said nothing about Belichick’s performance, not even by accident, unless you count a recent charity event where he remarked, “I don’t like losing.” Nothing earth-shattering there — who does like losing? — except in this case it’s got people wondering if there’s some sword of Damocles stuff going on. I keep waiting for Phil Perry and former Patriot Ted Johnson, who do a fine job breaking down plays during their “Board Games” segment on NBC Sports Boston, to take a shot at it.
Advertisement
Now then … the postgame handshake between Belichick and McDaniels following Sunday’s game at Allegiant Stadium. The two men have a healthy rapport that goes back a long way, so no comparisons are being made with the infamous Belichick brushoff of then-Jets coach Eric Mangini (and former Belichick assistant) in 2006. There was some bad blood there, and things got even worse in 2007 when the Mangini-coached Jets placed the call to NFL HQ that introduced us to Spygate. The actual meeting between Belichick and McDaniels will be fine. They’ll probably chat each other up later on, under the stands and away from the cameras. But know this: At the close of business on Sunday, the winning coach will enjoy a respite from the hollering, and the losing coach will receive a fresh coat of scorched earth. That’s the way it works.
But it’s no less stunning to see circumstances get to the point where the criticism — indeed, calls for action — has become deafening and incessant. Yes, Belichick’s legacy is secure, regardless of how this season turns out and whether or not he surpasses Don Shula for most coaching victories in NFL history. It’s much trickier with McDaniels, who has yet to prove he’s built to be a head coach in the NFL. He was 11-17 in his two seasons as coach of the Denver Broncos in 2009 and ’10, and he’s 8-14 in one-plus seasons with the Raiders. But he received nothing but high grades running the offense during his Patriots years, even if the revisionist historians are now pointing out that, ahem, he had Tom Brady as his quarterback.
Belichick could tell McDaniels a thing or two about that, since he’s been hearing it since the day Cam Newton arrived in Foxboro.
We all knew there’d be a market correction when, inevitably, Brady would become an ex-Patriot. While it’s always comforting to believe you have the next Steve Young poised to step in for your last Joe Montana, or a Carl Yastrzemski to inherit left field from Ted Williams, or, heck, a Jim Rice to take over for Yaz, it just doesn’t happen that way very often.
The Patriots were going to return to earth post-Brady. But now, the mistakes of 2022 seem only to have intensified in 2023. And as is plainly evident, it’s not all on quarterback Mac Jones. It remains riveting to me that receiver Kendrick Bourne spoke of a lack of “energy” on the team following the Patriots’ humiliating 34-0 loss to the New Orleans Saints.
Advertisement
It’s always fair game to question some of the draft-day decisions Belichick has made over the years, just as it’s always in-season to dredge up the he’s-never-won-anything-without-Brady debate. I’ve never been a subscriber to that last one, because it’s based on the assumption Brady would have won six Super Bowls with any coach, which is unprovable. I’ve made this speech many times, so I’ll let it go at that.
But the understanding has always been that Belichick-coached teams are prepared and focused on game day, whatever the actual talent. If there really is a lack of “energy,” it’s Belichick’s job to fix that.
Perhaps we’ll know more on Sunday. What’s certain is that one of the head coaches will sleep well that night. The other, not so much.
(Photo of Bill Belichick and Josh McDaniels shaking hands after the Raiders’ 30-24 victory last season: Jim Davis / The Boston Globe via Getty Images)