The Patriots’ final 2023-24 grades came on Wednesday.
Delta House would be ashamed.
Patriots Owner Robert “Hoover” Kraft: “D+”
Former Coach Bill “Otter” Belichick: “B-minus”
Meanwhile, “Treatment Of Families” pulled a Blutarsky.
“Zero-point-zero.”
An F-minus
Jonathan “D-Day” Kraft had no grade point average.
All courses incomplete.
These ratings came via the NFLPA’s annual team-by-team survey.
This is what the players think.
Overall, the Patriots are ranked 29th by the players association in 11 different categories.
Their team GPA is 1.71 on a 4.0 scale.
That’s a “D+.”
The Patriot Way is on double-secret probation.
“We’re a region that stresses family values,” Robert Kraft said 30 years ago on the day when he bought the Patriots.
The Patriots have become a franchise that literally cannot treat player families any worse.
“Family Values” have gone the way of “The Dynasty,”
When it comes to “The Dynasty,” Patriots fans are still wrangling with the various stages of grief.
The denial thing took about 5 years, but the bargaining phase shows no end date.
Talk of “The Dynasty” here is not limited to the current serialization of Jeff Benedict’s book currently airing in parts on Apple TV+.
We view “The Dynasty” as the entire three decades of Patriots decadence going back to the days when Robert Kraft made James Orthwein an offer he couldn’t refuse.
“The Dynasty” on Apple TV+ sits as a milestone between “Olympia,” “Why We Fight,” and the “NESN Red Sox Post Game Show” in terms of State Run Media propaganda.
While the reel-life “Dynasty” Patriots are streaming on your favorite big-screen of choice, the real-life Patriots seek their new post-Dynasty identity this week at the NFL combine in Indianapolis.
Eliot Wolf spoke to the world for the first time in his new role as Patriots GM-In-Everything-But-Name-Only Tuesday.
Wolf, 41, is the son of former Packers GM Ron Wolf. He followed dad’s footsteps and worked in Green Bay for 14 years.
And he is bringing the Packer Way to Foxboro.
“Cheese!”
Wolf wasn’t sheepish when it came to stating his priorities. He made it clear the days of “a hard-ass vibe” in New England have gone the way of straight A’s in Foxboro.
Wolf promised a new way to evaluate players, especially quarterbacks.
It appears he’s already given Mac the knife.
“You don’t want a guy that’s throwing his hands up after a bad play or you can see him physically pointing at somebody. Body language is important. Everybody’s looking to the quarterback,” Wolf said.
Declarative sentences.
Action verbs.
Cogent answers.
Welcome to 2024.
So much BS has gone the way of “B-minus B.”
The most important thing Wolf said was that he has the final say in deciding what to do with the No. 3 pick in April’s NFL draft. The finger of blame or success points in his direction.
This may be the first time since Kraft told Bill Parcells to draft Terry Glenn that we have definitive proof in terms of who makes the final call on draft day.
The Narrative says Kraft forced Belichick to draft Mac Jones in 2020. The truth is that assertion never surfaced after Jones’ strong rookie season.
In “The Dynasty,” Kraft is shown at the table when the team chooses Brady.
“Did Bob take Tom, too?”
Episodes 5 and 6 of “The Dynasty” drop late Thursday/early Friday depending on the time zone of your server.
But much is amiss.
Mike Martz and Michael Strahan are given more airtime than the 2003-2004 back-to-back Super Bowl winning seasons. Never mind Adam Vinatieri.
Vinatieri is the greatest clutch player in the history of Boston sports. In addition to his wizardry in the Snow Bowl, he provided the margin of victory in New England’s first three Super Bowl wins.
And when AI is doing its best to scrub any mentions of male NHL players from the internet, “The Dynasty” conveniently has yet to mention Kraft’s dalliance with the State of Connecticut.
The Narrative says the NFL would never let the Patriots leave the Boston Metro Area at the turn of the century. But in truth, the league could do nothing to stop a move to Hartford. (See: Browns, Cleveland). Rather the NFL worked behind the scenes to keep the team from leaving Massachusetts. A subtle but important difference.
The Nov. 19, 1998, front page “PATRIOTS EXTRA” of Hartford Courant was emblazoned with the headline “Touchdown!” Kraft was pictured with then Gov. John Rowland.
The Nutmeg State would open its wallet to give the franchise whatever it wanted to move to a stadium alongside the Connecticut River in Harford. The deal would have been the most lucrative, if not ludicrous, in NFL history.
Problems with the Hartford Steam Plant site doomed the project. The NFL got lucky.
Had the sides opted for a cleaner site across the river in East Hartford, Tom Brady may be Connecticut favorite’s son. The Hartford Heartthrob. The Middlebury Missile. The Torrington Tornado.
The “charade” lasted for months. The Patriots were moving to Connecticut … unless.
When the Connecticut deal was announced, Kraft spoke with the same emotion as he does in “The Dynasty” when discussing Super Bowl 36 and 9/11. Kraft and son Jonathan participated in a Hartford pep rally on the same day when his dad got a key to the city.
The deal would guarantee the Patriots a new stadium by 2002. Kraft terminated it on April 30, 1999, two days before an opt-out deadline.
The Patriots got their “unless” in the form of that $70 million in Bay State taxpayer money to cover infrastructure improvements around Gillette Stadium. That equals $129.5 million today. The Krafts also earned the everlasting gratitude of would-be NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who worked backchannels around Beacon Hill.
That chit came in handy when it came time to smash the “Spygate” tapes.
The Krafts may need a sequel to “The Dynasty” to clean up this current mess and raise that GPA.
“Hard Knocks” is just five months away.
Bill Speros (@RealOBF and @BillSperos) can be reached at bsperos1@gmail.com.
