LISTEN: Beetle and McCarthy rip the Patriots’ coaching staff announcement
Marc “Beetle” Bertrand and Matt McCarthy rip the Patriots coaching staff after it was officially announced Thursday, as they try to piece together what is going through Bill Belichick’s head right now.
Beetle: Steve Belichick and Jerod Mayo are going to be coaching the linebackers. OK, that’s a lie. I’m sure they will be coaching linebackers, but they’ll be coaching other players in addition to coaching linebackers because they are the de facto co-defensive coordinators, is what they are. And now you have two, I guess, co-offensive coordinators in some fashion with Judge and with Patricia.
And you have a head coach who is going to have to be involved on both sides of the ball and is probably spread too thin. This is coming at a critical time and a critical moment with the team, development, year two quarterback, sort of rebounding from the loss of Brady, that’s still happening, and at 70 years old, Bill Belichick is probably going to have to do more work than he’s ever done as Patriots head coach.
Matt McCarthy: I know they’re not naming a defensive coordinator. We all know who the defensive coordinator is. It’s his kid. It’s Steve Belichick. There’s a reason why they’re not giving him the job in title, because they don’t want to make it look like nepotism. We know what it is. Steve Belichick’s the defensive coordinator. I happen to think that Bill Belichick’s going to be much more involved on the offensive side of the football this year than he has been in years past.
Beetle: So that’s good. I mean, it’s good because I want that. But let me ask you this. If Steve Belichick is the guy that has to be the defensive coordinator or is the guy who’s going to be that guy behind the scenes, do you feel good about that? Who feels like that’s going to lead to good things for the team? And I also think one thing that has been sort of brought up in recent hours now, since yesterday, is that the Patriots have had plenty of other years where they haven’t named coordinators. And that is true.
But I think you’ve got to put that in the context of the guys who were not named officially defensive coordinator, whether it was Josh McDaniels when he started or Bill O’Brien or it was Brian Flores defensively. I mean, these were guys that were ascending and pretty much ascended into the job. But there is like this “pay your dues” aspect of the Patriots. Right now, it’s not like there’s this singular guy that you look at and say, “Well, he’s the guy and he’ll still be here next year and he’ll get the title next year.” No, they don’t have the guy. They don’t.
If you want to hear more of the conversation, tune into the second hour of Zolak & Bertrand to hear the full discussion. It can be found here:
Follow @ZoandBertrand on Twitter and @zoandbertrand on Instagram to keep up with the show!
