Mazz: In any other circumstance, Bill Belichick might be fired today

Well, at this moment, the end seems inevitable. In fact, were he just another coach, Bill Belichick might be fired today, tomorrow at the latest.

The signs are all there now in the wake of the Patriots' 20-17 loss to the Washington Commanders yesterday, another defeat to a bad team that the Patriots of old never would have suffered. The added difference this time is that the Patriots seem fraught with inner turmoil, specifically a pair of disciplinary benchings that cannot help but make one wonder if Belichick is trying to hold onto his team with his final breaths. And that was merely how the day began. It ended with yet another Mac Jones interception - his league-leading ninth of the season - and a succession of penalties by special teams player Brandon Schooler, last seen on the sideline launching expletives at the officials like a man amidst a breakdown.

Ugly it was. Ugly it is.

But that is what is happening to the once-mighty, once-proud Patriots right now. They - and, more specifically, he - is unraveling right before our very eyes, incapable slowing the self-destruction that the Patriots seem to execute on a weekly basis.

In fact, it might even be accelerating.

"A game where we had our chances," Belichick summarized in a familiar refrain, all before engaging in a verbal tug-o-war with media members who asked obvious questions.

Were J.C. Jackson and Jack Jones benched to start the game? No. Why did Shaun Wade start and then not play after the first two series? Everybody played. They all played. Why didn’t Shaun Wade play after the first two series? They all played. Jack Jones not playing for the first quarter - that was not disciplinary in nature? We played all the corners. I think we played all the safeties. I think we played everybody on defense.

After the game, Jackson and Jones both left without speaking to reporters. Veteran safety Adrian Phillips was asked about the absence of Jackson and Jones - and replied with the following according to this tweet:

Meanwhile, after praising wide receiver Kayshon Boutte during the week - "His best week of practice," Belichick said on Friday - the coach left the player inactive on Sunday as New England's impotent offense continued its season-long ineptitude. On more than one occasion, quarterback Jones questioned whether he had confidence in the Patriots "system." (Do they even have one anymore?) The sideline, locker room and entire operation oozed with the kind of messaging that engulfs bad teams - I don't give a f--- ... this is bulls---- - and Belichick seems to be further retreating into his bunker as he is being surrounded.

And the really scary part? The season is only half-over.

So where does this go now? Heaven knows, but the Patriots now seem to be in an all-out nosedive. They have just two wins this season - the first against a New York Jets team they would now almost certainly lose to, the second against a Buffalo Bills team that is sinking faster by the week and may also end up getting its coach fired. The list of losses now includes New Orleans (at home by a 34-0 score), Las Vegas (which has already fired its coach, Josh McDaniels) and Washington (which traded two of its best defensive players last week).

Of all those defeats, the most relevant may be that to the Raiders, who unceremoniously dismissed coach Josh McDaniels, a Belichick protege who has now been fired in-season during his career. In this most recent instance, McDaniels was dismissed after a team meeting in which his authority and operation were openly questioned by players, which is now exactly what is taking place in Foxboro. The only difference is that Belichick didn't call a meeting and encourage the grievances to be aired. No, in this case, the players are pretty much doing it on their own.

Would Patriots owner Robert Kraft ever go so far as to do what Raiders owner Mark Brown did in dismissing McDaniels midseason? That feels unlikely, though such things are impossible to predict. On Friday, Ben Volin of the Boston Globe wrote this piece suggesting that Belichick could be terminated if the Patriots lost to both Washington and the Indianapolis Colts, the latter a game that will take place in Germany in six days. Indianapolis is now 4-5 after yesterday's win over the wretched Carolina Panthers, and we are all fully aware that there is no such thing as an easy or automatic win on the 2023 New England football schedule.

Amid all of this, of course, Belichick rests at 331 career regular- and post-season NFL victories, 17 short or surpassing Don Shula for No. 1 all-time. At this rate, he will never get there. And if not for what Belichick has already accomplished and not for what he still could ... well ... we have all undoubtedly reached a similar conclusion.

He'd almost certainly be done and gone already.

This has obviously been well-documented, so let's get right to the point: Bill Belichick's coaching tree kinda sucks.

Or maybe it really sucks.

This is obviously relevant again today with the news that the Las Vegas Raiders have fired head coach Josh McDaniels, who second branch from the Belichick coaching tree ended almost as abruptly as the first. After 28 games (and an 11-17 record) with the Denver Broncos in his first stint as a head coach from 2009-10, McDaniels lasted only 25 games in this venture, going 9-16 with the Raiders. He now holds a 20-33 record in at least parts of four seasons as an NFL coach and is logical to assume he won't get another chance, at least not as the Big Kahuna.

McDaniels, of course, is perhaps the most famous of Belichick's assistant coaches, having served as offensive coordinator of the Patriots during two different stints under Belichick. In both instances the Patriots quarterback was Tom Brady, though it should be noted that McDaniels also led a successful Patriots offense in 2008 when an injured Brady was replaced by Matt Cassel. Brady obviously made everybody around him look good - including Belichick - but it was McDaniels' performance with Cassel that ultimately may have landed him the Denver job.

Regardless, McDaniels' stints as a head coach ended in spectacular balls of fire, and most head coaches in the NFL ultimately get just two chances.

Were McDaniels the only from Belichick's tree - and we use the word tree lightly - we could certainly suggest that McDaniels was the problem. But as we've learned over the years, Belichick's coaching tree is far more akin to the one from the Peanuts Christmas tree specials (image to the right), which was hardly a tree at all.

Purely for posterity, beyond McDaniels, here is a look at the offshoots of the Belichick coaching tree, which looks like a list of bad television spin-offs:

Let's make something clear here: as a head coach, Bill O'Brien was hardly a disaster. In seven seasons as head coach of the Houston Texas, O'Brien went 52-48 and made four playoff appearances, during which he went 2-4. Prior to that, he had a successful run at Penn State, where he resurrected what was a program ruined in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal. O'Brien will almost certainly be an HFL head coach again, though his current stint as Patriots offensive coordinator may not help.

On this list, Brian Flores holds a unique distinction - he is a former Belichick aide who was fired and probably didn't deserve to be. After a 5-11 rookie season with Miami, Flores went 10-6 and 9-7 in his next two years. He was then fired because of a dispute with the team owner, a controversy that subsequently spilled into the Giants pursuit of Daboll. (You can relive it here.) Now the defensive coordinator of the Minnesota Vikings, Flores feels like a prime candidate to get another head coaching opportunity at some point. Very few would complain if he ended up in Foxboro in some capacity. Unlike many of Belichick's former assistants, his head coaching career feels like more of a success.

The overall verdict on Daboll still out for now, but his career got off to a promising start last year with a 9-7-1 rookie performance that landed the Giants in the playoffs, where they subsequently upset the Minnesota Vikings. But the Giants this year have since plummeted to 2-6 with one of the worst offenses in the league - the Patriots (Belichick), Giants (Daboll) and Raiders (McDaniel) are the three lowest-scoring teams in football this year - leaving Daboll's overall record at 11-13-1 halfway through his second season. He should get another year - or at least the start of one - but we all know how the NFL works.

Weis looks a little like Bill Parcells in the above photo, and one could certainly argue that he, like Belichick, is actually a disciple of the Parcells tree. That might explain relative success compared to the other members of Belichick's tree, though we include him here anyway.

Though he never became a head coach in the NFL, Weis succeeded at Notre Dame during his first two seasons (when he posted a 19-6 record) en route to an overall record of 35-27. He subsequently went just 6-22 at Kansas and finished with a career mark of 41-49. He wasn't exactly a rousing success, but he wasn't McDaniels, either.

The man who was Bill Parcells' original protégé actually got off to a good start, posting a 10-6 record in his rookie season as head of the New York Jets after a well-publicized and bitter breakup with Bill Belichick. Mangini actually finished with two winning seasons in three years before the Jets fired him following a 9-7 campaign in 2008, after which he was immediately by hired by the Cleveland Browns. He went 10-22 in two seasons at Cleveland and never got another chance, finishing with a 33-47 record for the two franchises that Belichick may despise more than any other.

Like Weis, Crennel really falls under the Parcells umbrella, though he became a head coach after serving as Belichick's defensive coordinator with the Patriots. Widely respected and liked by his peers and former players, Crennel went 10-6 in his third season as head coach with the Cleveland Browns but was fired after a 4-12 performance the very next season. He subsequently went 8-23 in stints with Kansas City and Houston, those two of those seasons were interim positions in which he took over for a coach who had been fired - one of whom was O'Brien.

Bill Belichick has always believed in complementary football, so let the record show that Judge came from special teams, perfect augmenting the offensive (McDaniels, O'Brien, Weis) and defensive (Crennel, Mangini, Patricia) coaches who served under him. After Belichick recommended him to the New York Giants, Judge seemingly had the rebuilding Giants on the right track with a decent 5-7 record in his first season   before things went complete downhill. New York went 5-16 over Judge's final 21 games - including a 4-13 record in the 2021 season - before the Giants fired him. He, too, returned to New England, where he remains on Belichick's staff.

Like many of his predecessors, Patricia seemingly had a fatal flaw: he tried to be Belichick. Lions players seemingly rebelled against him right from the start, going 6-10 just one year after a 9-7 season under the deposed Jim Caldwell. Detroit then went a combined 7-19-1 over the next two years before he was fired during the 2020 season, finishing with a career mark of 13-29-1. Unlike Mangini, Patricia promptly was rehired in New England.