Bill Belichick responds to 'no fun' controversy in the most Bill Belichick way
“We feel what’s important to us is to win. …So that’s really what we’re trying to do.”
That sums it up for Bill Belichick and “The Patriot Way.”
The way the Patriots do business isn’t for everyone, but the results are undeniable: five Super Bowl wins in eight appearances since 2001.
Whatever they’re doing is working.
Unless, apparently, you want to have fun.
Earlier this week, it was former Patriot-turned-49er Cassius Marsh who ripped his former club.
“They don’t have fun there. There’s nothing fun about it. There’s nothing happy about it.” Marsh said, per the San Francisco Chronicle. “I didn’t enjoy any of my time there, you know what I’m saying? It made me for the first time in my life think about not playing football because I hated it that much.”
Before Marsh’s revelations, Eagles lineman Lane Johnson, who has an opinion on just about everything, chimed in.
“I just think that The Patriot Way is a fear-based organization,” Johnson said in February. “Obviously, do they win? Hell yes, they win. They’ve won for a long time. Do I think people enjoy and can say, ‘I had a lot of fun playing there’? No, I don’t. That’s just the God’s honest truth.”
Johnson’s teammate, Pro Bowl lineman Brandon Brooks played for former Belichick assistant Bill O’Brien in Houston.
He says The Patriot Way extended to the Texans.
“It’s crazy that people haven’t known this,” Brooks said this week. “It’s been this way for like a decade. You’ve seen — Reggie Wayne did it. He retired. He went there (to the Patriots) for a training camp and retired. S— is not fun there. I was under the same regime in Houston (with O’Brien). I almost retired. S— was miserable, every day. Every day.”
As you’d expect, those who’ve had success in New England see things differently.
Players that don’t like their Patriot experience are the ones that can’t take tough coaching, get eaten up by the pressure, blame others for failures and expect things are supposed to be given to them.
— Tedy Bruschi (@TedyBruschi) May 31, 2018
And make no mistake, Belichick doesn’t seem too worried about the naysayers.
https://twitter.com/realOBF/status/1002254374779973637
When asked about the “no fun” comments on Thursday, Belichick told reporters, “Yeah, we’re focused on what we’re doing, trying to get better and taking each day we can to try to improve our football team.”
“Not really focused on what everybody else is doing,” he added, per Pro Football Talk.
Of course, it gets a lot more fun for the Patriots, usually right around February.
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