Former Bears GM rips Bill Belichick
This apparently gave him plenty of time to analyze the league, and evidently stew on Bill Belichick's team building skills.
Namely, Angelo had a problem with how Belichick built the Patriots offense, saying that they needed to go all in with their offensive weapons to support their Hall of Fame quarterback. Angelo's contention was that Belichick fell in love with his system...
Jerry Angelo on Sulia:
I believe, if you don’t have an elite QB, you build your offense the way New England did, from the inside out. Protect the quarterback with a good offensive line and run the ball. A large part of your passing game is going to be based off run action. On the other hand, if you have a quarterback who sets the standard at his position, you built it around him from the outside in, meaning with top-notch receivers.
This is where New England calculated wrong. Brady is an elite quarterback, and they handcuffed him with talented but unproven receivers, except for Julian Edelman, who is a gritty, poor man’s Wes Welker. None of his other receivers had much of any playing time.
Their offense was devoid of the most critical parts needed for their quarterback to play to his ceiling: Established, go-to guys at tight end and receiver. You can argue they had Gronkowski coming back, but he was coming off his second back surgery, as well as have having surgery on his wrist. You couldn't count on him. He’s a chandelier. Whatever you get out of him is ‘gravy’, because of his medical history.
Angelo compared New England's strategy to Denver's, who poured a lot of resources into their offense. According to the former Bears GM, that is the way you should build your team when you have a QB of the caliber of Tom Brady.
Angelo believed that emphasizing your offensive line and running backs is a mistake. Which shows because of the horrid offensive lines the Bears have had prior to this past year.
My point: New England missed the mark and Denver hit it. In their game in Denver, Manning never hit
the ground and New England running backs were non-existent, because they couldn't get on the field and when they did their team was behind.
When you give a great quarterback legitimate weapons who can catch the ball, he doesn’t need the Great Wall of China protecting him or Adrian Peterson taking the defense’s attention off of him.
New England’s problem is they fell in love with their system. A fatal mistake for successful coaches. I said Bill Belichick did one of his finest coaching jobs this year and I know it. I’m a great admirer and would agree with Bill Cowher when he said that Belichick would go down as the greatest coach in football. But in this case, his thinking was misguided.
This shows you regardless of how great a coach is, if his philosophy isn’t applicable to the strengths of his personnel, then it’s unsound, not in principal, but in relevance to his personnel. And in football, the labor force starts with CEO of the offense, the quarterback.
Ok, are you pissed off yet?
Jerry Angelo is missing a lot here, and obviously does not have a full grasp of the Patriots personnel.
If you are looking at how the Patriots invested their resources, it's hard to argue they put it all in the running backs and offensive line. The running backs are made up of all players on rookie contracts (Shane Vereen, Stevan Ridley, Brandon Bolden) and LeGarrette Blount, who made $630,000 in 2013.
Angelo does have a point on the offensive line, as three offensive linemen (Dan Connolly, Logan Mankins and Sebastian Vollmer) were in the top 10 earners among Patriots last season. Whether or not investing in the offensive line though is obviously highly debatable.
Still, to get to the point, did the Patriots ignore Tom Brady's weapons?
There are a couple things that Angelo seems to forget. One, when the free-agency rush concluded last spring, the Patriots were still under the impression that they would have their famous two tight end attack for most of the season. Then, Aaron Hernandez went to jail.
That wasn't planned, that was an unexpected turn of events that forced the Patriots to adjust on the fly. I wouldn't say that the loss of Hernandez necessarily factored into Belichick's team building strategy, and neither should that be held against him in terms of the lack of offensive weapons that Brady had to work with.
Rob Gronkowski, while expected to miss the beginning of the regular season, was not expected to miss the second half as he did when a T.J. Ward hit to the knee ended his season. When that happened, Brady was down his reliable tight end as Angelo notes is so important for a team.
Even before the loss of the tight ends, it could be argued that Belichick did pour signficant resources into the skill positions on the Pats offense. The team handed Danny Amendola a 5 year, $20 million contract in the off-season, though he predictably struggled with injuries.
The Pats also spent their second overall pick on Aaron Dobson.
What really hurt the Patriots offensive arsenal dates back to June 20th of last year when Aaron Hernandez was arrested. Not early March, when free-agency kicked off, as Angelo suggests.
