So, this is how the Bill Belichick era ends. With a fake spike INT

I have watched enough football in my day to know when a man is at the end of his rope and clinging to anything to drag him out of that pit of despair. When New England Patriots quarterback Mac Jones threw his then league-leading 10th interception with 4:22 to go in the 4th quarter, only down four points to the Indianapolis Colts, coach Bill Belichick was at his wit’s end. This is an eight-time Super Bowl champion with a tactician-like mind that can scheme to neutralize your best players on offense at any given point.

Even more baffling, he benched Jones for Bailey Zappe to do the fake spike play like he was Miami Dolphins hall-of-fame legend Dan Marino in 1994. In a way, the play and the subsequent interception to end the game is a sublimation of the Patriots’ entire season. They head into the bye 2-8 for the first time since 2000. For Belichick, the who needed who more narrative rings louder than ever. Since Tom Brady’s departure in 2019, the Belichick-led Patriots have been 27-33, including an 18-23 with their now benched 2021 first-round pick.

Photo by Alex Grimm/Getty Images

They have one of the worst turnover ratios in the league and are second to last in points per game. No quick fix exists concerning this team’s many ails and aches; unfortunately, it starts at the top. This Patriots team, as constructed, is a far cry from even the one Belichick won the Executive Year award for in 2021. At this point, the Patriots, I’m sure, would love to rally to the 7-9 record they had in 2020, but we don’t even know who the starting quarterback will be when they venture to New York to play the Giants on the 26th.

It’s the battle of bad and worse, where both teams are looking to stay in high draft pick contention for next year. Even as the Patriots stare down their second rebuild project in four years and contemplate drafting USC’s Caleb Williams, North Carolina’s Drake Maye, and LSU’s Jayden Dallas, the real question is whether Belichick will oversee it. I don’t feel like owner Bob Kraft would fire him – although you can see he’s getting somewhat annoyed at the inefficiencies of this current team.

Maybe the answer isn’t letting Belichick walk, but pushing for another voice in the front office’s decisions and hiring coordinators outside his trusted tree. Would Belichick even be open to that in this state of his career? That’s a tricky question for a figure with so much winning history behind him. But if there are a couple of other things I know about the NFL, it is winning cures all, and when you’re not doing it, the history matters little. If the season keeps going this way, we will be talking about the Belichick way in the past tense.