Bill Belichick refuses to answer!🏈🏈🏈

He refuses to answer why he benched Malcolm Butler in the Super Bowl last year.

If you're familiar with coach Belichick, then you know he basically doesn't answer anything, and that of course you don't expect him to spill his heart out here.

Typically I like the way Belichick blows off questions. There's nothing to gain by volunteering information to the media. (Whether it relates to injuries or to the team's thought process, etc.) So he does the bare minimum of what he's required to do, which is stand on the podium and say words, but not give any actual information.

It's the game theory optimal way to do a press conference.

But there can come a point where explaining something is just fair to the curiosities of people interested in the team, and where that outweighs the need to guard information and protect competitive edge.

Could he have benched Brady in the Super Bowl and just not ever need to say why? How far could it go?

So the "on to next season, focused on training camp" gambit is really just about protecting himself personally.

And people can chalk it up to "well that's what Bill does when you ask him something". But no, it's kind of different. Usually when he's pressed for information (like "what's the status of Gronkowski's left hip?") it isn't that you're actually wondering or skeptical about him and what his motivations may have been and if he was coaching effectively or what the heck happened.

In this case, he's running the gambit for himself rather than for his team's competitive edge.

I'd actually like to see Robert Kraft step up and fire him, lol.

Bill realizes that there's nothing that forces him to explain his thought process. So okay, there's nothing that forces Patriots fans to remain patient with him either.

If he does something that makes no apparent sense and works to sabotage the team, the consequence of not explaining it is that it's fair to assume the worst.

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IMO, Belichick is a wizard. 🧙🧙🧙

But coaching is largely luck-based and there's only so much advantage that one head coach has over another. So if he's even capable of doing an ego-based thing that's bad for his team at a high leverage moment, it pretty quickly eats up his edge.

So if that's the version of Belichick that exists now (which probably isn't the version that existed 10 and 15 years ago-- now that he feels iconic and untouchable, now that perhaps he's invested in whether he rather than Brady gets the most credit for their dynasty), if you even have reason to believe maybe that's the version that exists now and that maybe his decisions aren't 100% focused on team output...

it at least isn't that bad to move on.

And given that Brady and McDaniels are already "coached up" by him, I'm not sure how much upside you'd really lose by just running on fumes without him for the last little stretch of Brady's play.

Psychologically it seems like it would be a nice 'reset' from last year, and the cleanest pleasure for Brady.

BoooOOOoooo Belichick BooOOOooOOooooOOOOOOooooooOOOOOoooooOOOoooo

Decisions that coaches make when they're trying to win (do you go for it on 4th down, etc.) should never be a big deal. Sometimes you make a decision that wasn't optimal, and making those mistakes is just a part of the battle.

But the thing about the Malcolm Butler benching is that it presumably wasn't even attempting to do what's best for the team's chances. It's hard to see how it could actually make sense and not just be a personal vendetta of some sort.

So if he doesn't want to explain it, okay, but then he doesn't get any benefit of the doubt either.

And if you're left to figure that you have a coach who can hurt his team for the sake of his personal agenda, then you just don't have a very good coach. And you should fire him.