For anyone that grew up in the New England region throughout the 2000’s, it was surely an amazing time to be a Patriots fan. This team assembled the greatest dynasty that has ever existed in the NFL. In 2001, head coach Bill Belichick made the smartest and boldest decision of his coaching career when he announced that the sixth-round pick Tom Brady was going to be the starting quarterback moving forward ahead of Drew Bledsoe, who signed a ten-year contract with the team to be their face of the franchise. Since that announcement, the Patriots went on to appear in nine Super Bowls and win six of them. Brady and Belichick, as well as owner Robert Kraft, were the three constants that made the Patriots dynasty stay afloat for twenty years. Even amid the Spygate and Deflategate controversies, they were still finding ways to win and kept putting their name in the history books. The Patriots had the greatest quarterback, the greatest head coach, and the greatest owner that the NFL has ever seen. Who wouldn’t delude themselves into thinking that they would win championships every year and that it will last forever? Unfortunately, there is an old saying that all good things must come to an end.

Fast forward to March 18, 2024. The Patriots are coming off the worst season that they have had since 2000, before Tom Brady even got a chance to start. The team only won four games as their starting quarterback shockingly regressed from one of the most hopeful quarterbacks in his rookie season to a man that was shell-shocked when he took a five step-drop in the pocket. They had no wide receivers that could gain consistent separation or get as much as two yards on a simple screen pass. The offensive line had a decent interior, but the lack of a strong tackle presence forced the quarterback to keep scrambling out of the pocket to save his life. Their defense was still their biggest strength, but even they could only do so much when they are on the field for too long. 

This was not a season that just happened by accident overnight. Instead, this was a result of years of horrible mistakes that Bill Belichick made as the general manager of this football team, trying to show Robert Kraft that he knew what he was doing. Instead, what he thought was “best for the team” ended up being their ultimate downfall. 

It’s still sad to think about to this day, but when Tom Brady threw that pick six to Logan Ryan in the 2019 Wild Card game against the Tennessee Titans, that was when the storybook came to an end. Not only did it end the season, but it would be the last pass that Brady would throw as a Patriot. Two months later, he announced that he would be leaving the team as an unrestricted free agent, the inevitable news that nobody wanted to become reality. There’s no need to explain why that was the case, there are several documentaries that explain it in great detail. Instead, the focus is to look ahead and see what happened after the duo split apart from one another.

2020 was a year that we will obviously never forget. The world was put on pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic as millions of families were forced to quarantine themselves in their houses for an extended period, causing a lot of uncertainty and fear. One thing that distracted us from all of that was the start of the NFL season, albeit without fans in the stadiums. The New England Patriots found their new starting quarterback in Cam Newton, a former MVP that was hoping to get his career back on track after a two-year stretch filled with injuries and disappointment. Even though eight players voluntarily opted out of the season due to the pandemic, the Patriots still had Bill Belichick at head coach, so we all knew that they were going to be extremely competitive if he was still there. However, they experienced something that they hadn’t in a long time: a year without a trip to the postseason. To put it short, it was extremely agonizing and frustrating to watch them that year. 

Through the first three weeks of the season, they were 2-1 and looked like one of the biggest “surprise teams” because of their new-look offense and still-consistent defense. Then the Patriots got exposed with four straight losses, where the offense failed to score more than twenty-one points in all of them. The team was 2-5 with no chance to make the playoffs, but then they hit another switch and started rattling off legitimate victories against some decent teams. They beat the reigning MVP Lamar Jackson on Sunday Night Football as seven-point underdogs, they rallied from a ten-point deficit to beat Kyler Murray and the Arizona Cardinals, and they shut out the eventual rookie of the year Justin Herbert 45-0! The Patriots won four out of their next five games, and sure enough, they were 6-6 and had a real shot to back into the postseason as a Wild Card team. Unfortunately, the team completely fell apart in their next three games and eventually finished the season 7-9. It was the first time that the Patriots had missed the playoffs since 2008 and the first losing season they had since 2000, two historical events that I wasn’t even old enough to clearly remember. Who knew that losing Tom Brady, the greatest quarterback that has walked the planet, was going to set this team back a bit? 

Speaking of Brady, his first season without Belichick has been nothing but one of the best seasons of his career. After he announced that he was leaving the Patriots, Brady eventually signed a contract with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the missing piece that the organization needed to make a strong postseason push. Even though the Bucs didn’t win the NFC South in 2020, they were still 11-5 and made the playoffs as the fifth seed in the conference, all because of their new face of the franchise. Let’s put this in its proper perspective. In his last season with New England, he barely threw for 4,000 yards with just twenty-four touchdowns and eight interceptions. One year later, he took his game to a whole new level. He was third in passing yards at over 4600 and second in touchdown passes with 40, at forty-three years old nonetheless! They won three straight road playoff games, including against Drew Brees and Aaron Rodgers, earning a trip to Super Bowl 55 against Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs. Not only did Tampa win that game, but they blew them out 31-9, giving Tom Brady his seventh Super Bowl championship and fifth Super Bowl MVP.

Let that sink in for just a second. In the one year that Belichick and Brady were apart from one another, the quarterback won a Super Bowl without him while the head coach was watching that entire postseason run from his couch. Patriots fans had a level of sympathy and happiness for Brady since he won another ring, but also disgust towards Belichick because the guy that carried his team to a Super Bowl was the one that was shoved out the door. 

Over the next three years, the Patriots were just average at best and completely trash at their worst. In 2021, they drafted Mac Jones with their first-round pick, a pro-ready quarterback that was coming off a National Championship victory with Belichick’s old buddy Nick Saban. They also had one of the most aggressive free agent periods ever, signing several new players to the roster including Matt Judon, Kendrick Bourne, and Jalen Mills. New England ended up making the playoffs that year and were the best team in the league with a 9-4 record at one point! But three out of four losses to end the year forced New England to back in as the sixth seed in the playoffs before they suffered the most humiliating loss in the history of the franchise. They took on the Buffalo Bills at Highmark Stadium in the Wild Card round lead by the hot-shot quarterback Josh Allen. New England didn’t just lose, they got absolutely annihilated 47-17. The defense gave up a touchdown every single time they took the field, and when the offense took the field, they weren’t that much better. But there was still a lot of hope for the future. The Patriots found their next great quarterback, Belichick was starting to win the fanbase back, and everyone thought they could easily get back to the playoffs. Well, that was far from the course.

When offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels left the Patriots after that season to be the next head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders, Belichick needed to find a strong offensive mind that was going to help Mac Jones develop and blossom into a legitimate starting quarterback. Instead, he went in a totally opposite direction by announcing that both Matt Patricia and Joe Judge would be the co-offensive coordinators. That’s right. Two guys that completely failed as head coaches and shouldn’t be anywhere near calling plays in this league were suddenly given full control of the offense. The results were as bad as you expected. The fact that the Patriots won eight games that year was shocking but that’s what happens when you have a paper-soft schedule and a defense that is still coached by Bill Belichick. But as for their promising quarterback, his stats plummeted. In his first season, he had over 3800 passing yards, twenty-two touchdowns and thirteen interceptions. He had the second-best completion percentage out of any rookie quarterback in NFL History, with only Dak Prescott having one better. In 2022, he didn’t even total 3,000 yards or even fifteen touchdown passes. All because he had a defensive coach with a pencil in his ear thinking he knew how to run an offense. The same guy that had his defense carved up by Nick Foles in Super Bowl 52 because Malcolm Butler was on the bench.

In 2023, whatever remained of the Patriots dynasty completely crumbled. It didn’t matter that the Patriots hired back Bill O’Brien to be the next offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach because the whole unit was a disaster. It would be too easy to say that Mac Jones was horrible. Yes, the decision-making was horrendous, and it was a huge reason why his confidence was completely shattered. At the same time, what quarterback wouldn’t when he’s been given next to no help? JuJu Smith-Schuster was signed to become the next number one option and all he proved is that he has never been that type of player. DeVante Parker had the lowest separation rate out of anybody else in the league. Tyquan Thornton is looking like the next John Ross, who is only known for having a fast 40-yard dash. When your offensive line has Vederian Lowe as the starting right tackle, there is a serious issue. The Patriots finished that season with one of the worst scoring offenses, the worst record in the AFC, and clinched the third overall pick in the draft with a 4-13 record.

Robert Kraft decided that enough was enough and determined that the best way moving forward was to part ways with Bill Belichick just a few days after their final regular season game. It might be the end of a fantastic era, but after those futile seasons that he had in the post-Brady era, it was one that I was certainly anticipating. It’s one thing that the team didn’t win another Super Bowl when Tom Brady left. It’s another when they slowly but surely just fall apart before our very eyes. The Patriots went from being the most feared and scrutinized villain in the National Football League to a visionless façade that is stuck in the past. Even though Bill Belichick deserves to be celebrated and cherished for all that he has done with the franchise, it’s not blasphemous or wrong to say that he could never match that level of success without the man that wore the number twelve on his jersey. The Sith has fallen from his post and it might take years before the next Jedi saves this team from further despair.