My point is that if Butler did something worthy of being benched he should have been sent home. Once you dress him for the game you are basically saying its a minor issue. Then you send him out on the punt return team so you obviously arent against him playing in the game.

Even if BB's thought process was that Butler was a me first guy while everyone else was team first, by not atleast seeing if Butler could help late in the game hurts the other players as much as Butler. Those team first guys that worked all season deserve the chance of Butler making a difference.

I still want BB as the coach and i realise how incredibly lucky I am to be fan of a team that has had the success the Pats have had under BB and in that time having very little to second guess BB about. I just feel on this occasion he got it wrong.

Well now that Butler released a statement denying all these allegations, and half his teammates (including Brady) liked it on Instagram within about 10 minutes, seems pretty fair to conclude this was definitely a Belichick ego issue.

If the coaches just thought Rowe and Bademosi and Chung gave them a better chance, fine. LOL but fine. But to keep believing that for the entire game and let Butler sit when there wasn't even a disciplinary thing going on?

McDaniels backed out of Colts to stay with Patriots. Hopefully it's just a broken Luck & not a departing Belichick?

My thought is that he'll take over for Bill B in say, 2 years or so?

Maybe the dementia is starting to set in for Belichick. Would explain his decision making on Sunday night.

Seems like that might be the plan. Weird they would wait until after the Colts announce his hiring to put this plan into place, though. Deflategate revenge?

Belichick's contract apparently only runs through 2018.

i feel like this is pretty huge to keep him

His agent just dropped him.

breaking the bank for Jimmy in SF

Yeah, prob a good decision by his agent not to take $10m/year less to stay with Pats.

Looking forward to the Globe firing Ron Borges later today.

Fixed my post.

here's a thought: maybe Malcolm was awful, flat-out awful, against the RPO? Maybe he had that Jamie Collins, overplay-his-hand thing going on in practice?

And BB doesn't want to announce that to the world?

Butler couldn't possibly be worse than the garbage that was out there.

We saw what the D looked like for the final 3/4 of the season: good but not great.

And we saw that taking Butler out, shifting Rowe from slot to corner 2, sticking Chung and Badamosi in the slot, and Jordan ****ing Richards at safety (aka playing a bunch of people out of position and playing scrubs), just completely ruined the D. It wasn't the same D at all that we saw on the field for most of the season.

Still makes no sense to me.

Having him dressed and on the sidelines and not using him doesn't fit Belichick's 53 man philosophy. All they needed was one stop, and I'd expect Butler to make the tackle Bademosi missed.

That being said:

Over the course of this run, Belichickhas made a lot of head-scratching decisions/moves, etc. Far more have been hits than misses. This was a miss.

So what?. On to 2018.

Lot's of smoke around Butler getting into an argument with Steve Belichick after being told he wasn't starting the SB. Maybe Butler told Steve his daddy was an *******, or something like that?

Nepotism sucks if that's what happened here, and it easily could have split the team right before game time.

Lewis gone, Amendola gone, Butler gone as expected and Solder seems on his way out as well. Hope Bill finds some guys to protect Brady and improve the secondary.

Yeah, Solder to Giants 4/$60m. I don't blame them for not paying any of these prices, or the players for taking them. Get some good comp picks next year at least.

Looks like they have about $17m. There aren't any decent free agent T.

The only DB I've heard them linked to lately is Patrick Robinson.

Losing Solder but keeping Scar >>>>>> Keeping Solder but losing Scar.

Edelman should be back, can't blame 'Dola for getting paid.

RBs are interchangeable parts.

Butler wasn't staying no matter what.

On to 2018.

Can't honestly look at any of the 4 that have left and disagree with the decisions to let them go at those prices.

what do you guys thing of his theory? I felt something was def off that game.. watch it all the way through.

Brady needs as much help on the OL as possible, IMO they need to be adding guys not letting the LT go. Now, idk how much the Pats wanted to pay and how much he got.

I think Amendola will be missed, I think Amendola is a damn good football player in the Pats system of getting YAC, but again, idk how much he got and how much the Pats wanted to give him.

I liked all the players that left and wished they hadn't and feel they would be better off with them than without if money was no object. But both Solder and Amendola got too much for the Pats to match imo, which was the point of my post. Certainly not happy to see any of them go.

Searched a little and saw Solder was getting $10mil last year, he signed a 2/$20mil extension a few years ago which made him 2nd highest paid LT in 2016 and around top 5 in 2017. Now he is getting $15mil a year, while it's a 50% increase I would guess it's somewhat close to the market inflation.

Who do they have to step in?

I was thinking Flemming or Waddle but they're also both FA apparently. They also drafted a guy last year, Garcia, but he missed the entire season due to illness.

$15 mm makes Solder the highest paid LT in the league, when he's probably middle of the pack somewhere performance wise. He was a turnstile at points early last season.