The Providence Journal, February 14, 2018
Bill Belichick was right to bench Malcolm Butler in the Super Bowl.
It may have cost the Patriots a sixth ring, and broken the hearts of their fans, but it was a necessary gamble made to keep in-check the future salary demands of the rest of the team, and was consistent with Belichick’s brutal, clear-eyed fiscal management of his players over the years.
Belichick tried to make an example of Butler. That they could win the Super Bowl without him.
The Patriot Way is not so much the X’s and O’s of their playbook anymore, but rather debits and credits on an incredibly complex financial ledger sheet, a payroll book, which Bill Belichick alone manages.
Malcolm Butler wanted to get paid, and was not shy about it. Like many of his teammates, this was his third Super Bowl in four years. He was an unheralded, undrafted player that Belichick coached into the penultimate play of Super Bowl 49, and both the fans and Patriots owner Robert Kraft loved him. Butler’s interception at the goal line was the best thing to ever happen in his Patriots career. But from that moment on, in Belichick’s eyes, Butler and his agent overvalued his worth to the team, and would not play for a salary commensurate to The Belichick Way.
Established, talented, popular football players are hard to move on from, but Belichick has been famously doing so for almost two decades. The one constant has been a willingness to move on from star players for the greater financial good of the team.
The Patriots spend about the same amount of money on salaries as the Red Sox do — $170 million — and both leagues operate under a salary cap, but Belichick has to spread that money around to about 120 players over the course of the season, compared with around 40 players over at Fenway Park. Even Tom Brady, supposedly the greatest quarterback ever, only made 8 percent of the total 2017 budget for Patriots salaries.
Belichick is tight-lipped at a press conference, excruciatingly so. Praise from Belichick equals money in a player’s contract, so he is careful with what he says.
Yet now he going to “open his world” to the heir apparent coach, Josh McDaniels, and school him on salary cap management.
Belichick is being forced to share his salary cap secrets with McDaniels, because of a breakdown in The Belichick Way that was outlined in an explosive ESPN article last month about tensions with Brady, Belichick and Kraft. It all came to a painful halt for Belichick this year, when he wanted to move on from the greatest player the Patriots have ever known. Tom Brady. When applied to their star quarterback, The Belichick Way was evidently too much for the Krafts, and they blocked Belichick’s plans to move on from Brady and play Jimmy Garoppolo.
Did having his methods questioned get to Belichick?
In the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl, the Patriots were leading the Eagles 33-32. The Patriots needed Butler on the field in Minneapolis. At $3.9 million per year, Butler was the 11th highest paid player on Belichick’s active roster of 52 Patriots. Put another way, he was the 11th most important player on a team of 52.
Malcolm Butler didn’t play one snap on defense. He sat on the bench humiliated, an example to all of the other Patriots looking to cash in after the Super Bowl.
All they needed was one stop on defense. One more tackle.
Belichick almost pulled it off.
Chip Benson, an occasional contributor, has a house in East Matunuck.