When the Patriots talk about their plans on defense for 2025, the word “violent” keeps coming up.
Via Karen Guregian of Masslive.com, multiple Patriots defensive coaches brought up violence when discussing the way they defense will play.
“We are going to make sure on tape, day in and day out, that people see our violence,” safeties coach Scott Booker said. “And it’s not just in tackling, it’s in re-routing, it’s in everything you do.”
Acting defensive coordinator Zak Kuhr offered a similar description.
“Being aggressive – being violent. Not turning down blocks. Having a good toolbox of tools to defeat the offensive player, but it’s not just always finesse,“ Kuhr said. ”There is some physicality there and some violence. We’re huge into guys that don’t mind playing violent football.”
The Patriots are coming off back-to-back 4-13 seasons and have fallen a long way from their status as the best franchise in the NFL for most of the 21st Century. They’re hoping that a more violent defense again makes them the team no one wants to play.
Yes, if Bill Belichick had simply taken a job at Duke, there’s much we would never know.
But because he opted to take a job with a public and not a private institution, his communications with North Carolina officials are fair game.
On Friday, WRAL posted an item featuring quotes from some of the documents it has obtained through public-records requests. They focus on the aftermath of the disastrous CBS interview, which included Belichick’s girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, instructing him not to answer the question of how they met.
Belichick previously has accused CBS of editing the interview to create a “false narrative” regarding Hudson’s perceived effort to control the conversation. In a message to Beth Keith, a senior associate vice chancellor in the office of university communication at North Carolina, Belichick claims that CBS surreptitiously recorded video of Hudson during the interview of Belichick.
“Secretly, CBS had a camera focused on Jordon where Lead producer Gabe instructed her to sit,” Belichick wrote to Keith.
Belichick also explained that Hudson attended the interview because Simon & Schuster publicist David Kass was not present. Earlier this month, someone from Belichick’s camp (possibly, Hudson herself) leaked various allegations to TMZ.com about Kass’s role in the interview debacle.
Belichick persists in his claim that questions unrelated to his book were not supposed to be asked during the interview with Tony Dokoupil of CBS.
“For approximately 35 uninterrupted minutes, Tony asked questions about the book,” Belichick wrote. “Then, the questions shifted to other subjects that were not related to the Art of Winning, which we had outlined as off-limits with my book publicist.”
The communications with UNC also include an explanation from Belichick as to how he and Hudson met — and as to why she shut down the question.
“I met Jordon randomly on a flight to Palm Beach in 2021,” Belichick wrote. “That is no secret. Jordon was not dodging the specific question regarding how we met, but rather was preventing the interview from continuing to probe into personal matters.”
It really would be useful to see the full interview, so that the reasonableness of Hudson’s apparent “enough is enough” interjection could be assessed. Why won’t CBS post the full interview? It would leave no doubt as to what happened during what should have been a slo-pitch softball session, and as to how often Hudson interrupted.
While this isn’t another example of Belichick or Hudson kicking a sleeping dog and pushing a dormant story back into the news cycle, the release of the communications received now by the media is a natural consequence of Belichick taking a job with a public institution.
The Patriots closed out their week by signing a draft pick.
The team announced the signing of fourth-round pick Craig Woodson. That leaves second-round running back TreVeyon Henderson as the only unsigned member of the class.
Most of the remaining unsigned picks are second-round selections and the percentage of guaranteed money in their four-year rookie deals is the reason things are moving slowly.
Woodson started at safety for Cal the last three seasons. He had 70 tackles, 2.5 tackles for loss, two interceptions, and seven passes defensed during his final college season.
Kyle Dugger, Jabrill Peppers, Jaylinn Hawkins, and Marcus Epps are the more experienced safety options to go with Woodson in 2025.
Patriots rookie Kyle Williams knows what wide receivers get paid to do in the NFL, and he doesn’t want to drop the bag.
Williams told WEEI that he views the football as like a bag of money, and his livelihood depends on catching it.
“My mindset is don’t drop the money. Every time the ball is there, it’s a bag of money. We can’t let that hit the floor, because [then] that’s somebody else’s. Just being able to make those plays, just showing that I can compete against those top-tier guys in the league,” Williams said.
A third-round draft pick, Williams signed a four-year, $6.7 million contract with the Patriots. That contract was set by the rookie pay scale in the Collective Bargaining Agreement, but any future bags of money he gets will be determined by how well he catches the football while playing on his rookie deal.
There’s yet another place to spend money in Sin City.
Tom Brady has opened the Hall of Excellence at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas, via Greg Bishop of SI.com. (Technically, it’s open to the public on Friday.)
It’s a partnership between Brady, the Tom Brady Family Collection, sportscaster Jim Gray, his wife, Frann, and the hotel.
The Hall of Excellence will feature “history’s elite entertainers, with items used or worn by Elvis Presley and the Beatles; Jackie Robinson’s bat from the season when he broke the color barrier; the late Kobe Bryant’s McDonald’s All-American gear; Billie Jean King’s most iconic tennis dress; a golf ball smacked by Tiger Woods in his first Masters triumph; all of Brady’s rings; worn gloves from Muhammad Ali’s first bout . . . and Shohei Ohtani’s bat from last season’s World Series triumph.”
Actor Morgan Freeman provides the main voice for the venue, with Oprah Winfrey, Brady, Jim Nantz, Bob Costas, Marv Albert, Mary Carillo, Mike Emrick, Andres Cantor, Jim Gray, and Snoop Dogg among the voices explaining various specific items.
And Bishop became the official writer for the facility. Between the audio scripts, item descriptions, case inscriptions, labels for items, and a Wall of Excellence, he writes that he generated more than 660,000 words.
As Brady told Bishop, “[A] certain legend who shall remain nameless called me from his own exhibit and said, ‘This is better than the Hall of Fame.’”
Not mentioned in the article is the price of admission. Tickets are sold based on admission every 15 minutes, at a rate of $35 each.
Because excellence ain’t free.
