Bill Belichick Reportedly Felt This Way About Patriots President Jonathan Kraft

In even the most amicable splits, the harsh truths always seem to find their way out in the open regardless of how hard the parties attempt to keep them buried.

Despite the kumbaya rhetoric Robert Kraft and Bill Belichick spouted in the press conference announcing the “mutual” parting of ways there appears to be no love lost between the legendary coach and New England Patriots president Jonathan Kraft, according to ESPN’s Seth Wickersham & Wright Thompson.

As the Patriots’ record continued to deteriorate after Tom Brady and the team split, so did the relationship between Belichick and Kraft, per the lengthy ESPN report:

The relationship between Jonathan Kraft and Belichick, never strong, worsened. Jonathan is protective over his father’s legacy and watched for years as Belichick refused to acknowledge him in the hallways and dismissed him as obsessed with optics. In late 2022, according to a first-hand account, which Jonathan denied this week through a team spokesperson, Jonathan was talking to friends when one of them brought up New England’s losing season.

“That guy’s got to go,” he said about Belichick. “He’s done.”

According to Wickersham and Thompson, Kraft slowly picked away at Belichick’s authority within Gillette Stadium while quietly empowering newly promoted head coach Jerod Mayo and offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien.

In years past, Belichick would set a vision and leave it to the staff to execute it, leading to long discussions and creative solutions. That high-level collaborative roundtable was a thing of the past. People in the personnel department privately said that it was “amateur hour” with the coaches on game days; coaches complained that those on the personnel side were incapable of implementing Belichick’s ideas. O’Brien, humbled by the inept offensive performance, was invested in finding a solution with Belichick. Mayo sometimes brought a baseball bat to meetings, swinging it around while the rest of the coaches had their heads down, projecting an attitude that he was separate from the rest, a favored son. 

While Robert Kraft remained somewhat silent to the public, speculation started swirling that the Patriots were looking at ways to replace Belichick; Jonathan was apparently pummelling the coach about personnel decisions. Belichick took note.

“He’s been brutal,” Belichick told a friend, according to Wickersham and Thompson.

It’s probably safe to say that if Belichick winds up coaching a team and that team faces the Patriots, he probably won’t be visiting with Jonathan Kraft pre or postgame.