Patriots owner Robert Kraft said in a recent interview that the best move he’s made since buying the team was the trade that made Bill Belichick the team’s head coach in 1999, but another one of his comments caught Belichick’s attention.
Kraft said he was “hammered” in the local media for the move and termed it a “big risk” because of Belichick’s previous history as a head coach in Cleveland. In a statement to ESPN, Belichick responded by saying that he felt he made a similar leap when he resigned from the Jets in order to come to New England.
“As I told Robert multiple times through the years, I took a big risk by taking the New England Patriots head coaching job,” Belichick said. “I already had an opportunity to be the Head Coach of the New York Jets, but the ownership situation was unstable. I had been warned by multiple previous Patriots’ coaches, as well as other members of other NFL organizations and the media, that the New England job was going to come with many internal obstacles. I made it clear that we would have to change the way the team was managed to regain the previously attained success.”
Belichick went on to say that he “appreciated Robert giving me the opportunity to make those changes and build a program that was consistent with my vision for a championship team.” Six Super Bowl titles make it clear that those moves were the right thing for the franchise, so rolling the dice worked out quite well for both men in the long run.
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