By One of the biggest questions around the New England Patriots in the past few seasons revolved around people wanting to know the relationship between owner Robert Kraft and longtime head coach Bill Belichick.
Kraft seemingly grew disillusioned with the head coach over the past few years, which would ultimately lead to the sides parting ways in January, ending Belichick’s 24-year run with the team.
The pair were reportedly “tense” when they crossed paths at Netflix’s roast of Tom Brady in May.
So, when did things start to go south? How did the relationship get to this point?
Few are better equipped to answer that than Michael Holley. Holley, who has covered Boston sports in print, radio, or on television since 1997 joined Brandon Contes on the Awful Announcing Podcast this week and discussed plenty of topics, including the Belichick/Kraft dynamic.
“I think in the last couple years with Brady it got a little nasty. Nasty because Kraft wasn’t getting the credit that he wanted and you have the coach, the quarterback, and the owner. The owner and quarterback are tight, and the coach is trying to move on. It was just very tense,” Holley noted.
He also pointed out that it’s easy to find solutions or compromises when you’re not one of the parties involved, but Belichick and Kraft could have patched things up if they wanted to.
“They just got sick of each other. If I were Robert Kraft I would have taken personnel power away from Bill three years ago but framed it as a way that would have been helpful to him and say ‘This is going to help extend your coaching career. I want you to be head coach forever.’ But Kraft didn’t want him to be head coach forever, he wanted to move on.”
Holley went on to say that he does expect the pair to be “courteous” towards each other going forward.
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