Are The Tanks Rolling In?

After yesterday's brutal loss to the New York Giants, Shank's starting to wonder whether this is bad luck or New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick tanking the team:

Are the Patriots tanking? Bill Belichick is wired to win, but this hideous loss makes us wonder

Tank!

Tank!

Tank!

When is the last time a Patriots field goal kicker missed a 35-yard chip shot that would have sent a game into overtime?

It happened Sunday in the Meadowlands when rookie Chad Ryland hooked a 3-foot putt with three seconds remaining in a 10-7 loss to the Giants (a game that should have been flexed to April).

Wow. We haven’t seen a muffed kick like this since Baltimore’s Billy Cundiff’s 32-yard bunny sailed wide left in the 2011 AFC Championship game, delivering the once-great Patriots to yet another Super Bowl.

Was Ryland under orders to miss? Any chance the Pats, now 2-9, did not want to win to stay in position for a top-three pick in the 2024 NFL Draft?

DHL Dan CXCII - Talking To The Youk

Shank catches up with the former Red Sox player:

In a difficult time, Kevin Youkilis speaks out for unity and positivity, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while wondering if we’re going to see Tim Tebow or Michael Bishop playing quarterback for the Patriots Sunday …

▪ Kevin Youkilis gave the Red Sox 8½ quality seasons. He made three All-Star teams, won a Gold Glove and two World Series, and finished in the top six in MVP voting twice — ranking third in 2008 when he hit .312 with 29 homers and 115 RBIs. He is in the Red Sox Hall of Fame, owns a brewery in California, is married to Tom Brady’s sister, has three children, and spends summertime with Dave O’Brien in the NESN booth.

Oh, and he also is Jewish, which is unusual for a big league baseball player. Just more than 200 of the 23,115 men who have worn big league uniforms are/were Jewish. Youkilis never made much of it when he was playing here, and a lot of us thought he was Greek because “Moneyball” dubbed him “the Greek God of Walks.”

It's Quiz Time!

Shank does a columnin the tradition of 'dumping out the sports drawer' and he came up with an interesting local sports quiz:

If I used these old Boston sports references, would you know what I mean?

I can’t prove it, but think it all started in the 1980s when Billy Crystal (remember him?) was doing stand-up and told a joke about his young daughter asking him, “Daddy, did you know Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings?”

This is the challenge for the aging newspaper columnist.

Wait. Did I say “newspaper”?

I mean, how can we assume anyone on our digital platform knows what a newspaper is? Many of them have never handled one. It breaks my heart today when I walk into local television newsrooms and there is no newspaper to be found.

...

Try this: Here are 17 notes, quotes, names, sites, and numbers unique to the 20th century Boston sports experience. How many require an explanation?

1. “Six, two, and even.”

2. Ben Dreith.

3. “Too late!”

4. “We’ll win more than we lose.”

5. Rene Rancourt.

6. 13,909.

7. “Mercy.”

8. .406.

9. “Curly-haired boyfriend.”

10. Sherm Feller.

11. McFilthy and McNasty.

12. Margo Adams.

13. The Iron Horse.

14. The Can’s Film Festival.

15. The Victory Tour.

16. “Pumped and jacked.”

17. Eliot Lounge.

Answers:

DHL Dan CXCI - To Tank Or Not To Tank?

There's been plenty of talk about whether the New England Patriots should start tanking games in order to get a higher draft pick, but Shank says that's not how head coach Bill Belichick rolls:

It’s not in Bill Belichick’s interest to tank this season, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while wondering if Bob Kraft brought the Costanza Gore-Tex coat back from Germany …

▪ Let’s talk tanking, shall we? It’s bye week for the 2-8 Patriots, and if the 2024 NFL Draft were held today, they would have the No. 3 overall pick, trailing only the 1-8 Panthers and the 2-8 Giants.

It looks as if the Patriots need another quarterback, and top prospects include Southern Cal’s Caleb Williams, North Carolina’s Drake Maye, Washington’s Michael Penix, Oregon’s Bo Nix, and Michigan’s J.J. McCarthy.

Would Bill Belichick tank to secure any of these guys?

No.

Forget about the notion of Belichick playing to lose (although we did wonder when there was nobody back to receive that punt in Germany last weekend). It is antithetical to everything Bill believes. He coaches to win the game.

A Question You Don't Expect From Shank

The New England Patriots' record currently stands at 2-8. For the past quarter century Shank would've been blowtorching this team from every angle - players, coach, ownership, even the concession stands; all of it was on the table and more.

Is this Shank version 2.0 or something?

Aren’t we being a little too rough on Mac Jones around here?

Forgive me for not piling on this time, but I kind of feel sorry for Mac Jones.

Seriously.

Why the vitriol? Why the exaggeration? Why the demonization of this 25-year-old quarterback?

It’s not as though Mac invented a cryptocurrency scheme and stole everybody’s money. He hasn’t said that New England foliage is overrated, or that he hates Dunkin’ Donuts. He hasn’t complained about his contract, doesn’t appear to be juicing, and never tried to embarrass Dennis Eckersley in front of his teammates.

He hasn’t stomped on the Pat Patriot logo or burned sage around the Gillette Stadium sideline.

He hasn’t even complained about the Green Line. Not once.

Jones seems to be doing the best he can. And it hasn’t been great of late. It’s been pretty terrible. A Boston.com headline Monday read, “Mac Jones’s performance was the worst in Patriots history.” On Bostonglobe.com, the headline was “Mac Jones’s performance was the worst I have seen by a Patriots quarterback.”

Read on for a bit of revisionist history, which tends to reveal what Shank's doing here (and - also after Shank listening to Felger & Mazz say the same thing for the better part of four hours yesterday):

That’s the kind of coaching malpractice that has turned Jones into a puddle in his third pro season after being the 15th overall pick of the 2021 draft. The nadir came Sunday when Jones — clearly afraid to throw the ball in the red zone after getting taken to the woodshed by offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien — missed a wide-open Mike Gesicki in the end zone with a short, soft toss that landed in the arms of Colts defensive back Julian Blackmon.

'Coaching malpractice' will translate into 'it was Belichick's fault' in the upcoming months.

DHL Dan CXC - Checking In With Marv Levy

Shank talks to the legendary Buffalo Bills coach and naturally compares his last coaching days to Bill Belichick's:

Marv Levy can relate to Bill Belichick’s situation, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while wondering if the player-control, payroll-flexibility Red Sox will finally make a splash to show fans they are back in the business of winning …

▪ Marv Levy knows how Bill Belichick feels. Buffalo’s Hall of Fame coach worked for a veteran loyal owner (Ralph Wilson), took the Bills to four straight Super Bowls, stayed on the sideline until he was 72, then stepped down after going 6-10 in 1997.

Today Levy is 98, sharper than anybody running for president, and wistful about his final days as an NFL head coach.

“After the good run we’d had, we’d fallen back a bit and I just felt it was time,” Levy said from his Chicago home this past week. “Ralph tried to talk me out of it. He didn’t want me to retire.

“But after going to those four Super Bowls, we began to regress. We were bouncing back, but I just felt the time had come to go on vacation in Palm Springs and stuff like that. A year or two later, I regretted it and wanted to come back.”

Belichick and his Patriots are playing the Colts in Germany Sunday. A 3,600-mile trip across the ocean is a good thing for New England’s 71-year-old coach at this hour. The Patriots are 2-7 and some fans are leaning on Bob Kraft to make a coaching change. The unthinkable has suddenly become a real possibility.

And Shank's already got that column half written, doesn't he?

Perfect Record

Here's Shank's semi-annual local sports story:

Watertown and coach Eileen Donahue have basically perfected the sport of field hockey

There is perfection.

And then there is Watertown field hockey. Which is something more.

Eileen Donahue’s Raiders play Dennis-Yarmouth in a Division 3 quarterfinal game at aptly named Victory Field Saturday at 11 a.m.

Watertown is seeking a third straight state title. And things look pretty good for the Raiders. They are 19-0 and have scored 128 goals while allowing zero.

That’s right. Folks around the team estimate that Watertown goalie Ava Husson has stopped only about 10 shots this season. Husson could study for the SATs while guarding the net. The ball is almost never down at her end of the field.

Talk Talk

Shank has an interesting take on new Red Sox general manager Craig Breslow's opening press conference:

New Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow sure can talk a good game

“It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”

— Winston Churchill describing Russia

Craig Breslow, the Red Sox’ new chief baseball officer, is in Arizona this week at the General Managers Meetings. This will be his first chance for face-to-face meetings with his counterparts from other big league teams. Hope the Sox don’t need to provide an interpreter (they have one for Masataka Yoshida, why not Breslow?). Breslow’s language can be a little … lofty.

Perhaps you were busy working or having an early lunch when the Sox introduced Breslow at Fenway Park last week.

His kickoff press conference was a doozy. The guy is … wicked smaaaart. Good Will Hunting Smart. Oppenheimer Smart. He had me scratching my head and reaching for a thesaurus. There were moments that reminded me of when the Scarecrow gets his diploma in “The Wizard of Oz,” and instantly says, “The sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side.”

When Breslow was asked about maybe hiring a general manager/lieutenant, he answered, “I think over time, the right profile, the right thought partner will avail itself.”

Wow. Thought partner? Sounds like Gwyneth Paltrow talking about her marital breakup as “conscious uncoupling” instead of plain old “divorced.”

Breslow’s cerebral speaking style had me longing for olden days of straight-talking sports — back when an assistant GM was a back-slappin’ drinking buddy rather than a “thought partner.”

I hear shit like that and think 'That's nice- you graduated from Buzzword College!' Color me skeptical.

DHL Dan CLXXXIX - Leaving The Stage

In this week's version of the Picked Up Pieces column, Shank pretends to feel sorry for New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, in the midst of a losing season:

It’s getting tough to watch Bill Belichick go through this, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while wondering if Bob Kraft plans to trade Bill Belichick to the Commanders at halftime Sunday …

▪ Red Auerbach had it right. He retired from the bench after winning his eighth straight championship, his ninth in 10 years, in 1966. Red was 48 years old. He settled into a better life as a cigar-smoking, deal-making, opponent-baiting general manager, building two more Celtics dynasties on the way out the door. His legacy has never been challenged.

Belichick? Not so much. A long time ago, he said he didn’t want to end up like Buffalo’s Marv Levy, coaching into his 70s. Today Belichick is 71 years old, has the worst team in the AFC, and is 4-11 in his last 15 games — 27-32 since Tom Brady left.

And he’s taking heat from every corner of Patriot Nation.

Has Belichick simply stayed too long? Has the NFL game passed him by? Should Bill have walked away when Brady went to Tampa four years ago?

The death of Bobby Knight Wednesday brought some of this to mind. It got me to thinking about Knight’s final days at Indiana.

I was thinking this column would be another semi-hatchet job by one of the Boston Globe's finest butchers, but the recent passing of The General, unfortunately, brings another interesting parallel to the question - how long is too long to stick around?