Reggie Wayne responds to reports on joyless Patriots - 'Belichick's not a party planner'
To say the New England Patriots are one of the most divisive franchises in sports is like saying the Germans and Russians had a “friendly rivalry” in World War II.
To their fans, “The Patriot Way” of coach Bill Belichick and the front office is a brilliant and efficient “championship culture” that expects the best from everyone in the organization in pursuit of a mentality where any season that does not result in winning the Super Bowl is a failure.
To their detractors, the Patriots are a soulless, corporate, joyless football gulag where players are used as cogs, chewed up and spit out; some free agents even avoid New England precisely because they don’t want to be part of that culture.
After the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Patriots in Super Bowl LII, two of their players were particularly vocal in their criticism of the Patriots’ culture.
“It’s crazy that people haven’t known this,” Eagles offensive lineman Brandon Brooks said last week, per CBS Sports. “It’s been this way for like a decade. You’ve seen — Reggie Wayne did it. He retired. He went there (to the Patriots) for a training camp and retired. S— is not fun there. I was under the same regime in Houston. I almost retired. S— was miserable, every day. Every day.”
The “regime” in Houston was under former Belichick assistant Bill O’Brien, who has been one of the Johnny Appleseeds planting Patriots football around the NFL and trying to set other franchises on the winning track by capturing New England’s magic in a bottle.
Fellow Eagles lineman Lane Johnson added, “All these guys talking about ‘I’ll take the rings.’ OK. You can have your rings. You can also have f—ing 15 miserable years.”
Wayne himself, however, disputed Brooks’ version of events.
“There are some reports out there … that I left New England because I said it was not fun or it was too hard,” Wayne told NFL Network on Friday. “Those reports are false. The fact is, I was done. It was time for me to retire. There were other teams that wanted my services but I knew it was done for me.
“Bill Belichick is not a party planner. That is not what he is in it for. I think he’s in it for winning championships, winning games for that organization.”
No fun in Foxborough? @reggiewayne_17 says that’s NOT why he left the Patriots.
“It was time for me to be an all pro dad.“
”I knew going into it, it was going to be different.“
”Bill Belichick isn’t a party planner.“ pic.twitter.com/3LU148gKQP— Lindsay Rhodes (@lindsay_rhodes) June 1, 2018
Tedy Bruschi, who spent 13 years with the Patriots and was by no means “miserable” as Johnson asserted, tweeted his support of The Patriot Way.
Players that don’t like their Patriot experience are the ones that can’t take tough coaching, get eaten up by the pressure, blame others for failures and expect things are supposed to be given to them.
— Tedy Bruschi (@TedyBruschi) May 31, 2018
Brooks showed his true colors, though, playing right into the hands of guys like Bruschi when he dismissed the very goal of an NFL season while talking about his time in Houston first under Gary Kubiak and then under O’Brien.
“I came in (as a rookie) under Kubiak, who was just an older version of Doug (Pederson),” Brooks said. “Then I went to O’Brien, who was Belichick, and then I came back to Doug, who’s like Kubes, so for me, man, s— was great. Like, I cannot tell you how much better this is than it was down there. Like, it’s just night and day. What does (Eagles offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland) say? Happy workers make more productive workers. When you’re not having fun, man, those grinding, those hard-a– nosed days.”
Brooks is entitled to his own opinion, but the New England Patriots, love ’em or hate ’em, have won five Super Bowls since 2001, lost by one score in three others, and made the playoffs in 16 out of 18 years under Belichick.
They have more 12-win seasons during Belichick’s tenure (12, including eight in a row) than most NFL teams have in franchise history.
No great player has ever been measured by how much fun he had. Just ask Tom Brady, Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw.
And when training camp starts in July, any player who doesn’t buy in to The Patriot Way won’t have a chance to be miserable, because he’ll get cut.
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