The Patriots sent a mini-shockwave around the NFL on Tuesday when they released Cam Newton and named rookie Mac Jones their starting quarterback less than two weeks before the regular season begins.
Newton's play has been severely uninspiring since he joined New England last year, and Jones impressed during the preseason, but the move still seemed to catch most of the league by surprise.
And, because Belichick and Newton are both NFL lightning rods, plenty of players around the league - and former players as well - had some takes they wanted to get off their chest.
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That group included former Eagles and Patriots cornerback Asante Samuel, who fired off a pair of tweets about Belichick after the move.
The first one was fairly innocuous:
But the second one...
Dang! Tell us how you really feel, Asante.
The cold-blooded part of his take here isn't all that spicy, though it probably stems from Samuel's time in New England and maybe an inability to jibe with the Patriot Way. Belichick is a no-nonsense dude who does what's best for his team every time, or at least that's his goal.
NFL
But calling Belichick, who many consider to be one of the two or three greatest head coaches in NFL history? Whew boy. That's been a popular comment among hot take artists over the last year after Belichick and Brady parted ways, and then Brady won a Super Bowl in Tampa Bay while Belichick missed the playoffs.
(There were a number of extenuating circumstances that made those results not-so-black-and-white, but this is the Internet where nuance doesn't exist.)
I think Belichick falls somewhere between The GOAT and Just Another Coach. He's clearly a brilliant football mind, particularly defensively... but there might be something to the idea that Brady helped him reach his ultimate six-time-champion heights.
In any case, it probably isn't hard to figure out who Samuel will be rooting for when his former squad New England faces the Chargers and Samuel's son, rookie cornerback Asante Samuel Jr.
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