No mystery to Cleveland Browns why Patriots assistants fail to match Belichick

This is just Moneyball 101

This is Pro Sports. Players recognize two forms of compensation: money and wins. If they believe they have a high expectation of winning, they are willing to take less money. Conversely, if players and their agents believe your team is terrible, it will take very high dollar values to get them to sign with your team.

Bill Belichick always had high competence. But once Belichick he got on a roll with Tom Brady, the psychological belief that the Patriots could deliver wins translated to tangible value. There has never been a general manager who could scoop millions of dollars off the payroll in this way.

Patriots assistants have generally tried to mimic Belichick’s authoritarian ways on the practice field, but what they are not getting is that Belichick wears two hats, calling the shots as general manager also. After thirty years of study, Belichick’s assistants may truly be his equal or close to his equal on the field, but they are still blown out of the water at the negotiating table.

The Browns hired Eric Mangini as a coach and later hired Romeo Crennel. General managers Phil Savage and Michael Lombardi also had experience under Belichick as a mentor. It didn’t matter, they could not use their charisma to charm player agents like Belichick could. In fact the opposite was true. Once the Browns established a reputation as a chronic loser, it took extra money to persuade players to come to Cleveland. The loser’s cycle really is a vicious cycle.

Belichick’s discount is part of a metastable economic system. That is, as long as Belichick wins, he commands a winner’s discount. As long as he has the winner’s discount, it hugely improves his chance to win every year. One reinforces the other. However if something totally unexpected happens to upset the system (say, an unexpected breakout of Covid-19 or some other random disease or injuries to key players), the entire system might break down. If that happens, the winner’s discount may suddenly  decrease  substantially or vanish altogether.

But that has not happened yet. Not when you can lose a Tom Brady and replace him with a Cam Newton at a $20 million dollar discount.