Patriots just took a quiet but telling step away from the Bill Belichick era as their new identity keeps taking shape
Month after month, year after year, the Bill Belichick legacy on the New England Patriots is more historical and less practical. This week, for instance, another member of the old front office under Belichick has left the organization. Camren Williams, formerly a director of college scouting, parted ways with the franchise to be a co-director […]
Month after month, year after year, the Bill Belichick legacy on the New England Patriots is more historical and less practical. This week, for instance, another member of the old front office under Belichick has left the organization. Camren Williams, formerly a director of college scouting, parted ways with the franchise to be a co-director of player personnel with the Denver Broncos.
Williams spent almost a decade with the Patriots, winning two Super Bowls. He arrived in 2016 as a scouting assistant and got promoted several times: to a scout in 2018, to the national scout in 2021, and to director of college scouting in 2022.
Even though the Patriots tried to keep people in the front office and coaching staff in 2024, promoting Jerod Mayo to head coach and Eliot Wolf to a de facto general manager position, things are clearly further away from Belichick now under Mike Vrabel.
"We're going to continue to try to add players that are going to help us. We're going to try to continue to add coaches that can help us potentially, and I would say that we're going to probably try to do the same in the personnel department," Vrabel said last week. "So, anybody that can help us and we feel like can help us ultimately win, we're going to try to do that at every level throughout the program."
New England has kept Eliot Wolf as the executive vice president of player personnel and Matt Groh as the director of player personnel, even though Vrabel has more power on roster decisions. Moreover, the team also hired vice president of player personnel Ryan Cowden, who had the same role (and then even interim general manager) with the Tennessee Titans alongside Vrabel.
Belichick environment
The Patriots had been built for years based on what Bill Belichick thinks is the right way. And he's taking some of the people he trusts to North Carolina. General manager Michael Lombardi, defensive coordinator/linebackers coach Steve Belichick, defensive backs/safeties coach Brian Belichick, and inside linebackers coach Jamie Collins are examples of people with familiarity with the head coach who are going to work with the Tar Heels.
