All My Pain and Woe Can Be Summed Up by Rex Ryan Saying Belichick's Team 'Stinks' and No One Cares About It. Because He's 100% Right.
Ask most people who have been around SNL for a long time and they'll tell you that the best cast member in the show's history was Dana Carvey. He was the peak performer in what to me were the peak years and Dennis Miller is on record as saying that everything he ever did simply crushed. And when he was at the height of his powers, he used to do a spot on Johnny Carson at a time when Carson was not only still the king of Late Night but of all TV. And the running gag Carvey did was portraying him like he was totally out of touch, past his prime, and that his whole schtick was dated and irrelevant. And that impression drove Carson off TV . He'd roam the hallways of the studio saying something to the effect that once they start making you the butt of the joke, it's all over. So he retired rather than expose himself to further humiliation.
I bring this up because there's a moderate-to-severe controversy around the Patriots after they went all week splitting reps between their two quarterbacks and when they told the team Mac Jones was starting. Bill Belichick was at his most cryptic in his postgame presser, spending maybe 10 seconds of his four minute exercise in social awkwardness saying he didn't remember, but that it was some time during the week. Some of the players have contradicted that, among them Rhamondre Stevenson, who said everybody knew all along.
Where this circles back to the show business anecdote I led off with is that this isn't the Bill Belichick of his prime. In 2023, he's late-career Carson. At 2-9, with all his bad personnel moves, poor coaching hires, and failed in-game decisions piling up, he's becoming the punchline. And unlike Dana Carvey, who actually revered Carson and felt bad about how his impression was received, Belichick has real enemies with old axes to grind. And they're not about to miss the opportunity to make him a laughingstock:
The thing I hate most about Rex Ryan shooting his shot like this is that there's no counter argument. I'd love nothing more than to fire back. But with what? What ammo has Belichick given those of us who are still loyal? I suppose I could bring up the ButtFumble, but that was fucking 11 Thanksgivings ago. It would be like saying you couldn't make fun of Carson in the 1980s because that one time a tomahawk hit a target in the nuts was hilarious. No one cares about how badly Shrex Ryan's career flamed out years ago. The immediate problem is that he's right; no one cares about the team Belichick is currently in charge of, or the fake intrigue around which of his incompetent quarterbacks was going to be under center to start the game.
