Patriots' Belichick on Overspending: 'Can't Sustain It!'

New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick criticized teams for overspending one year, then feeling the drawbacks the next.

Over the past few years, more and more NFL teams have seemingly gone "all in" to chase a Super Bowl.

Of course, teams pushing for championships is nothing new in the NFL. The difference, though, is that teams seem more willing to mortgage the future in exchange for the present than they were before. Whether it's by signing massive, back-loaded contracts or trading away valuable draft assets, several teams have sold the future for a better chance at winning now.

This strategy has become very controversial in the NFL world, and among the detractors is legendary New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick. In a Monday appearance on radio station WEEI, Belichick said that despite the initial boost this approach is not suitable for long-term success.

“Temporarily you can, but you can’t sustain it, no,” Belichick said. “You can’t sustain the 20 years of success that we sustained by overspending every year without having to eventually pay those bills and play with a lesser team. So I think if you look at the teams that have done that, that’s kinda where some of them ended up. Jacksonville back in ‘14, the Rams are going through it, Tampa is going through it now. So, I’m not saying there’s anything right or wrong with it. It’s just a different way of doing things and there’s the results for doing that.”

Belichick brings up some valid points, but it's worth noting that two of the three teams he specifically mentions won championships. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers won a Super Bowl in 2020, largely thanks to legendary Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, and the Los Angeles Rams won the following year. While those teams are dealing with the negative repercussions now, no one can ever take those rings away from them.

On the other hand, Belichick is correct that the Patriots' more-conservative approach helped them maintain their dominance for so long. Despite winning six Super Bowls over a two-decade span, the Patriots rarely ran into cap problems during their dynasty. A large reason for that impressive feat is because Brady and others took discount to help the team win as part of "The Patriot Way."

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Furthermore, Belichick adds that the amount of cap space used is more important than the raw cash value. The Patriots are usually near the bottom of the league in cash spending, but relatively high up in cap spending. This holds true even now, as the New England is No. 31 in cash spending ($218.7 million) but rank No. 15 in available cap space ($11.5 million), per Spotrac.

“Cash spending isn’t really that relevant. It’s cap spending,” Belichick said. “So teams that spend a lot of cash one year, probably don’t spend a lot of cash in the next year because you just can’t sustain that. So we’ve had high years, we’ve had low years, but our cap spending has always been high. And that’s the most competitive position you can be in. So that’s really — the cash spending, there’s no cash cap. There’s a salary cap and we spend to the salary cap. That’s what’s important.”

Ultimately, Belichick's philosophy comes from a desire to achieve sustained success, not just be a one-hit wonder.

"You can’t look at it in a Polaroid snapshot. It’s a multi-year process," Belichick said. "So you can overspend one year, and then at some point you’re not going to be able to do that.”