Cassius Marsh, Lane Johnson, and the Weirdness Surrounding the New England Patriots

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When Lane Johnson stated that the Patriots were a fear-based organization after the Super Bowl, people felt as if he was just rubbing it in that they had tackled the biggest bully on the block.

On Barstool Sports’ Pardon My Take, Johnson had this to say about the team they had just de-throned:

I just think that The Patriot Way is a fear-based organization. Obviously, do they win? Hell yes, they win. They’ve won for a long time. Do I think people enjoy and can say, ‘I had a lot of fun playing there’? No, I don’t. That’s just the God’s honest truth. They’re successful, but when they go to interviews, they act like fucking robots. Hey, stop being a shit head. We can be cordial for a little bit. You only get to do this job one time, so let’s have fun while we’re doing it. Not to be reckless, but we’d much rather have fun and win a Super Bowl than be miserable and win five Super Bowls. But hey, it is what it is.

People sort of waved it off.

Lane Johnson did call Tom Brady a pretty boy, after all.

When Cassius Marsh (who just completed a stint with the Patriots) spoke up, however, people began to listen.

In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Marsh gave his unfiltered opinion on just how poorly his stint with the New England Patriots went.

Marsh’s words are strong ones.

It’s rare that a player will openly speak ill of his former team, so it generally makes waves when it does happen.

We’ve all heard about how robotic everything is for the Patriots. It’s a big machine where every cog is expendable. It’s the “Patriot Way.”

This is the downside to having such a structured, sterilized organization, and Marsh just confirmed the worst of the criticisms about them.

But he didn’t stop there.

He expounded on exactly what the problem was:

They asked me to do a bunch of stuff that I had never done: covering running backs and receivers and basically almost never rushing the passer, which is what I did in playing defensive line. I confronted [Belichick] about all the things that were going on. I won’t get into detail, but it was B.S. things they were doing. I just wasn’t a fan. And so I, basically, without asking to get cut, I kind of asked to get cut.

Bill Belichick’s mantra “Do Your Job” has a whole new meaning in this case.

I will say this criticism is a bit odd. Sure, he may have felt as if he was better at rushing the passer than what they asked him to do, but that’s sort of irrelevant, right? You do the job you’re paid to do. The whole “do anything for the team” ideal seemed to sort of escape him.

Still, it’s a notable criticism.

When you combine Marsh’s words with those of Malcolm Butler after the Super Bowl, where he was mysteriously benched, you have more strings unravelling than ever before.

He flat-out accused them of giving up on him entirely, even at the expense of the Super Bowl:

They gave up on me. Fuck. It is what it is. I don’t know what it was. I guess I wasn’t playing good or they didn’t feel comfortable. I don’t know. But I could have changed that game.

There’s a growing rift of dissension in the ranks, and it isn’t limited to role players and depth guys.

Throughout the entirety of the offseason there have been rumblings at the top of the food chain.

From the weird uncertainty surrounding Rob Gronkowski’s offseason, the tension between the coaching staff and Tom Brady, and enough dysfunction from the top down to warrant the release of a joint statement, this has been anything but a traditional offseason for the New England Patriots.

Will this change anything about the organization, how they’re run, how acquire talent, or how they use talent?

No. Most likely not, nor should it, honestly.

The New England Patriots are still the premier franchise in all of football. They’re the gold standard for what other teams should aspire to be.

But this is a strong reminder that nothing lasts forever.

Even Rome fell in the end.