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Ex-Patriots WR stuns football community with truth behind playing for Bill Belichick

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Danny Amendola was supposed to be the next Wes Welker in the Patriots system, but things didn’t work out quite as planned.

Amendola did stick around in New England for five seasons and collected two Super Bowl rings, but his tenure is seen as a disappointment as Julian Edelman inherited Welker’s role and became Tom Brady’s most trusted wide receiver.

It wasn’t for a lack of effort on Amendola’s part as he clearly wanted to be in New England: He took pay cuts in three straight offseasons to remain with the team.

But just because Amendola wanted to play for the Patriots, that doesn’t necessarily mean he liked playing for the Patriots and, more specifically, Bill Belichick.

After being low-balled yet again with an offer from New England, Amendola rejected it this time around and signed with the divisional rival Miami Dolphins in March.

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One month later, Amendola is opening up about his time in New England and particularly what it was like playing for Belichick.

“It’s not easy, that’s for sure,” Amendola told ESPN when asked what it’s like playing for Belichick. “He’s an a–hole sometimes. There were a lot of things I didn’t like about playing for him, but I must say, the things I didn’t like were all in regards to getting the team better, and I respected him.

“I didn’t like practicing in the snow, I didn’t like practicing in the rain, but that was going to make us a better football team and that was going to make me a better football player. It wasn’t easy, and he’d be the first to admit, at the [Super Bowl] ring ceremony, that it wasn’t easy playing for him. The silver lining was that we were at the ring ceremony.”

Apart from the X’s and O’s of being a coach, Belichick likes to test the mental toughness of his players and practicing in a snowstorm is one of his ways to do that. Last season, pictures and videos of the Patriots’ snowstorm practice went viral, especially considering the team has an indoor practice facility.

Do you think Danny Amendola will have more success in Miami than in New England?

Amendola said that after three years of taking the pay cuts, he thought he would be taken care of on the back end with an offer from New England to stay. But he soon realized that the organization wasn’t going to come close to the offers he had in free agency, so he ended up departing.

Amendola also weighed in on the Malcolm Butler benching in the Super Bowl. He said while he did ask why Butler didn’t play, he didn’t get any answers.

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“To tell you the truth, I don’t know why [Butler didn’t play],” the wide receiver said. “I did ask, but I didn’t get any answers. … For whatever reason, he wasn’t out there. He’s going to play more football in his career, and he’s going to be a great player for a long time.”

He may be a former Patriot, but Amendola still has love for one current Patriot and that is Edelman. The two hung out together last month at Amendola’s home in Texas, and it was there where Edelman potentially thwarted a school shooting by alerting his assistant of a threatening message posted in the comments section of an Instagram post.

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Ross Kelly has been a sportswriter since 2009.
Ross Kelly has been a sportswriter since 2009 and previously worked for ESPN, CBS and STATS Inc. A native of Louisiana, Ross now resides in Houston.
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