Belichick Canceled Practice and Took Everybody Paintballing

I have no doubt this will trigger somebody somewhere who sees Bill Belchick taking his players and coaches for a day of paintballing as promoting gun violence and entirely inappropriate given the fact he once had an armed murderer on his roster.

I can already hear the audible eyerolls coming from the Felgers and Mazzes who are convinced he’s gone soft because his franchise players launched a mutiny against him last year.

And I’m sure this isn’t going over at all well with guys like Lane Johnson and Cassius Marsh who chalk up every (rare) Patriots loss to how much joyless toil it is to play for Coach McNoFun. I have no doubt they’ll see this as a stupid ploy to hide the fact that playing for the Patriots has all the enjoyment of working the chain gang in “Cool Hand Luke.”

But tell me this isn’t badass. Imagine showing up for the last practices of OTAs and being told you’re going off to shoot paintballs at your teammates and coaches instead. It must’ve been like dragging yourself into school only to have the teacher spring a surprise field trip on your ass instead. The mindless fun kind. where you go to an amusement park in matching t-shirts; not the kind where you visit some educational site and then get assigned an essay.

The difference is, paintball is a million times more fun that spinning around on some centrifugal vomit machine run by a drifter with a substance abuse problem. I’ve done it a few times, indoors and out. And properly run, paintball is a high octane adrenaline rush. There’s a reason so many ex-military guys make it their major hobby. You get your aggression out without violence. You get to test your mettle without any actual peril. And most of all, you get to put a cap in some sumbitches ass without causing harm.

I mean, it’s no coincidence paintballing has become a staple of the whole RomCom genre, for the way it brings people together:

Just let’s not kid ourselves this is some new approach by the head coach. He’s been doing the Michael Scott group funtivity thing for years now. He’s taken them to see movies like “American Sniper.” They’ve gone bowling. Last year he turned Gillette Stadium into a football history museum to give his players a better understanding of where they came from. And now, paintball. Not only is he not Coach McNoFun, he’s become the camp counselor of the NFL. And anyone who wouldn’t do everything in his power to play for the man deserves to lose.