When you’re responsible for every decision, from personnel off the field to coaching on it, and you win 6 Super Bowls, there really isn’t much of a debate to be had. You’re the GOAT.
Yet after 24 seasons, owner Robert Kraft decided it was time to move on. He and Bill Belichick announced the “mutual” decision to part ways on Thursday, officially ending an unprecedented and unmatched run:
24 seasons
Regular Season W-L: 266-121
Playoff W-L: 30-12
17 division titles
13 AFC Championship Game appearances (including 8 consecutive)
9 Super Bowl appearances
6 Super Bowl wins
Fewest turnovers in the NFL
Most takeaways in the NFL
Most points scored from 2001-19
Fewest points allowed from 2001-19
3rd in return TDs (Kick, Punt, INT, Fumble-Return, Other)
There are probably 100 other stats that you could use to show how great Belichick’s time in New England was. Yet probably the defining aspect of his tenure is that he was able to win in so many different ways. He won with defense-first teams. He won with offense-first teams. He won with special teams. And for most of his career, he was two steps ahead of the league, whether it was via his scheme or personnel decisions.
Perhaps the most impressive thing about Belichick was his ability to use completely different gameplans and approaches from year to year and even week-to-week based on the opponent. He found unique ways to make teams play left-handed.
Just off the top of my head, there are a few unconventional gameplans and strategic approaches that come to mind:
Having edge rushers hit Marshall Faulk on almost every pass play before rushing the quarterback in order to disrupt the “Greatest Show on Turf” in Super Bowl XXXVI.
Taking away the Colts’ outside zone stretch play with the alignment of outside linebackers Willie McGinest and Mike Vrabel. That also shut down their play-action off of it, which was a bread-and-butter play for those Peyton-Manning-led teams in the 2000’s.
“Cover-1 double jersey #” coverage and taking away receivers like Tyreek Hill by double-teaming them with his #2 corner and a safety and then using his best corner to shut down the offense’s #2 receiver.
The way he would match up personnel based on skill sets instead of status. For instance, he used Kyle Arrington instead of Darrelle Revis to take away the Colts best receiver (T.Y. Hilton) twice during the 2014 season, including the AFC Championship Game. Arrington was then benched midway through Super Bowl XLIX vs. Seattle and replaced with Malcolm Butler…
Holding Sean McVay’s Rams offense to 3 points in Super Bowl LIII using a combination of a 6-1 front to stop their zone runs and having cornerback Jonathan Jones play as a deep safety (often out of quarters coverage) to be able to better match up to L.A.’s intermediate-to-deep route combinations.
What’s so impressive about the examples above is that he didn’t just come up with the idea to utilize these unique approaches. He had to coach them as well. His coaches had to understand them. His players had to understand them and be able to apply them on the field.
There are plenty of other approaches and in-game decisions we could talk about as well. Like his decision not to call a timeout at the end of Super Bowl XLIX when the Seahawks were about to score the game-winning touchdown and had the ball at the 1-yard line. Belichick saw chaos on the opposite sideline. He didn’t want to bail them out. On the very next play, Malcolm Butler picked off Russell Wilson, and the rest is history.
Belichick also wasn’t reliant on one or two great defenders during his 24 years in New England. He didn’t have an all-timer on defense at any position. He didn’t have a Ray Lewis or Ed Reed or Troy Polamalu. In fact, to date, the Patriots have only had 4 Hall-of-Famers from Belichick’s Patriots defenses. And most weren’t on the team for long:
Ty Law (5 seasons, 69 regular season games)
Richard Seymour (8 seasons, 111 regular season games)
Junior Seau (4 seasons, 38 regular season games)
Darrelle Revis (1 season, 16 regular season games)
Despite the lack of stars, his defense allowed the fewest points in the NFL from 2001-19. During that stretch, they finished in the top-10 in points allowed 16 times, which included 8 top-five finishes and three seasons as the top scoring D in the league.
The way he continually re-shaped the team, particularly on offense, in order to stay ahead of the league played as big of a role in the Patriots’ success as anything. The Patriots went from a defense-first team with great special teams and timely offense during their first 3 Super Bowl wins from 2001-04, to a team that attacked with one of the best passing games in the league after the NFL put an emphasis on calling illegal contact and basically outlawed defense in 2004.
Belichick traded for Randy Moss when everyone thought he was done. Of course, he set an NFL record for TD receptions in his first season with the Patriots.
But it wasn’t just 2007 with Moss. Belichick also spotted something in Wes Welker (when no one else did) and engineered the passing game around him and his unique abilities in the slot. He spotted the same thing in Julian Edelman despite the fact that he was a quarterback in college.
The passing game morphed into one based primarily on matchups in the 2010’s - with tight ends like Rob Gronkowski and running backs like Shane Vereen, Dion Lewis, and James White, etc. who could align on the perimeter and either become mismatches or help define the coverage. He zigged when the league zagged, and that helped lead to the Patriots’ sustained success.
Of course his biggest decision, and arguably his best coaching job, revolved around Tom Brady. Belichick never gets much credit for Brady. Instead, many try to make him wear Brady’s career like an albatross around his neck. As if this was a situation where Brady and Belichick never talked. Brady took the offense, Belichick took the defense, and they met at the field on Sunday. And then of course Belichick wasn’t that great, he was just carried by Brady.
It doesn’t take much to see that this is a wildly inaccurate assumption.
We can start with Belichick’s decision to draft Brady and then keep him on the roster in 2000. The Patriots would keep 4 quarterbacks that year, which was highly unusual. But Belichick didn’t want to risk losing Brady by placing him on the practice squad, so he kept him on.
Then, of course, you have the decision to stick with Brady in 2001, both when $100-million-dollar-man Drew Bledsoe was cleared to return from injury at mid-season and then before the Super Bowl after Brady got knocked out of the AFC Championship game.
Even the staunchest Belichick hater can admit he made some good decisions with Brady during those early years. However, it’s the development of Brady that Belichick seldom gets any credit for.
I wrote about this a couple of months ago in more depth, but Brady has told us multiple times how instrumental Belichick was in his development, and has given specific examples.
Belichick also took over the QB meetings in 2001, Brady’s first year as the starter, after QB coach Dick Rehbein unexpectedly passed away during training camp. That was a pretty formative year in Brady’s development, I’d say.
Then you have this statement from Dean Pees, who was the Patriots linebackers coach from 2004-05 and defensive coordinator from 2006-09, while on the “Make Defense Great Again” podcast with Coach Chris Vasseur:
“He spent [his time] with Tom Brady telling Tom Brady, here’s what those defenses are doing against you. Which was perfect. He sat in the meeting room with Tom every day in individual meetings, in unit meetings. […] He did an incredible job of sitting with Tom, and like, we’re playing the Jets or something, and he’s telling Tom, here’s what to look for. Here’s what that safety’s showing you. Here’s what the linebacker’s showing you. I mean what a great tool to have a guy like that with that experience sitting with your quarterback teaching him how to read defenses. That’s why we were so daggone good. […] When I was there in New England, I was there 6 years total […], he spent 90% of his time with Tom Brady.”
(By the way, follow Coach Vass on twitter and listen to his podcast. You’ll get infinitely smarter about football).
So there you have it. Proof of Belichick’s involvement in Brady’s development in 2001 and then from 2004-09 (I highly doubt that he took 2 years off from developing his quarterback in 2002-03).
If you think Brady is the greatest quarterback of all time, then you have to acknowledge that Belichick developed the greatest quarterback of all time. You can’t separate the two.
We’ll deal with where Belichick should or will go another day. For now, let’s all just agree to agree: he’s the GOAT. I don’t care that he’s “only won 6 Super Bowls with one quarterback.” What a ridiculous statement. When I hear “Won 6 Super Bowls,” I stop listening to the rest of the sentence. That’s enough for me.
By the way, as I wrote in that Belichick article two months ago, every coach in the greatest-of-all-time discussion has the same “issue” as Belichick. From Don Shula to Vince Lombardi to Paul Brown to Bill Walsh to Chuck Noll to Tom Landry to Andy Reid, they each won all of their championships with one Hall-of-Fame quarterback.
So let’s stop trying to discredit the man. He created and ran a football program from 2000-19 that is unmatched in history. His next project, the rebuild from 2020-23, didn’t work out. That doesn’t take away from what happened during the two prior decades.
And he’s not done yet, clearly. Everything from this point forward for Belichick is gravy on an unbelievable resume. But I have a feeling he’ll find himself in a situation where he turns another team into a winner.
Great analysis, Nick!… esp your thoughts on Belichick’s development of Brady. Love your humor, too!