So, this Thanksgiving, I want to revisit a question I asked earlier this year:
As you may recall, my conclusion in January was: No. We can now safely conclude that Bill Belichick was riding Tom Brady’s coattails for 20 years, and that without Brady at quarterback, Bill is simply not a very good coach.
Since then, the Patriots are 2-8, they benched Mac Jones, their former first-round pick, and they have the worst point differential of any team in the AFC. There is now an emerging consensus that Belichick will not be back as New England’s head coach in 2024. Which makes sense! He’s been terrible! The only reasons he hasn’t been fired already are A) his reputation; and B) the hope that some poor sap will trade for him when the season is over.
Which just goes to show how wildly misperceived Belichick is. The fact that some other team might actually give something up to acquire a coach whose track record is as pathetic as Belichick’s is baffling to me. But people simply love to make excuses for this man. Let’s go over some of the usual ones, shall we?
You can’t judge Belichick off of a few bad seasons! Every coach has a few bad seasons, even legends like Belichick…
The mistake here is thinking that Belichick has had only a few bad seasons. In reality, he has now coached more than ten seasons without Tom Brady as his starting quarterback: Five seasons in Cleveland, the first year (and two games) in New England (before Drew Bledsoe got hurt), the 2008 season when Brady was hurt, and the 3.5 seasons since Brady left for Tampa Bay. That’s over 170 games! Only 50 guys in the history of the NFL have ever coached that many games. And in those games without Brady, Belichick’s coaching record is 79-93. That’s a .459 winning percentage, which would put him just behind Joe Philbin for 129th place all-time. His team missed the playoffs eight times in those 10 years (and will almost certainly miss it again for the ninth time this year), and he has only one playoff win without Brady, which came back in 1995.
This kind of track record goes beyond a few down years. It a consistent stretch of mediocrity. No other coach would survive over a decade with this record, and no coach of his stature has a similar stretch.
It’s not really fair to count Belichick’s time in Cleveland. Nobody wins in Cleveland!
For a long time, Belichick’s five-year stretch with the Browns was seen as a kind of superhero origin story: A brilliant assistant becomes a head coach before he’s really ready, and while he exhibits moments of greatness (recording the Browns’ most recent playoff win in Cleveland), he ultimately fails before returning, humbled to his old perch under Bill Parcells’ wing. Only then can he emerge as the genius we all know today.
But given the greater context we now have, it’s worth revisiting Bill’s years in Cleveland. Modern fans think of the Browns as a perennial doormat because, after the team was rebooted in 1999, they went two decades with only one playoff appearance (a loss in the 2002 Wild Card round). But the team Belichick took over in 1991 was NOT actually hapless. They were just a year removed from an appearance in the AFC Championship Game. In fact, Belichick’s record in Cleveland is the worst of ANY coach who led the Browns from 1977 to the team’s relocation in 1995. Bud Carson, Marty Schottenheimer, Sam Rutigliano… all of them did better in Cleveland than Belichick did.
In fact, when we look back at Belichick’s time in Cleveland, what do we see? A guy who took personnel decisions away from the General Manager, prematurely pushed out a beloved franchise quarterback, and picked unnecessary fights with the media. Seems like he’s actually the same guy now that he was then…
Come on, you can’t just IGNORE the time Belichick spent with Tom Brady — they spent 20 years together and won six Super Bowls! Surely he deserves some credit for that…
No, I don’t think so. Players win championships, not coaches. After all, Brady went to Tampa Bay, a team that hadn’t made the postseason in 12 years, and immediately won another Super Bowl without Belichick. (And nobody calls Bruce Arians a “genius”…) Meanwhile, Belichick’s team immediately got worse, and he has not had any real success since Brady left.
Look, Belichick is not unique in having his success tied to closely to a particular player. What makes him unique is just how little he’s been able to replicate that success without Brady. Usually, the coach can accomplish SOMETHING after a star player leaves: Tom Landry made three NFC Championships after Roger Staubach retired; Phil Jackson won with Michael Jordan in Chicago AND Kobe Bryant/Shaq in LA; Andy Reid made a Super Bowl with Donovan McNabb, and won two with Patrick Mahoomes; etc. But Belichick without Brady is, as mentioned, a long string of mediocrity…
Perhaps we ought to ask ourselves why so many people are committed to the idea of Belichick’s brilliance. It IS difficult to quantify exactly what a coach does, especially for an outsider, but IF a coach were riding a star player’s coattails, this is exactly what it would look like. And yet football fans are, by and large, invested in the idea of Bill Belichick as a genius.
And this is because Belichick conforms to certain class-based notions of what intelligence means. He is rude to the press, gruff and unsentimental with his employees, and dismissive of outside criticism. For people invested in the mythology of a coach or a boss as a leader, these are the trappings of intelligence, and they are more important that the actual, empirical results delivered.
In reality, coaching a service business, at least when it’s done right. You are there to put your ego aside and get the best out of the players. Belichick, frankly, does not seem capable of that, which is why he is bad at his job.