NFL: Bill Belichick: The answer to everything

When the New England Patriots grab a sixth Vince Lombardi Trophy on Sunday night, two people are in particular focus: Tom Brady and Bill Belichick. But where the four times Super Bowl MVP is the regular content of the so-called “GOAT”discussions on the quarterback position, the same should be the case more often with Belichick as head coach. Prior to Super Bowl LII, SPOX takes a look at one of the most successful coaching careers of all time. Super Bowl LII will be available live at DAZN on Sunday from 11.45 pm – optionally with German and US original commentary!

No one in the history of the NFL has managed to win the Super Bowl eight times. After two titles as Defensive Coordinator for the New York Giants, Belichick’s sixth as Head Coach of the Patriots could now crack this mark and consolidate his position as perhaps the best coach of all time even more clearly.

Numbers like these don’t really interest him as a permanent student of the game. And yet, in such a fast-moving league they demonstrate the remarkable and unique consistency of his teams. Fifteen consecutive seasons with at least ten victories have been in place since 2003. The previous record was eight. In the Belichick-Head-Coaching era, there was only one season in New England that wasn’t finished with a positive result: 2000. Then the Brady era began.

This is now 17 years ago. 17 years since the patriots developed into a dynasty. Belichick led New England to the playoffs 15 times. Twice, the only reason to miss out was the unfavourable tie-breaker. He won despite drastic personnel changes in the players and coaching area. He distinguished himself by teaching and developing players like coaches. He won, sometimes controversial.

But he won.

The connection to football was almost inevitable for Belichick. Bill’s father Steve was himself a player for the Detroit Lions and then joined the Navy as assistant coach and scout. At the age of nine, Bill began studying game tape and looking at the game from a different perspective. Football was always there, always present.

Away from the football pitch, however, the 65-year-old man looked quite different from what we know today. Belichick showed himself from a wilder side and was the president of a brotherhood that liked to beat about severity:”We were like animals,”said one of Belichick’s former fellow players in the football and lacrosse teams at Wesleyan University in Connecticut,”I think we’ve been on probation all along.”

Belichick himself was not an angel and is said to have drunk a glass too much on excursions. He already got to know his future wife in high school days, but it took them many years before they became a couple. When she asked him during an interview if he had really loved her in all the years before, he answered dryly:”You know I don’t discuss my private life.”

At only 23 years of age, he joined Baltimore Colts as Special Assistant and gained further experience as a position coach with the Lions and Broncos. But the decisive turnaround came in New York, where Belichick played the role of special team coach and defensive assistant and later linebackers coach since 1979. He has been working as a defensive assistant with Bill Parcells, who was then defensive coordinator of the team, since he took office. In 1983, Parcells took over as head coach and promoted Belichick to defensive coordinator two years later.

With Parcells as Head Coach and Belichick as Defensive Coordinator, the Giants won two Super Bowls within five years (1986,1990). In these five years, New York’s Defenses always finished seventh or better with a DVOA and Parcells and Belichick developed a special appreciation for each other, which became the basis for a long lasting collaboration.

At first, however, Belichick had other plans.

In the season after the second Super Bowl win, Cleveland Browns gave him the opportunity to prove himself as head coach. Belichick took over a 3-13-browns team and lost at least nine games in his first three years in Ohio.

During this time he dismissed Bernie Kosar, a quarterback who was very much appreciated in Cleveland. The fans were so indignant that Belichick received death threats and was put under protection by the FBI. In 1994, however, after a 11-5 season, the Browns were allowed to catch playoff air again and even celebrate a wildcard victory against the patriots. This makes Belichick the last Browns coach to win a playoff game.

The following season should still be the last for the Browns in Ohio before the franchise moved to Baltimore. Belichick is said to have received a guarantee from team owner Art Modell for further cooperation, but he was fired after a 5-11 season.

Belichick is regarded as a person who attaches great importance to loyalty. To this day, he has not yet accepted a single car presented as a sponsor gift, since his former college team-mate Jim Farrell owns a car dealership. In fact, he bought each of his family’s cars from Ferrall Volvo until today. Accordingly, the Causa Cleveland-Belichick is still one that both sides do not like to address.

In any case, Belichick found his way back to the old superior Parcells and thus to his first engagement with the Patriots, where he acted as Assistant Head Coach and Defensive Backs Coach. After only one season of reaching the Super Bowl and losing it to the Green Bay Packers, Parcells left the Patriots to hire New York jets.

Belichick followed, taking over a defence that had finished the season as the third worst in terms of approved points, and placing them in the top 10 in each of the following three years in this category. He had an excellent mentor in Parcells, although Parcells’ teams in his years without Belichick defensively always revealed great problems. The cooperation between the two of them came to an end in 1999 for the last time in a way that couldn’t have been more curious.

After Parcells resigned to take over as managing director and Belichick became the new head coach based on a clause in his contract, he took care of the new head coach just one day later – on the 4th day of the event. January 2000 – at his actual official presentation for one of the most memorable press conferences in league history.

“Due to the many ambiguities that accompany my position in connection with the team’s new owners, I decided to resign as head coach of the New York Jets,”Belichick told the surprised reporters. Jets President Steve Gutman he had informed just a few minutes before the press conference, on a napkin scribbled Belichick that he would be called “H. C. the “NYJ” resigns.

The jets, which had just lost Parcells and then Belichick on the coaching level in just over 24 hours, were in chaos and rumours bubbled: What could have happened behind the scenes in this actually manageable period of time? Meanwhile, Belichick set out to found his dynasty elsewhere.

Page 1: The beginnings, the first Super Bowls and the Cleveland era

Page 2: The construction of a dynasty and numerous scandals