Belichick’s End Part 1
As promised, Belichick getting fired deserves a week. Not a comic for all 5 days I don’t have the time for that, but all 3 comics this week will be our opportunity to reflect on the Belichick firing, surprising non-hiring, and then speculation about the future. So let’s start with the end.
I never thought I’d see Belichick get fired. And yes, he was fired. I’m sure Kraft was “respectful” and all that jazz and they put on the show of Bill stepping down and having a mutual parting of ways but we all know the truth. If Kraft were fine with it, Belichick would have stayed. Kraft pushed him to leave with as much dignity as a firing in this industry can muster. I’m surprised because it genuinely seemed like Belichick had earned tenure in a way few coaches do. He is one of the most successful coaches in football history. Whether or not he was doing a good job at the end there almost feels irrelevant.
This is a business though; looking past his football status as a legend, it was the right move. The post-Brady years did not go well for Bill. Cam Newton was a woeful stopgap and Mac Jones started mediocre and only got worse. I’ll touch on it on the next comic but it really wasn’t coach Belichick who got fired, it was GM Belichick. I think Bill is still a good coach and even this season the defense was still semi-respectable. But the lack of talent and the people he’s picked up to surround himself with has gone so downhill. It should have been a sign that Belichick wasn’t good at picking out assistants when every single one hired away turned into a pumpkin and tanked a franchise with a combination of ego and mismanagement. I think this problem existed long before Bill stopped being decent at evaluating talent and making at least decent draft picks. We just never truly considered how bad at it he must be when he was still winning games with the help of the best decision he ever made 20 years ago.
But what a legacy he leaves behind. It is easy to look at how things have gone post-Brady and give Brady the credit for the two-decade dynasty. We really shouldn’t do that. Looking at Andy Reid with Mahomes now, it feels like the way to be a transcendent team is simply to have the right pieces there at the right time, making the right decisions at the right moment. These individuals do not exist as they are without the other. This is a symbiotic sport. Belichick wasn’t a great coach simply because he had Brady, but having Brady made him a better coach. Brady didn’t carry Belichick, he certainly would have never turned into the guy he is without him. Brady’s early years were often game-manager performances bolstered by Belichick’s defense. Belichick got him Randy Moss. Belichick got him Wes Welker and every other shifty white guy in the league, and Gronk. Even Hernandez, who was probably going to be a huge star if not for…you know. Brady isn’t Brady if he goes to the Browns or Jets, dealing with incompetent coaching and franchises constantly in flux. Belichick knew what the Browns were like. He suffered that hell.
No other coach in history even went to 5 Super Bowls, let alone 9, winning 6. He’s tied with Halas for championships. Of course, he actually has 8 total Super Bowl rings and has been to 12 if you count his coordinator years. He has the most playoff wins in history with 31, and the most divisional championships with 17. Belichick has a .647 winning percentage, which is almost a full 2 thirds of games played. Keep in mind that stat includes his Cleveland years and his current past seasons. At his best, Belichick’s percentage was .683. Belichick is currently 3rd all-time in coaching wins. He has 16 games to pass George Halas, and 26 games to pass Don Shula. I’d say that’s probably 4 seasons of coaching. If he wins just 7 games or more every year for several seasons, he’s got it in the bag. That’s doable. You can bet your ass he wants that record. He’s old now though, so time is not on his side.
Fun fact, he leads the NFL in -Gate conspiracies, with 2. He’s also never tied once in his career, a blemish he could still rectify. He also never joined the NFL Coaches Association for some reason and therefore cannot be named in Madden games.
We now enter the first year in my entire life that will not have Belichick on a sideline in any capacity. It’s gonna be weird. I will also hate it when he wears another team’s colors when/if he gets picked up next season. Bill Belichick is the Patriots to me. Hell, the Pats didn’t even clean house to fire him and picked up his longtime disciple Jerod Mayo to take command. I do not envy Mayo at all. He takes over a mess of a roster and we do not know what kind of patience Kraft will have now that he no longer has the GOATS leading the team. Will Mayo finally be the first good Belichick tree coach? I guess we will see.
But let’s leave this post on a fun note. What are your favorite Billy memories of his time as Pats coach? Things I’ll always remember:
-“We’re on to Cincinnati”
-The petulant challenge flag spike from this year
-Bill hates tablets
-The time a reporter asked him about long snappers and he talked for 10 minutes
-Rejecting the Jets job by writing his resignation on a napkin
-(personal pettiness joy here) walking off the field before the final victory snap in Super Bowl 42
-The time he just unapologetically looked like a hobo
-“Do Your Job”
-Him cracking a Tebow joke during his final Patriots farewell press conference. Dude was funnier than we give him credit for.
-Listing Brady as questionable every game for 20 years just to be a fucker
–His dog during the Covid virtual draft. That one especially got me after several years of giving him a cute dog sidekick without knowing he actually had one
-His pissy deflategate press conference where he gave the world a science lesson
-Honestly anytime he hated press questions his disdain would be visceral. It became one of his best-known qualities and genuinely turned him into a sort of folk hero who wouldn’t take anyone’s bullshit, even though he’d be more than willing to engage with good questions and he just has a general subdued demeanor.
–Trolling Wes Welker by bringing up Wally Pip as if Edelman was the Lou Gering to Welker’s Wally Pip.
>-Listing Brady as questionable every game for 20 years just to be a fucker
I have a dim recollection of the only game Brady not being listed for right shoulder was the one in which he wound up suffering the Pollarding. Perhaps I’m misremembering it and it was his return game, but I could swear it was on the game he actually did get injured.
OK, yes. On the run up to SBXLII Brady suffered an ankle injury that was a problem of some amount. At the start of the following year he was not listed on the injury report as if to say “yes, we insist he’s all better now,” that all better lasting what? 20 minutes?
Belichick listing Brady as questionable every week permanently altered how I view players listed as questionable. I see it all the time and still get just a little bit surprised when I hear that they aren’t playing because I was so used to Brady starting no matter what despite the designation.
I know this is a Belichick week but I really hope you have the time and motivation to make a proper Pete Carroll comic as well.
It’s sad that the last several years post-Brady are going to at least somewhat alter how people view Belichick’s career. He suffers from the same issue that Brady has where he coached/ran the team for so long that a lot of people just generally forgot how good he was back at the start. Where people often underrate what Brady did in those early days, I feel like people also understate how good of a GM and roster manager Bill was in the first Dynasty. And any implication that it was all Tom Brady is simply recency bias going wild.
It’s not that Bill was always totally incapable of building a roster, particularly without Brady, it’s that his methods became outdated for the modern game and he was unwilling to adjust. His strategy worked back at a time where teams needed to be more stingy about how they spent money. He was savvy, knew exactly when to let guys go, and especially knew when to pull the trigger for the right player at the right time. It helped NE build some excellent teams before Brady ascended to being GOAT QB and achieve a ton of success at a time where constructing a Dynasty was thought to be near impossible. He might not be able to construct a roster right now, but if I had it to do over again starting from 2000, I’d pick Bill Belichick to do it every single time.
The problem was the media was so ready to determine a winner between the two. There were little ripples of it early on, but once they split the media was all to ready to say “TB has nothing w/o Bill” or “Bill would be nothing without TB”. The truth is, of course, right down the middle. Tom Brady probably doesn’t win those first three Super Bowls without Bill’s incredible defenses. Bill probably doesn’t win the second 3 without Tom Brady’s ability to stay focused and drive the offense, especially in crunch time.
Then if anybody tries to use the Bucs championship against Bill, we see how hard it is to build a competitive roster without a star QB. Add in the fact that his division got REALLY good REALLY quickly, while TB went to one of the most stacked teams at the time and still needed a huge defensive performance to get that 7th ring.
Also, love the commentary on Bill’s ability to know when to fold ’em. That was something he did better than anyone else. How many great DBs did he coach up and then let go at juuuuuust the right time.
One of my favorite things about Belichick Press Conferences was his tendency to deflect actual questions by giving lessons on football history and/or break down impressive plays around the league. I remember one clearly where there was some question mark about the Patriots, can’t remember what, but he spent like 20 minutes breaking down the Rodgers Hail Mary game-winner the week before and why it was such an impressive pass and play.
I gotta go with an early one. Bb resigning from the Jet’s on a napkin. He knew that organization was a snakebitten, clusterfuck and would have rather taken the wrath of NY (a city he has shown to love from his talks about the Giants) than be HC of the JETS.
It reminded me a lot of Eli Manning’s face when the Chargers drafted him.
FUCK YEA FUCK YOU YA OLD redacted Man
Seeing people as irritating as you happy almost makes me want to be a Pats fan.
Probably less painful than being a Commies fan.
A fuck Bill Billicheck weed AND IM IN DISNEY WORLD WhAt ArE tHe ChAnCeS
In 2003, he called for an intentional safety against Denver on MNF that ended up winning the game for the Pats. I Can’t remember exactly the situation, but they were down by one point (so they needed at least a field goal anyways) and had to punt anyways. So Bill took the safety for better field position, and that ended up setting up what turned into Brady’s game winning TD pass to Troy Brown(?).
I have a soft spot for Belichick giving social-media platforms wrong names basically on purpose (“I don’t MyFace, I don’t Yearbook”; “I’m not really too worried about what they put on InstantChat”).
One of my favorite quick 30 Rock jokes: “Who cares what people around here think? Your neighbors named their daughter Belichick!
I forget whom specifically he selected, but intentionally selecting various Ravens for the Pro Bowl that he knew had Pro Bowl bonuses in their contract just as a Fuck You to Art Modell is glorious in its pettiness and definitely belongs on your list.
Also I kinda wish they kept the draft selections from coaches houses even post-COVID. Who can forget Kliff Kingsbury apparently living in the house from “Parasite”, Vrabel’s son possibly dropping a duce in the man cave shiter, or Belichick’s den looking exactly as you’d imagined it would be (nautical prints a plenty)
My favorite Belichick moment is one I doubt most people remember. It would have been back around 2004 or so, I think, at the height of the Brady-Manning wars.
It was the first season the Pats had started emphasizing those WR screens they loved so much. They ran them a good 4-5 times a game all year long, to varying success. So come the playoffs, the big game against the Colts, Troy Brown steps back and squares up to Brady to receive the screen. But the CB has seen this probably 100 times in film over the course of the season, he reads it immediately and jumps the route. It should have been an easy pick-6… except of course it was a fake. Brown easily runs past the now out-of-position CB into the endzone and Brady tosses him the TD before the safety can get there. Game is broken open, Colts never recover.
It was the only fake screen they ran all year. Bill spent an entire season running that play just to set up that single fake, at exactly the right time, against exactly the right opponent. How many coaches would have that kind of patience? It changed the way I thought about the game, and coaching in general.