http://mmqb.si.com/2015/07/14/bill-belichick-new-england-patriots-nfl-the-mmqb-100/
Winslow Townson/Sports Illustrated
No. 4: No One Navigates a Minefield Better Than Bill Belichick
2015 is already shaping up to be the most challenging season of the head coach’s career. But through roster turnover, catastrophic injuries and scandal, there has been one constant in the Belichick era: wins. How he has done it in the past, and how he’ll get it done this year
By Greg A. Bedard
Editor’s note: This is part of our summer series, The MMQB 100, counting down the most influential people for the 2015 season.
If the NFL is playing, and Bill Belichick is on the sidelines for the Patriots, he’s going to have a profound impact on the league.
Do we really need proof? Fine.
After winning Super Bowl XLIX, Belichick is tied with Pittsburgh’s Chuck Noll for most titles as a head coach (four). Belichick, whose 12 division titles are the most of all time, is also tied with Don Shula with six conference championships. (Keep in mind, Noll and Shula—and other greats like Vince Lombardi, Bill Walsh and Joe Gibbs—didn’t have to deal with the salary cap.)
Belichick’s greatness resides in the remarkable consistency of his teams in an era of constant turnover—on the roster, the coaching staff and in the front office. In the past 14 years, the Patriots have been to the playoffs 12 times. In those two seasons when they missed out on the postseason (2002, and 2008 without Tom Brady), New England tied for the division title but lost a tiebreaker.
And of the 11 teams to post at least 10 consecutive winning seasons since 1920, the Patriots are the only team to do it in the salary cap era. They have 14 straight winning seasons dating back to 2001, Belichick’s second season in New England. The closest to that mark is Indianapolis with nine (2002-10).
You can pencil in a 15th consecutive winning season for the defending champions. Normally you’d have to add a qualifier, like
if Tom Brady remains healthy. But Belichick has already gone 11-5 without his future first-ballot Hall of Fame quarterback.
To say all eyes will be on the Patriots from the first game this season (they’ll host the league opener on Sept. 10 against the Steelers and are seeking to join Pittsburgh as the only franchises to win back-to-back titles twice) is an understatement. This season goes beyond defending a title. The Patriots were slammed this offseason because of allegations they tampered with footballs during the AFC Championship.
The team was fined $1 million and docked first- and fourth-round draft picks. Brady is suspended the first four games of the season pending his appeal because investigator Ted Wells found that it was “more probable than not” that he “was at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities.”
With Brady’s status for the opener—and perhaps beyond if he takes the league to court to clear his name— undetermined, Belichick has a lot on his plate. Managing the defending champion is difficult enough; you must get players to at least match their effort from the previous season while every opponent hunts the champ. It’s that much more difficult with a distraction making the Patriots national news for months.
I’ve written it before, and it’s been proven time and time again: No one navigates a minefield better than Belichick.
He overcame a quarterback controversy to win not just one Super Bowl, but three in four years. He has cut a defensive captain (Lawyer Milloy), traded stalwart defensive lineman (Richard Seymour), jettisoned a Super Bowl MVP (Deion Branch) and had an All-Pro guard (Logan Mankins) sit out eight games during a contract squabble; and he kept winning.
Belichick has been fined by the league for taping the signals of opposing coaches, and he kept winning. He has lost a franchise quarterback in the season opener and turned to a guy who didn’t start for his college team, and he kept winning. Belichick has even had a star player arrested and later convicted of first-degree murder (Aaron Hernandez), and the Patriots just kept winning.
How? Consistency. The players won’t notice any difference between this season and last. They’ll be instructed to not talk about the past, and they won’t. It’s easier when the head coach is doing the same thing. And it’s not a strategy that’s just trotted out during moments of controversy.
Even during the most mundane seasons, Belichick will refuse any interview that has to do with the past because he’s solely focused on the next game. Want a few history lessons from arguably the greatest NFL coach ever? That will have to wait for a bye week, or the offseason.
Expect the Patriots to have an intense focus similar to the reaction after Spygate in 2007. That season, they took out their frustration on the rest of the league with blowouts and a focus on perfection (16-0 regular season).
The extent of the 2015 team’s success could be a bit different, however. The ’07 Patriots were one of the greatest NFL teams ever. The defending champs should still be considered the favorites in the AFC, but there could be another rough patch similar to last season (they were 2-2 after a 41-14 loss to the Chiefs on Monday Night Football), especially if Brady is suspended for multiple games and second-year backup Jimmy Garoppolo isn’t quite ready for prime time.
The Patriots still have question marks at both guard spots (just like they did in ’14), they no longer have Vince Wilfork in the middle of the defensive line, and a standout secondary has seen an exodus of talent (their top three corners from the Super Bowl—Darrelle Revis, Brandon Browner and Kyle Arrington—as well as former starter Alfonzo Dennard are elsewhere).
Rebuilding a secondary in a pass-happy league, potentially playing the first portion of the season without Brady, and doing it all while wearing the crown. 2015 might be the biggest challenge Belichick will ever face.
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Pats will forever be defined by their Cheatness...
Just ask Matt Walsh (spygate videographer living well in Krafts condo in Hawaii). Who turned in his tapes and signed a "Settlement" with a sealed gag order. Same tapes immediately destroyed by the NFL.
Or, ask "The Deflator". The adult ball-boy hired the same year Brady (with Peyton) got the rules changed in 2007 to allow teams to manage their own footballs during the game.
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BB was 37-45 W-L in Cleveland as HC.. Without Brady...he would have the same percentage.
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The only constant about Bill Belicheat is that he is a low life, cheating POS......
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It is not just about deflategate, he helped invent other words that end in gate such as spygate. The Patriot history of cheating, bending rules, win at all costs without regard to good sportsmanship all started The day they brought the POS Belicheat into their organization. The loser has single handedly tarnished everything they have done.....
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Two words - Cleveland Browns. Belichick benefits from having a future HOF at New England. I don't think his career would have played out any where near the same if he had Drew Bledsoe for the early years. Also, he has an owner who is willing to condone the dirty tricks and cheating that he engages in.
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Yet we have a culture of cheating from him. You have to be very naive to think that deflating the balls only happened I. The AFC game. It's been happening since Brady lobbied to have their own footballs. If Belicheat is the coach he is advertised to be then he knew what was going on with his team the whole time. He has singlehandedly made people look at the NFL differently.
What would the last decade be like if they had played by the rules??? They won all their Superbowls by small margins. Take out the cheating and you might have all losses. We are only talking about the cheating that we know of ... What else is out there. The Cheatriots are a cancer to the league and I can't wait till Belicheat is gone from coaching.
