In a dark week full of bad news, something lighter: I cannot believe that New England Patriots fans — arguably the most spoiled sports fans in the known universe — are forcing me to write a defense of Patriots head coach Bill Belichick.
After a long, long run of spectacular success and six Super Bowl championships, the Patriots have been mediocre since Tom Brady left to win another Super Bowl with Tampa Bay. The Patriots have accumulated 26 wins and 29 losses since Brady left, and currently stand at 1–4. It’s not just that they’re losing; last week the New Orleans Saints crushed New England, 34–0. Patriots fans are fuming and say it’s time for Belichick to go.
And yes, Belichick doesn’t look like quite such a dominating head coach without Brady, and at age 71, Belichick has probably lost a step or two. The coach who won the most games in NFL history was Don Shula of the Baltimore Colts and Miami Dolphins, with 328 wins. Belichick has 299 wins, and it is likely that he would like to be the winningest head coach in league history when he retires. How many more years would it take him to win 28 more regular-season games? At this rate, quite a few. Patriots fans may correctly assess that Belichick’s best years of coaching are behind him and he has won his last Super Bowl. They may want to rip off the Band-Aid, move on, and start the next era as soon as possible.
But if any man in the sport has earned the right to leave the sideline on his own terms, it’s Belichick. He had one lousy year in his first year in 2000, going 5–11, and his teams have achieved unparalleled excellence since then. Since the year 2000, Belichick’s teams have won 258 regular season games and 30 playoff games, including the six Super Bowls. Andy Reid is another excellent, guaranteed Hall of Fame coach. Since 2000, with the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs, Reid has won 235 games and two Super Bowls. Belichick’s record makes the records of other excellent coaches look merely pretty good.
Winning as a head coach in the NFL is hard. A whole bunch of coaches who won the Super Bowl never won another, or at least not so far — Doug Pederson, Gary Kubiak, Pete Carroll, Mike McCarthy, among others. Coaches who can win with one team don’t always succeed with another team. Ask Sean Payton, or Mike Ditka, or Jon Gruden. A lot of excellent offensive and defensive coordinators of championship teams just aren’t able to achieve the same success as a head coach. Sometimes successful head coaches in college can make the jump, and sometimes you end up with train wrecks like Urban Meyer.
The hard fact of life is that most NFL head coaches do not succeed, or achieve mediocrity. A good coach is hard to find, and the Patriots stumbled onto a man who belongs front and center in all of the debates about the greatest coach ever. And a subpar Bill Belichick is probably still better than the majority of potential head coaches out there. Spoiled by about two decades of football excellence, Patriots fans think a coach like Belichick can easily be replaced.
The next coach of the New England Patriots will not be as successful as Belichick was, and will probably not be anywhere near as good a coach as Belichick is, even if he’s losing his touch as he ages. Reversion to the mean suggests that the Patriots will struggle for a year or two and start the rebuilding process.
Do the New England Patriots really want to be known as the franchise that released the greatest quarterback in league history and that fired arguably the greatest coach in league history?