This year’s NFL head coaching carousel had some familiar and long-tenured coaches lose their jobs, but none was bigger than the New England Patriots parting ways with the greatest of all time: Bill Belichick.
Belichick’s outstanding tenure as the lead man in New England came to a painful end this season, finishing 4-13, the third-worst record in the league and the worst of his tenure.
Fans started to call for owner Robert Kraft to move on from Belichick after producing multiple games of scoring 10 or fewer points. This included three straight, in which the defense also allowed 10 or fewer points, but the team lost.
The cherry on top came after a 17-3 home loss to the New York Jets to conclude the season. The Pats’ loss to the Jets was the first time in 15 games. Belichick had terrorized the Jets, whom he resigned from after one day as head coach to take the Patriots job in 2000, going 38-11 since that infamous day, but the men in green got the last laugh.
The fall from grace for Bill Belichick following Tom Brady’s departure has football fans everywhere questioning the coach’s legacy. With Brady, Bill went 249-75, won 17 division titles and made nine Super Bowls while winning six of them. Since Brady left, Bill has compiled a record of 29-38 over the last four years.
All Brady did in his time away from Belichick was win a seventh Super Bowl in his first year with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the NFC South division in the other two, leaving football fans saying Belichick needs to win without Brady just as Brady did without Belichick.
Along with the below .500 record, Belichick made questionable coaching hires, missed on several draft picks, including who was supposed to be the successor to Brady and made only one playoff appearance over the last four years.
That being said, Belichick’s legacy should not only be defined by his outstanding success with Brady and abysmal time after, when in reality, Belichick has held some sort of coaching position starting before Brady was born.
Belichick’s coaching career started in 1975 after being hired as a special assistant for the Baltimore Colts. Over the next four years, he would hold four different positions with three different teams before beginning a 12-year stint with the New York Giants.
During his time with the Giants, he led the defense to two Super Bowl wins with arguably the greatest defensive player ever in Lawrence Taylor and an all-time head coach and mentor in Bill Parcells. The two wins included an exceptional defensive game plan to upset the Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXV.
After spending years as the defensive protégé of Parcells, it was inevitable that teams would come calling. The Cleveland Browns were the first to take a shot at hiring the young coach and hired him just 10 days after the Super Bowl win over the Bills in 1991. At 38, Belichick became the league’s youngest head coach of the time.
His first head coaching gig did not go as planned. Over the five years, the Browns had one winning season with Belichick at odds with the fans, ownership and the media almost the entire time. His lack of success and sour relationships eventually drove Browns owner Art Modell to fire Belichick after the 1995 season.
After one year in New England in 1996, once again an assistant under Parcells, the two moved to the New York Jets together, spending three seasons there. Upon Parcells’ retirement from coaching, Belichick was appointed the head coaching position for the Jets, which he held for one day before his notorious paper napkin resignation. After taking the Patriot’s job and drafting Brady, the rest is history.
With all this information, the question can now be answered: does Belichick need to take another coaching job to salvage his legacy?
The answer is simply no. He is far and away the greatest coach of all time, and there may never be anyone else with such an impressive overall coaching resume. Ironically, by taking another coaching job, Belichick could be putting his legacy in jeopardy.
None of the available coaching positions have a clear path to success, unlike when Brady left the Pats for the Bucs. Yes, Brady went to a team that had not made the playoffs since 2007 but was for years seen as a team that had the talent but was just a quarterback and head coach duo away. They already had the offensive weapons in Mike Evans and Chris Godwin, a formidable O-line and a young defense full of future and current stars in place.
As it stands, there are only two head coaching jobs up for grabs: the Seattle Seahawks and Washington Commanders. Both of these teams have quarterback questions, the Seahawks with Geno Smith and the Commanders without a quarterback, but expecting to draft one with the number two overall pick.
The only fit of the two is the Commander’s job. Belichick grew up in Annapolis, Md., which is just a half hour away from their stadium, and he would have a significant say on who he would want to draft with the second pick.
However, the last quarterback Belichick drafted in the first round, Mac Jones, quickly became an absolute disaster for the Patriots, getting benched multiple times over the last two years. This means that if Belichick missed on another first-round quarterback, his legacy would most certainly be tarnished, and would never hear the end of that he is nothing without Brady.
Belichick was most closely linked with the Atlanta Falcons before hiring Raheem Morris as their next head coach. It is possible that he will take a year off like Sean Payton did and see what jobs are available next offseason.
If this is the end for Belichick, his legacy should not be questioned but praised. Although if it is not, based on what football fans know about him, he will not care and instead ride off into the sunset with his eight total Super Bowl rings — still one more than Brady — and enjoy the fruits of retirement.
