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One poor season in 23 years
I'm so confused..
The Pats were 3rd in their division in 2020 and 2022, and then made the playoffs by the skin of their teeth in 2021 (where they were blown out by the Bills).
Every season without Brady has been poor, that's the whole point.
Where are you getting "one poor season" from?
one poor season
*seven poor seasons
has gone*. Please.
Just take it from the fans of teams that had to play him every single year, twice a year. He's a defensive mastermind, who got fairly lucky getting a QB like Brady, but probably would've been a very successful coach even without him. Together they were simply unfair
Belichick is a great coach but the question is he the GOAT head coach and the jury is still out on that. Other head coaches have had great success with multiple qbs. Bill hasn’t had that yet. Bill still has time though.
BB is still a good coach, but BB as a GM, not so much.
Without Brady, BB would have been a prolific DC. The Monte Kiffen of the modern era.
I'm sorry but when he's comfortably under .500 in his career without the greatest QB of all time, both before and after, I think the skepticism is warranted.
We all wanted the natural experiment of what they'd each be like without each other, and the results are pretty striking.
The slander is very deserved. He’s an absolutely below average GM but insists on holding onto that power. It’s his own doing, but I agree it doesn’t discredit his work as a HC and especially as a GOAT DC.
One thing I don't see talked about enough - think about where the Pats have been drafting - towards the end of rounds - for 20 years. It's insane to build such a consistently competitive team when you are rarely getting a top 20 pick for so long
one bad season
He’s 80-94 without Tom Brady as his starting QB.
What I've always found interesting is the lack of credit Bill gets for developing Tom into Tom. People make like Tom Brady, the 6th round pick, was always destined to be the greatest QB of all time. Isn't it entirely possible that without Bill Bellick, Brady is just an average QB?
Bill is the GOAT, end of discussion.
He's a great defensive coach and is a lock for the hall, but if the question is does he deserve to be called the greatest ever on his own merit I think it's fair to disagree. He had the best quarterback ever for the lions share of his big success
If Bill was just an average coach despite having many years with a hall of fame QB he’d be….Mike McCarthy.
I just have to roll my eyes when I see people say it was all Brady. Those first three super bowls are all Bill, elite defense, elite special teams. There's a lot of Josh McDaniels slander too given his accomplishments.
Agreed. People have gone waaay too far with the Belichick disrespect.
The fact of the matter is that very few coaches in NFL history can win SBs without franchise level QBs. On the other hand..even legendary QBs generally need great Coaches to win SBs.
Football is a team sport. As much as we like to boil it down to a singular factor, it's not tlike that.
Both BB and TB12 are GOATs and being together helped each other reach that status..none of them would be as successful without the other.
IMO, the greatest defensive performance by ANY team in NFL history was that 2004 AFC Divisional rd game where the Pats held the record setting Colts offense to just 3 Pts.
I remember Manning having barely any time to throw in that game and the WRs were covered when he did have any time to pass
I think most of the slander comes from his extremely outdated and conservative doing as a GM
Bruh Belicheck is just waiting ominously for an opportunity to show how much more tricks he has in the bag.
when you realize that /r/nfl is filled with 14 year olds, things start making a lot more sense.
I think most Pats fans (including myself) realize the contributions he’s given to the franchise, and we probably don’t win 6 super bowls without him, but the slander is more so geared towards the arrogance he’s illustrated as a GM and to a lesser extent as a coach (ex: Malcom Butler Super Bowl benching). I’ll forever be grateful for him, as I’ve been here since the beginning, but it’s time to start fresh because this was inevitable with some of the moves he’s made the past 4-5 years.
I'd also argue that the defense is not what is losing the Patriots games, and even will Bill and the Pats were in the middle of their dynasty-days, it was well known and accepted that Bill is a Defensive mastermind, not an offensive one. If anything, I think what we've learned is that the reason the patriots were able to succeed at a high level with mediocre and borderline bad players on the offensive side was because the best of all time ran the offense and could make something out of nothing.
I think I would maybe try hiring a GM first and let BB focus purely on coaching. His drafting isn't exactly amazing, and he hasn't hit on a ton of really good FAs lately. It's clear that his coaching isn't the problem, in my opinion.
I don't think anybody doubts that Bill Belichick is a brilliant defensive coach. And his culture of business first just worked so perfectly with Tom Brady being a psycho who put football over literally everything else in his life.
But it never really seen a Bradyless Bill Belichick really put it together on offense..
What I will say is this. The argument that he's so legendary and brought them six Super Bowls and they should give him extra leeway because of that. I just don't think that holds any water. Nobody gets to coast in the nfl. Nobody. NADA no one. You do not get to coast in the NFL.
They can't keep Bill Belichick around for two more seasons so that he can squeeze out the record for wins. If they really want it so bad they can give him one more year. And he either starts adding a significant number of wins to the amount he has left to match the record or he's gone
Tomlin lost Roethlisberger and he's still cruising to an above 500 season like he's done his entire career. If Bill can't do the same he doesn't deserve a job
His GM skills are criminally underrated, right now. Attaining success is hard enough but maintaining it when you’re typically drafting your 1st pick in the 28-32 range every year really hasn’t been done. He has a knack for finding diamonds in the rough farther down the draft board.
“Bill wasn’t good it was the players that he brought in and coached that were good”
I swear well be getting unironic “bill didn’t score a single TD. He did nothing” takes by the offseason
Welcome to the "What have you done for me lately" attitude that is the talking point in all sports now.
first time on reddit?
Massachusetts doesn’t know how to lose. Spoiled little shits!
BB is the best defensive mind in football. Ever. As much as I hate to say it, he's the best coach of all time. But BB as GM may have run his course. The formula for early Patriots success of a killer D with an average offense falls apart when the entire secondary dies and the offense wishes for an average day.
The problem isn't scheming on defense this year, it's a piss-poor offense that makes the Steelers look good. Mac Jones has not developed into a good QB. His mechanics and decision making are just flat out bad. Mitch Trubisky would be an upgrade over Mac Jones, and Mitch is not good.
Bill is having a bad season, but that doesn't mean that every coach across from him isn't bringing their A-Game each and every game.
And he was the GM!!! People forget that.
The initial wave of "Belichick needed Brady more than Brady needed Belichick" always seemed to me like a playfully exaggerated response to the ridiculous "Brady was a system QB" narrative.
But the fact that people are now taking it seriously and acting like Brady carried Belichick with raw talent despite being a 6th rounder that Bill developed is insane lmao. They're the best collaboration in NFL history and needed each other
People are legitimately stupid as fuck and cannot even comprehend the simple reality that coaches have primes and shelf lives too. Belichick is fucking 71 years old. Do you people not interact with your families? Go talk to a 70+ year old family member, you will have to start explaining shit real slow and a little louder than usual.
You don’t even have to be a grandpa like that. Look at Mike McCarthy. One of the top elite coaches in the early 2010s and seemingly overnight he turned into a dumb fat moron and never got better.
Coaches can only be good for so long, eventually the juice runs out just like a player.
The Bill Belichick slander and revisionism has ~~went~~ gone way too far overall
I would hope he could put together some good defences when he gave Brady the junk he found on his balcony for offensive tools. Everyone talks up mahomes and rightfully so but let’s not pretend he didn’t have weapons Brady could only dream of in his 2 decade+ career.
Brady is the luckiest an of all time.
People in here have very short term memories. However a team or player is playing this year is how they have always been.
Agreed, it’s foolish.
His legacy goes beyond New England too. Coached the Browns to their most recent playoff win before Baker’s, has a Super Bowl gameplan in the Hall of Fame, and Bill Parcells (a HoF coach) never won a playoff game without BB on the staff.
His personnel decisions have put the current Patriots in a rough spot, but people forget how dominant the Pats’ defenses were in the first part of the dynasty. They faced a bunch of MVP caliber QBs and BB’s scheme gave them absolute fits. Not to mention he held MVP Mahomes scoreless for a half and completely locked down the 2018 Rams in his last SB run.
If you want to give Brady the greater share of credit for the dynasty, that’s fine—Belichick himself has said it’s a player’s game. But acting like any other coach could’ve led the Pats to their dynasty and thinking BB just had his thumb up his ass in the film room for 20 years is completely disingenuous and disrespectful to his legacy and impact on the league.
feels like you read my comment in the other thread and the replies and said "enough is enough" lmao. love this post.
So I’d like to add in two of the SBs they lost to the giants they allowed 17 and 21 points. If you look through history the winning team typically scores a lot more than that
I think a lot of the negative stories about his proteges like McDaniels are coming out now and (maybe rightfully?) contribute to tarnishing his image
Agree with everything, but you are suggesting him to be a DC ? This is arguably the best ever Head Coach
Eric Mangini could’ve won those Super Bowls with Brady. Belichek is a fraud.
It isn’t easy in this league to escape from 8-8 hell without a franchise QB.
Hell, it's not that easy to escape 9-8/8-9 hell even with a franchise QB gestures at flair
Bill and Tom were just a perfect pair. Brady would win with any good coach and team for sure. But you can’t have 6 super bowls over 20 years and be a bad coach
People really forget those early championships with Brady. While he was still a good quarterback, he definitely wasn't the greatest. He was able to win a lot of games thanks to great defense and special teams. Really it wasn't until the Moss year that he had an elite offense.
Every sports memory I could possibly dream up actually happened in my lifetime because of a team coached by this guy. It’s not going well right now but I think I forgot about 2001 to 2018 is insane
One of BB"s best coaching jobs was coaxing a team with the corpse of Cam Newton at QB to a 7-9 record.
Actually it hasn't gone far enough. Bill needs to retire. It was Brady all along. The last 4 years proved that to everybody except people living in denial.