NFL

I think all you've got to do to short-circuit at least some of this BS is admit that Lawrence Taylor respected this man's football knowledge a decade before he was even in his FIRST head coaching gig.

Bill is still a good overall coach, and a great defensive mind. He just isn’t a good offensive coach for this age of football and his GM skills no longer match what helps teams win offensively. If he’d be willing to let an actual GM and a true modern OC come in, he’d still be fine.

Patriot fans: they are who we thought they were

Also, Brady has historically had very good field position to start a drive. I think that there was a stat somewhere that Brady has never had a touchdown drive that was 75 yards or more in the super bowl or something like that

Bill Belichick is an excellent coach. He also had a hall of fame quarterback for 20 years, and combined, they won 6 super bowls. What Belichick is not good at is draft scouting/talent evaluation. Belichick has always been known for reclamation projects of highly touted veterans, and it helps when your QB can make any combination of receivers work (see: Troy Brown, David Patten, Deion Branch, David Givens, Reche Caldwell, Donte' Stallworth, Jabar Gaffney, Brandon Tate, Brandon Lloyd, Danny Amendola, Aaron Dobson, Kenbrell Thompkins, Brandon LaFell, Chris Hogan, Phillip Dorsett). Bill Belichick has not hit on draft picks, especially as of late, and now that Brady is gone, it doesn't matter what he does schematically since his team is literally just less talented.

All the belichek hate you see now is absurd. And honestly it’s for entertainment to stir up drama and ratings. Belichek doesn’t “need” Brady. What he needs is what all coaches need. A very very very very good quarterback. And what every quarterback needs to win Super Bowl. Avery good coach, offensive line, and defense. The patriots were put together from top to bottom almost perfectly for 20 years. During the patriot dynasty. If beleichik had. Manning, rivers, Rodgers, Big Ben. Brees. Msybe a few others. They would have been the best dynasty of all time. 6 super bowls. Msybe. Maybe not. But they would have been great. When you look at all the super bowls they won, they could have swapped qbs, and the patriots would have most likely won.

If Warner played on NE. Probably If delhome played on NE. Maybe If Mcnabb played on NE. Maybe If Matt Ryan played on NE. Probably Goff. Maybe. Russel Wilson. Probably If you swapped manning and Brady in those afc championships. I’d take the patriots. Big Ben lost to Brady twice in afc championships. Those might have been switched.

All in all. The patriots dynasty, the stars and planets aligned for 2 decades straight. If Brady went somewhere else would he have 7? Doubtful. People tend to forget how great those early patriots defenses were. It’s not some black and white topic. They are a team who had great and the right players at all positions, and coaches who drew up plays and schemes that made them the best

Andy Reid can actually compete on a consistent basis without a generational QB

Try 3 subpar-to-poor seasons in 4 years.

Your whole post is spot on and I couldn't agree more.

But this part

But one poor season in 23 years does not call for some of the revisionism occurring here lately.

It's not one poor season we are going on #4 poor season. And most people have no problem with him as a coach, its his GM duties that hurt him.

The only way Billy B stops being a HC is if he decides to retire.

There’s no way Brady has his early success of 3 SBs without the benefit of the Pats’ system, including Belichick’s world class defenses. Anyone who thinks the Pats win that first SB against the Greatest Show On Turf Rams without Belichick’s defense is in serious denial. Now, AFTER Brady had been there for a decade and the Pats re-energized and won 3 more, Brady was obviously a much more complete QB who could do it all. So, while Belichick’s system made Brady, Brady returned the favor being the most clutch and complete QB in history. They had a part in making each other, but I think Brady needed Belichick first.

The whole "should brady or belichick get more credit for the pats dynasty?" discussion is fucking stupid. If you ask me they are both the GOATs at their respective roles and what we got from that was an unprecedented run of success that lasted for twenty fucking years and will never be replicated. Conversation over.

Mostly every very good /great QB that won a superbowl in the last 20 years did so with a very good or opportunistic defense:

• Big Ben: mid-00s Steelers D, need we say anything more

• Peyton: Bob sanders fully healthy year and the best the colts defense ever was. 2015 broncos

• Brees: 09 saints led the league in turnovers, had a clutch int of manning in the SB.

• Rodgers: Charles Woodson playing at DPOY level

• Eli: giants d-line goes super saiyan.

• Mahomes: Chiefs defense got better in 2019 than it was in 2018. Last years chiefs defense was no slouch either.

Look brady is great but he’s not 5 super bowls better than Peyton or 6 super bowls better than Brees/Rodgers. Let’s not forget Tampas Defense had a huge role in ring #7 too

Of the years the pats made the Super Bowl, 2011 and 2017 were really the only times they had a bad defense and they lost both times.

Ok Bill

Belichik didn’t win any super bowls with Cleveland, it’s like everyone forgets he coached there first, a under .500 record. Without Brady he doesn’t have the success that he had. Also belichik deserves criticism for the roster because he hasn’t been drafting well recently. Other than randy moss name 1 legitimate WR 1 the patriots had

“Brady made him”. You can use whatever stat you want here, but let’s use the most basic one. Points allowed per game. Of course there are influences here. Time of possession, special teams, ability to generate turnovers. But at its most basic level this is what determines the result of a game.

OP, do you understand why using a metric like “points allowed” (or even points per drive) when ranking defenses can be very very flawed when your QB is Tom Brady versus an average QB or say… Jameis Winston.

Not only FLAWED, but it can actually produce opposite of the correct results.

For example, by using this metric, the 2017 Patriots are in fact the BEST defense in the NFL (#1 in points allowed). But when we use a more sophisticated metric like DVOA, we see that this a in fact a terrible defense (30th in DVOA, worst defense to ever make the Super Bowl).

I mean, do you really believe the 2017 Patriots are the best defense in the NFL?

How many passing yards does Belichick personally have now that Brady is gone? Zero. And zero completions. Proof he’s overrated.

I don't see people criticizing Bill the coach. They're criticizing Bill, the GM. And rightfully so. He's not a good GM. He could get away with poor GM decisions when he had Brady. Now, he can't. He is, perhaps, the best defensive coach of all time and one of the best football minds of all time. He is perhaps even the best coach of all time. But his mediocre to poor GM abilities are becoming too big of a problem now without an elite QB on a below-market value deal like he had for so long with Brady.

Well said. Not just defense, but team building, coaching and staffing. For 20 years. And he's still crushing it on defense, even against "modern" offenses. But it's hard when his qb's turnovers are now costing him multiple wins and this wave of nonsense takes over.

It’s not one poor season. It’s been several.

With that said BB isn’t getting fired. It would be idiotic.

I've said it in another comment, but the most important advantage the Patriots had was Brady's wife Gisele. Brady making less money than his super model wife allowed him to take less money compared to his peers and allow the Pats to allocate that would-be cap space elsewhere.

Watched some mini-documentary about BB and Brady from the beginning of Brady career and its clear to me that without BB there would not be Brady. Both has a piece of the dynasty puzzle and IMO it doesn't matter who had the "bigger" piece.

Brady is the GOAT and BB is GOAT HC.

I use Tom’s greatness to tear down belichick. I use Belichick’s greatness to tear down Tom.

Welcome to the internet OP. All we know how to do is overreact.

Brady threw the best game of his career on the biggest stage and yet this "defensive mastermind" couldn't stop a backup QB from snatching it from the jaws of victory because he was so self-absorbed he benched his star corner over some minor personal tiff, lmao.

Nobody is arguing that Tom Brady didn’t consistently have solid defenses. However, it’s a team game and Belichick has a great defensive mind. Nonetheless, it cannot be ignored that Belichick is a loser without the goat as his quarterback. I’ll take Andy Reid over him personally. Succeeded with or without Mahomes.

I am a Bill hater at this point and none of us ever doubted Bill's defensive skills, they are elite and he's proved it. He's hated for being one of the worst GMs in football and having 0 clue how to build a modern offense without the greatest player ever at the most important position, its that simple.

Has gone**

Wasn’t it revisionist we glossed over all his cheating?

Im sure Robert Kraft will take this into consideration haha.

In the two super bowl losses to the Giants, the defense allowed just 17 and 22 points. It was our offense that didn't get the job done.

Bill with any of the HOF QBs from that era has a similar career. Brady with any of the coaches those QBs had, has a similar career as them. With the caveat that Brady took a long time to become elite and I'm not sure another coach would have had the patience.

Combined, they did things neither could do alone, or with anyone else. But given Bill's defensive prowess he could generate the same level of success in a wider variety of situations. Mostly because the number of coaches that can consistently field a top10 defense over a 2 decade period is basically a class of 1.

A lot of it seems to be backlash from years and years of calling Brady a system QB and attributing all success to a magical system that never really existed. Reality has always been that the best QB ever was paired with the best coach ever and we got what we got. I believe players deserve the brunt of the credit (and the blame), specially QBs, but to pretend that Bill was some bum that got carried is crazy, and, as I said, likely the byproduct of so many people who were wrong about Tom for 20 years being unable to admit it and pivoting to discrediting Bill.

Maybe if he wasnt such a shit GM for offense currently he wouldn't have the criticism he's getting now about his coaching

Of course he's one of the greatest coaches of all time, but he's also setting his team up for failure by disregarding the offense that he hasnt had to care about since he had Tom fucking Brady