NFL

The Patriots had good to great defenses in 2008, 2020, 2021 & 2022 and didn’t win anything. 0-1 in the playoffs.

Belichick is a fraud

Bill Belicheck is GOATed, but he has made some tremendously boneheaded decisions concerning his offense.

2 Pro Bowl draftees in 10 years is not good.

Not to mention winning the Seattle superbowl by having balls of steel and not calling a timeout before the interception, when every other coach would have. He knew the play that was coming. He knew his defense knew the play. And they won that ring because of it.

I saw a stat a couple years ago. Every single “great” head coach in the modern era had a losing record without their franchise QB. Except Tony Dungy, he had a .55 winning percentage without Peyton Manning.

The NFL is a QB league

This is the case for everything now - recency bias is as bad as it's ever been, and people are super reactionary and have no patience anymore. In the TNF game thread last week, several people were suggesting Najee Harris is the most disappointing RB to ever come out of Alabama, like a guy named Trent Richardson doesn't exist.

Cares.

Belichick without Brady:

81-95 Record (45-51 w/ NE)

43-45 at Home (23-25 w/ NE)

57-76 w/ 1st Round Picks at QB (30-43 w/ NE)

69-82 w/ Pro Bowl QBs (40-48 w/ NE)

0 Division Titles

2 Playoff Appearances

1-2 Playoff Record (0-1 w/ NE)

He wasn’t a very good head-coach before Brady, and it seems like he isn’t very good without him 🤷🏿‍♂️

Oh yeha

Look at how quickly they turned on Coaches like Landry, Noll and Shula. Skip Bayless was a scumbag all the way back in the late eighties when he called Tom Landry “Mount Senility”. When the glory years run their coarse it just seems inevitable that people who sing their praises for so long take a perverse pleasure in tearing down what they built up in these coaches.

I do not understand any of the hate Belichick is getting atm.

Ok cool but a head coach is supposed to coach all 3 phases

"has went" is never correct.

3 crap seasons and a wc beating. Maybe his defenses have had their moments but he’s been pretty incompetent as a HC/gm for a while now. They used to be fun to watch but now they are like the jets.

As a Vikings/Patriots fan, I’m having no fun weathering this storm of calling for Kirk/BB to be taken out back and shot in the head.

There has long been hate towards Belichick and now that things are on the down turn for him they have taken advantage of the time to pounce on him. Whether that's jealousy because the Pats beat their team over and over again, or due to extreme media bias because he doesn't make their job easier.

Fact of the matter is that Belichick drafted Tom Brady. Belichick kept Brady as the fourth quarterback on the roster his rookie season. Keeping a fourth quarterback on a roster is virtually unheard of, yet Belichick did it. When Brady got his chance to start the next year expectations were in the toilet. Bledsoe was not only the number one pick in the draft but also signed the biggest contract in NFL history recently. By the time Bledsoe was healthy and ready to return the Pats were around .500. Belichick kept Brady in as the starter and got absolutely demolished by the media and fans for doing so. While there was a decent amount of Brady support the majority was on the Bledsoe side, especially among those with influence. There were calls for Belichick to be fired over picking Brady over Bledsoe. The Pats first Super Bowl contained a grand total of 1 Tom Brady TD pass the entire playoffs. In the Super Bowl, the Pats scored 20 points, of which 7 was on a pick six, 10 were off of short fields produced by the defense forcing turnovers and 3 points were on the last drive of the game where even John Madden was doubting Brady could do it. When the season was over Belichick traded Bledsoe to the Bills and kept Brady and once again faced a lot of heat over it.

With all that said, in what universe can it be said Brady made Belichick? At that point it was the other way around. Belichick was the one who had faith in Tom Brady and stuck with him despite all the people blasting him for doing so. It is total revisionist history to act like it was simply luck that Brady became the QB rather than Belichick drafting and developing him and putting him in the position to succeed despite the claims from so many "experts" that Belichick was an idiot for relying upon Brady.

Now Brady certainly improved his game significantly over time and I would say that the dynamic eventually changed such that Brady was more important to the team than Belichick was. But Brady doesn't become that if Belichick didn't develop him and put him in that position. If Brady isn't drafted by the Pats odds are pretty good as a sixth round draft pick that he's out of the league within a couple of years and never gets the chance to become the GOAT.

Also as a Pats fan who has been supporting Brady since 2001 I can say for a great many years I heard non-stop that he was just a system QB. That Peyton Manning was better. That Donovan McNabb was better. That Michael Vick was better. Insert numerous other QBs throughout the years. I also heard non-stop that Brady had an unfair advantage because he had Belichick as his coach. That he could rely on great defenses while other QBs could not (ironicaly if you look at Peyton Manning and all the failing he had in the playoffs up until he finally won it in 2006, it was nearly always the offense letting the team down, so people were often totally wrong on that anyway). Years later people want to pretend like none of this ever happened. Years later people who blasted Brady for years, in some cases decades suddenly now act like they always claimed he was the GOAT.

To me it's never been all or nothing. The Pats won 6 Super Bowls and went to 3 more because of Belichick and Brady being there together. Neither would have had the success without the other. By the end of his career Brady gets the nod over Belichick because he won a Super Bowl without him. And he was always the one on the field actually getting it done. But this recent mentality that its all or nothing and that Belichick rode on the coat tails of Brady and deserves 0 credit for developing him is absurdity.

People forget how QB dependant this league is Many slandered Brady for years saying he was a player that was only good because of Bellichick and his system now that they saw Brady leave and win without him they immediately turn on Bill. It's hard to develop a QB and make him work look at all the teams that hav drafted QBs in the past 5 years and see how many have immediately become a success, only a small amount have actually succeeded and Mac Jones hasn't been what many expected. I always use the example of the Niners, imo they had a team that could've easily won like 3 SBs in the past couple of years and they haven't because their QB is not good enough.

If they do the dumb thing and fire bill some team with a good base but terrible coaching can get a pretty good option.

No, you don’t get it. Tom Brady motivated these Patriot defences to be so good, because he’s such a great leader. Bill is obviously a fraud.

Gregg Popovich's win percentage without Tim Duncan is .476

Bill's without Brady is .462

Pop is unanimously considered a legend even by the most ignorant nephews on r/NBA, whereas on r/NFL Bill Belichick is, and has always been, a hack

It’s bait. It’s all farming clicks. You have fallen for it

BB is a good coach but it’s time for the Pats to make a change. The direction they are heading is not good. Their roster construction has been horrible

Listen to jets , dolphins and bills fans, he’s the best there ever has been. Jets fans still post the 2010 playoff win almost daily in our sub

Honestly I’ve stopped looking at and engaging with 99% of patriots media and social media, especially the sub. The amount of entitled, young, fairweather fans and slander I see in there is really sad. The mere suggestion that BB is done is absolutely ridiculous to me. I’m not saying criticism is unfounded - I think BB the GM isn’t BB the Coach, but goddamn you’d think he’s the worst coach in nfl history with the sentiment towards him right now. I’m genuinely ashamed of most of my team’s internet fan base this season.

Shula got run out the same way lol

What slander? Belichick is a cheater

I was hoping the Pats would fire him and he would join us a DC just to spite the entire NFL.

Okay, it’s a bit crazy to see people in this thread go from Bill is the goat and Brady was lucky as well.

Both were the best at leading their team to the Super Bowl. Bill helped build a culture and defenses that could perform when it mattered and Brady helped the offense and performed in clutch moments as well.

People saying Brady was just a game manager, forget that after his first season he was top6 for yards and first in TDs his second year starting. He was close to top 6, definitely top 10 the next two years after that before he finally exploded as he was given more control of the offense.

As for Bill, he destroyed dreams with the giants defence and the patriot’s defence those early years. Then he had a renaissance in the later years as his defence found its groove against the rams (one of the most dominating performances I’ve seen from a Super Bowl defence).

They are both probably the goats for coach and player for now.

Pretty sure the criticism recently has been him as a Head Coach making personnel decisions, not as a pure defensive mind, which he's still great at. This is some next level strawman.

If the toxic fans chase away the best thing that's ever happened to the Patriots, me and my fan dollars are following.

This flip is so funny to see. The whole idiotic "Brady or Belichick" stuff began almost exclusively to handwave away Brady's success by fans of other QBs. For years and years, it was used to disparage Brady's accomplishments as a QB and, ya know, iF mAnNiNg hAd bELicHicK he woulda won it 10!

I adamantly defended Brady at the time because players play. You can be the best coach in the world, but if your player doesn't jibe with what you're doing, you're not going to win an insane amount of championships and compete for two decades straight.

I'm going to adamantly defend Belichick's role in the dynasty because writing him off now is as stupid as writing off Tom Brady then. There's valid criticism of how he's running the team now but you can't take away the program he built around Brady. I do think there are elements that are essentially tall tales (the Pats defenses are largely overrated around here outside or 2004 and 2019 and a few others) but you don't win with those not-amazing defenses without the discipline, situational football, and adjustments that you can't attribute to anyone else but Belichick. In fact, the OP is using the extremely flawed metric of defensive scoring to rank defenses.

They were amazing complements to each other -- criticize Bill's current moves and intransigence and fruitless nepotism now if you want, that's fair, but let's not revise history.

Bill belicheck one of great defensive coaches and situational coaches of all time. It’s just know nothings that would say that. It’s not Brady vs belicheck. It takes a team and winning is not by accident

To butcher a quote from Layer Cake:

He wouldn't be so fucking good if he didn't have Tom Brady!

Well he fucking did, didn't he?

Dude this guy is insane and his owners had him draft a joke southern college white boy qb who sucks. All of a sudden he needs fired coming in on the all time record of wins???? Bro I hate this motherfucker for legit reasons, not just because he wears patriots logos. Don’t disrespect me like that