NFL Open Thread: the Belichick without Brady myth edition

First of all, it’s great to hear that Damar Hamlin looks like he’ll be OK.

Paul discussed this a little while ago, but Mark Gaughan observes that the idea that Belichick is just a mediocre coach without Brady is really dumb:

Under the category of lies, damned lies and statistics, we present the head coaching record of Bill Belichick without Tom Brady: 79-87.

It has become a trend on social media and sports talk shows for people to claim this diminishes Belichick’s legacy.

Ridiculous. Belichick is the greatest NFL coach of all time, regardless of his record without Brady.

No coach wins without good players. No great coach ever won without a good quarterback. Paul Brown won seven titles with Otto Graham and never won another in 15 seasons without him. Brown is up there in the conversation with Belichick as one of the greatest coaches ever (even if you don’t agree that Belichick is the greatest).

By any measure, Belichick stands at the top of his profession. His defensive game plans overcame some of the greatest offenses in history in conference or league title games: the Joe Montana-led 49ers, the Bills in Super Bowl 25, the Rams’ Greatest Show on Turf in Super Bowl 36 and Peyton Manning’s Colts. His game management is unmatched. Not calling a time out before the decisive play in the Super Bowl win over Seattle is at the top of countless examples. His salary cap management and willingness to unload veterans just past their prime helped keep the Patriots dynasty going for 20 years. His trade record (Randy Moss) is good. His ability to stockpile draft picks is good. His track record of hiring assistants is mostly outstanding. Every opposing head coach and top quarterback who ever faced the Pats talked about how hard Belichick made the challenge.

[…]

Belichick wasn’t nearly as good a head coach during his five-year tenure with the Cleveland Browns as he became with the Patriots. He improved as a communicator and a leader. He learned from his mistakes. But his Browns’ tenure from 1991 to 1995 was not an abject failure. He built a solid program beneath the shaky ownership of Art Modell. He got them to 11-5 and a playoff win in 1994. He resurrected Vinny Testaverde’s career. Then the Browns moved and it fell apart.

A couple additional points of elaboration:

• As I’ve said before, the Browns improved by 226 points the year he took over, and despite the impossible circumstances after Modell’s extortion scheme proved successful got even worse after moving to Baltimore. (Nick Saban deserves some of the credit for the improvement of the defense, of course, but so does Belichick for identifying one of the best football minds of his generation coaching at Toldeo.)
• I don’t know how many NFL coaches would have stuck with Brady in 2001 despite a high-paid veteran beloved by the owner ready to return in his rookie year, but I’m confident it’s less than 1 in 10. It’s true that Belichick doesn’t deserve a lot of credit for drafting Brady, but he sure as hell does for judging that he was better than Drew Bledsoe and sticking with that although he almost certainly would have been fired after the season had he been wrong. As Paul explained with an ordinary head coach it’s eminently possible that Brady never would have gotten a permanent job as an NFL starter.
• One other major problem with the “it was just Brady” myth is that 1)in Super Bowl XXXVI the Pats gave up 17 points (to one of the greatest offenses in NFL history), 2)in 2003 Brady was great in the Super Bowl but got there because the Pats held Peyton Manning to 14 points in the conference championship, 3)in 2004 the Pats held Manning to three points in the divisional round and Andy Reid’s Eagles to 21 in the Super Bowl, 4)in 2018 the Pats held a Rams team that scored 527 points in the regular season to 3 in the Super Bowl, winning more despite Brady than because of him. Brady is the greatest NFL QB of all time, but Belichick would have multiple Super Bowl rings as a head coach if his QB during his tenure was Blake Bortles.