Bill Belichick Did Two Things Really Right

Plus, episode 11 of Casual Diehard drops

Editor’s note: We’re winding things down around here, like our friend Michele Catalano, but until casualdiehard.com is set up to do more than redirect to an item from the Willets Pen (future Casual Diehard) shop — today, it’s a Chicago Beers shirt paired with episode 11 of the podcast (subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify) — well, we’ve got a platform here for writing, and today we’ve got Roger on Bill Belichick. Enjoy!

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Bill Belichick was really lucky. Bill Belichick worked really hard. Both of those sentences are true.

People forget how the game that changed everything unfolded. Jets vs. Patriots at Foxboro, September 23, 2001. Mo Lewis destroyed Drew Bledsoe with about five minutes left. Bledsoe later claimed he could have died, had he not gone to the hospital afterwards: he was concussed and was losing a liter of blood per hour. So naturally, Bledsoe came out to play for the next New England offensive series. It was the drive after that when second-year backup Tom Brady took over. Dan Dierdorf, calling the game for CBS, said something incredible:

"We're being told that Drew Bledsoe, imagine this: we're being told that his replacement is not because of injury. Yes, I did not misspeak, that's what we're being told by the Patriots."

"It's not for me to call the Patriots liars…" he later said. Brady led the team to New York's 30-yard line before two failed shots at the end zone cemented a 10-3 loss.

That is how the Bill Belichick is a Genius story began.

Over time, team-friendly literature claimed that the Patriot coaching staff identified Brady as better than Bledsoe by the time camp broke in 2001, but they couldn't hand the kid the keys because the veteran Bledsoe had just signed a huge contract extension. It's interesting that given the opportunity from the very beginning, Bill Belichick wanted people believe he was smart, not lucky, about the fateful quarterback change.

The Patriots finished the 2001 season as Super Bowl champions. They were 14-point underdogs but defeated the Greatest Show on Turf anyway. Belichick, the defensive genius, took Marshall Faulk away and put together what is considered by some to be the greatest game plan in NFL history and the Bills. He also had Tom Brady.

He was the young defensive coordinator who shut down the offensively blessed Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXV. His audacious game plan then was to let Thurman Thomas run nuts. But he had Lawrence Taylor. And Bill Parcells' strategy of only allowing the Bills to have the ball for 19 and a half minutes. And Scott Norwood had to miss the field goal in the end.

That 28-3 comeback against the Falcons? Okay, he had a pair of two-point conversion plays ready to go: so does everyone. He trained the Patriots to have more stamina than anybody else, which came in handy for the first overtime in Super Bowl history. But he had Tom Brady. He had the guy who threw what should have been an interception and he had Julian Edelman, who made a circus catch instead to keep the final drive in regulation alive.

Technically, he was part of the brain trust that drafted Brady in the first place, sixth round be damned. Future Hall of Famer and weirdo USAA enthusiast Rob Grankowski fell asleep while visiting the Patriots but Belichick, at the time GM of the Patriots, drafted him anyway. The yeahbuts don't stop though. There was Spygate. There was Deflategate. (Deflategate was mostly bullshit but of course Belichick was involved.)

Belichick works hard. And he's lucky. Hustle and luck is the secret to success. Nobody wants to admit how much luck is involved though.

It's a problem. Growing up you read about, say, a six-time Super Bowl champion head coach who outworks and outsmarts everybody, and you become defensive when others try to shoot him down by pointing out all of the karmic help he seemed to have receive, instead of considering you're both right. You need both. It kind of sucks: lady luck doesn't shine on everyone.

And it sure as hell didn't always cast its light on Bill Belichick all the time. Consider how his tenure as Patriots head coach ended on the field: in a messy snowstorm, losing to the Jets, again, only scoring three points, again, just like on September 23, 2001, when it truly began. Bill's ending was as messy as most mortals'. The coincidences of how the opponent and location was only lucky to me, a writer always looking to tie it all together. I just hope I worked hard enough.