Bill Belichick Deserves More Respect Than He’s Finding

Let me begin by making myself clear: I am not a fan of the New England Patriots. I do not find Bill Belichick to be particularly likable. I am 28 years old. An NFL run by Foxboro is almost all I’ve ever known. I’ve been sick of Belichick and the Patriots like everyone else outside of the Northeast, excluding the endless randoms across America who have gilded themselves in Gronk jerseys and cognitive dissonance, ardent in defending the mirage that their bandwagon hopping is something more spiritual than glory hunting. I do this begrudgingly because I’m one of the fools who believes truth comes above dogpiling, as fun as dogpiling can be.

Bill Belichick is a deity among football mortals, and he deserves more respect than he’s been finding lately.

This isn’t about his decisions as general manager the last few years, which includes such hits as drafting N’Keal Harry with the No. 32 overall pick in the 2019 NFL Draft instead of Deebo Samuel, A.J. Brown, D.K. Metcalf, Terry McLaurin, or one of the plenty of other wide receivers that have done more now four years down the road. That’s only one piece of the puzzle in the unraveling of the Patriots dynasty. Plus, the whole Tom Brady thing.

Belichick is not blameless in the franchise’s decline. But he’s still the best to ever do it.

The standard set in New England is Super Bowls. When you attend 50 percent of them over an 18-year span, anything less is tragic. Missing the playoffs is riot-worthy. A losing season? Not even fathomable.

But thanks to Father Time, even the mighty fall. The Patriots are 2-5 seven weeks into the NFL season with some performances uglier than a Belichick cutoff. As a result, rumors have swirled about his future in Foxboro.

Their legitimacy is unknown, but that they have happened at all means something. A tide in public opinion has shifted, and the prospect of firing the coach has been rationalized into more brains than ever before.

Then he goes and beats the Bills as the biggest underdog of the week. Typical Bill.

It’s not a long-term solution to the problem, and no matter how good of a coach Belichick is, he’s not getting this roster anywhere near a Super Bowl for a while. His hand in that lies in his draft decisions and free agency calls. Criticisms in those realms are warranted. But it’s a different ball game on the sideline.

The team’s second victory of the season was the 300th of Belichick’s head coaching career. In fitting fashion, it came against Buffalo, the same side that opposed New England in Belichick’s 50th, 100th, 150th, and 250th wins as an NFL head honcho and has been on the receiving end of many punishments via the Patriots in the new millennium. Even with death at its door, the darkness rises.

Belichick cracked the NFL code since the start of the second Bush administration. Sure, he had some help along the way from one of the most elite athletes of the last 100 years. There is no mystery shrouding whether Brady’s influence played a major part in six Super Bowls and decades of excellence. But Belichick wasn’t dwindling his thumbs through it all.

There are 32 teams in this league. Only one of them hoists the Lombardi Trophy in February. Qualifying for the postseason twice in five years with zero playoff wins is not abnormal: nine Super Bowls in 18 years is.

The dynasty is over. The Patriots now are not what they were in the 2000s and 2010s. It has been 80 years since you could find a comparable era of any NFL franchise to the level of dominance New England displayed in those decades, and neither the Bears nor the Packers of the ‘20s, ‘30s, and ‘40s bossed a league with a salary cap around their necks nor 31 other competitors breathing down them. Belichick’s Patriots have been unprecedented.

If that’s the measurement to live up to, then satisfaction is impossible. That’s not to say any NFL team or fan base should willingly swallow 2-5 and 30-point beatdowns – there are questions to be asked of Belichick, especially Belichick the general manager, and an infinite decline cannot be met with apathy. Yes, good will does eventually die if you live long enough to see yourself become the villain, but so quickly?

The Patriots were nearly a playoff team a year ago. From 2020 through 2022, they went 25-25 in the regular season. It’s not as though this franchise has spent the last few years mired in the dungeon of despair, just far off from the same pace as before. That’s to be expected when the best quarterback ever is no longer on your roster.

We have not yet reached the midway point of the 2023 football calendar. The speed that some have discounted Belichick’s credibility is astonishing, so ready to dismiss what he has proven himself to be capable of. From an emotional standpoint, I get it: if you’re a Patriots fan, you want to grasp onto the glory days and are angry they’re over, and if you’re a Patriots hater, this is the moment you’ve been waiting for since well before you had wrinkles. From a logical standpoint, Belichick isn’t going anywhere, and he shouldn’t, either.

We can know he isn’t going anywhere, because he quietly signed a fat extension with New England in the summer that he refuses to discuss. But he shouldn’t be out right now even if it was the final year of his deal. You don’t fire a six-time Super Bowl champion in the middle of a season. You just don’t do that.

Beyond that, he should have earned enough slack to weather a storm before it’s assumed the rain will never go away. If the Patriots miss the playoffs like they are on course to do, it will be the first time the franchise skipped the postseason twice in a row under Belichick’s guise. Two seasons outside of the playoffs isn’t ideal for any team in this league, but is it so horrible that Belichick is the fraud some are making him out to be?

I don’t have a lot of hope that Belichick will win another Super Bowl in New England. I do think he could have the Patriots in a couple more playoffs and generally have them better than the basement of the AFC East. If it’s Super Bowl or bust for the Patriots, then sure, axe him now. Then spin the wheel on the next guy, who will have to stand in the shadow of the greatest coach of all-time. Good luck finding the next Belichick, because there isn’t one.

New England fans have been more spoiled than some of their younger members may realize. What you experienced from 2001 through 2018 will never be surpassed. Not by you, and not by anyone else. This is why you must relish the good times, in sports and in life, because they’re forever fleeting. And with the zero-sum game that sports necessitate, the valleys are much more inevitable than any peaks that might not even come.

It’s a business, and Belichick cannot be allowed to drive the franchise off the cliff into desolation. No one can be. This season has looked to be his biggest hiccup yet, and I wouldn’t hold my breath for a “we’re on to Cincinnati” type of turnaround. But we aren’t yet at the point of no return, even if some want to believe so. If we are a year and a half from now and there is nothing positive to say about the Patriots, then time may be up. If there is a coach in the NFL who has earned the benefit of the doubt, it’s Bill Belichick, and he deserves that and then some from the Patriots and their fans for his services over the last 24 years.

We’re on to Miami.