Someone out there will let Belichick do his job

The NFL's most successful coach becomes an overqualified 72-year-old applicant.

Some gold jackets have pink slips in the pocket. Tom Landry was gone two seconds after Jerry Jones signed the Cowboys’ bill of sale. Don Shula got Miami into the playoffs and was eased out of his job anyway, with owner Wayne Huizenga pulling the strings. Andy Reid lost his job in Philadelphia and won two Super Bowls in Kansas City. 

Leaving on your own terms, in the pro coaching business, is a noble but arrogant hope. The Cleveland Browns are named after Paul Brown, whom they fired in 1963.

Bill Belichick won six Super Bowls in New England. None brought immunity. He and the Patriots “amicably parted ways” Thursday, which means Belichick left the property voluntarily, but New England went 4-13 this year and has missed the playoffs in back-to-back years for the first time since Belichick’s first two seasons, in 1999-2000. The finale, on Sunday, was as galling as it could have been, in the Foxboro snow, against a Jets team that Belichick has loathed since he turned down a chance to coach them, and had beaten 15 consecutive times. He is 72 and wants to keep coaching, even if he isn’t running the roster anymore.

He probably won’t need Indeed. Even this year the Patriots led the NFL in rushing defense (per carry). Eight of their losses were by seven or fewer points. Weekly quarterbacking follies told the story, as consistent as a Road Runner cartoon. The Patriots were the opposite of Sam Malone’s bar; nobody knew their names, and those who were asked which Patriot jersey they wanted for the holidays were stumped for an answer. But those players, whoever they were, generally showed up and knew what they were doing.

So Thursday was as clean a separation as possible, and the region could properly commemorate the best coaching career in at least the Super Bowl era, and certainly in salary-cap times.

Beginning with the 2001 season, in which the Patriots jolted the Rams, Belichick coached his team to a Super Bowl nine times in 18 years. That’s nine cruelly short off-seasons, nine Super Bowl hangovers, and yet the Patriots were always there the next September, as if Belichck had Ziplocked and stored them in a summer closet.

Bud Grant and Joe Gibbs coached eight Super Bowls, total. John Madden coached one. More to the point, it meant Belichick won nine AFC championship games, in the same neighborhood as the Steelers, Ravens, Broncos and Peyton Manning’s Colts.

The Patriots were down 25 points to Atlanta and won a Super Bowl. They won all 16 regular-season games and were on the verge of 19-0 when a drive-altering pass from the Giants’ Eli Manning stuck in David Tyree’s helmet. They found themselves in a wind-ravaged home playoff game with Buffalo, so they ran the ball every time they snapped it in the second half and won with only three pass attempts.

And when Seattle marshaled its forces and moved into position to win its second consecutive Super Bowl, Belichick placidly refused to call time out and sped up the process on Pete Carroll’s sideline. What should have been a simple game-winning plunge by Marshawn Lynch became an overthought pass that was intercepted, turning Malcolm Butler into the Bucky Dent of football.

Belichick will be known for those nimble moments, those winning inventions, not for West Coast offenses or power sweeps. Mostly he’ll be known as the Deactivator, the coach who removed your best weapons before you got them out of the holster. Football people call this “not getting hit with the right hand.” Marshall Faulk was the epicenter of those Rams in 2001, and in Super Bowl practices Belichick had the Patriots yelling “Where is he?” to keep up with  Faulk’s whereabouts. When a veteran heard “Where is he?” once too often and told Belichick to shut-the-Faulk-up, the coach knew his work was done. Faulk was a bruised-up bit player by the time Tom Brady took the Patriots to the winning field goal.

Ah, Brady. Those who like to belittle Belichick point out that he was 29-38 when he wasn’t coaching Brady. Vince Lombardi didn’t win much without Bart Starr, and ditto for Mike Shanahan when he didn’t have John Elway. Joe Torre wasn’t so hot without Derek Jeter, and where is Phil Jackson without Michael, Shaq and Kobe? 

The Patriots did win 11 games when Brady tore up his knee and Matt Cassel was the quarterback, and they even won 12 with Mac Jones. More to the point, Belichick saw the inner maestro in Brady before anyone else did. When Drew Bledsoe got healthy in 2001 and expected to walk back into the place that rookie Brady was holding, Belichick informed him he wasn’t the quarterback anymore. And when Bledsoe rescued the Patriots after Brady was knocked out, he still didn’t get his job back.

The world doesn’t understand introverts, and Belichick was never in the explanation business. So he became known as The Hoodie, for his deliberately shabby cut-off sweatshirts, suffering in the chill. The players couldn’t have had a simpler life. They didn’t exactly like him – he kept them far too jittery for that — but he was never in danger of “losing the room,” because the room always changed and he never did. “Do your job,” he kept saying. It became a club motto and, ultimately, the theme of executive retreats.

Reputations meant nothing, whether it was Randy Moss wearing out his welcome in Minnesota, or any number of workout warriors who couldn’t sense the game like Mike Vrabel and Tedy Bruschi. Mistakes got you benched. Repeat mistakes could get you to Buffalo. When young Bill was helping his dad Steve write up scouting reports at Navy, he wasn’t coloring in emotions. 

Yet Belichick could use anything as a grievance. The Deflategate and sign-stealing scandals, both of them quite real, became crusades for revenge. And when Belichick stumbled upon the Eagles’ plans for a Super Bowl parade, he read every detail to his team, which was already looking for reasons to seethe. The Patriots won that game, too.

But usually the game itself is enough. Belichick devised a different system for every one. That is why NFL Films used to show him walking to practice, twirling a rope that had a whistle on the end of it, a man utterly at peace with the structure around him, as excited as a kid coming downstairs on Christmas morning. There was nothing waiting for Belichick on Thursday in Foxboro, but the world is full of trees, most of them older than 72.