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William Stephen Belichick (/ ˈ b ɛ l ɪ tʃ ɪ k, ˈ b ɛ l ɪ tʃ ɛ k /; born April 16, 1952) is an American sports analyst and football coach. Widely regarded as one of the greatest head coaches of all time, [1] [2] [3] he holds numerous coaching records, including the record of most Super Bowl wins (six) as a head coach, all with the New England Patriots, along with two more during his ...
- Overview
- Early life
- Coaching career: New York Giants, Cleveland Browns, and New York Jets
- New England Patriots
Bill Belichick (born April 16, 1952, Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.) is widely regarded as the greatest professional gridiron football coach in history. During 24 seasons with the New England Patriots of the National Football League (NFL), he led the team to six Super Bowl titles (2002, 2004, 2005, 2015, 2017, and 2019), the most for an NFL head coach.
Belichick’s father was an assistant collegiate football coach, primarily at the United States Naval Academy, who taught his son the finer points of the sport from an early age. The young Belichick attended team meetings and film sessions and knew how to diagram complex plays before he became a teenager. Although possessed of a precocious football intelligence, he was a limited football player who received no interest from top-division colleges and instead played centre and tight end at the smaller Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut. Upon his graduation in 1975, Belichick was hired as a special assistant for the Baltimore Colts.
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Belichick moved on to assistant-coaching positions with the Detroit Lions and the Denver Broncos before joining the coaching staff of the New York Giants in 1979. He served as special-teams coach and then linebackers coach before being promoted to defensive coordinator by head coach Bill Parcells in 1985. Capitalizing on the presence of future Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor, Belichick developed one of the NFL’s most dominant defenses of the 1980s. In four of his six seasons as coordinator, his Giants defenses ranked in the top five of the NFL in yards and points allowed and were integral to the team’s two Super Bowl victories (1987, 1991) during that span. As a result of his success with the Giants, Belichick was named the head coach of the Cleveland Browns in 1991.
After leading the Browns to just one winning season in five years as head coach, Belichick was fired shortly before the franchise relocated to Baltimore and became the Ravens. He then served as a defensive assistant and assistant head coach for Parcells with the Patriots (1996) and the New York Jets (1997–99). Upon Parcells’s retirement from coaching at the end of the 1999 season, Belichick was promoted to the Jets’ head coach, but he resigned after just one day at the job—rather notoriously doing so by writing “I resign as HC of the NYJ” on a piece of paper shortly before taking the podium at a press conference and announcing his departure—citing discomfort with coaching a team that was up for sale. He instead became the Patriots’ head coach less than a month later.
After posting a 5–11 record in his first season in New England, Belichick saw his team lose the first two games of the 2001 season as well as starting quarterback Drew Bledsoe to a season-ending injury. He then turned to little-used second-year quarterback Tom Brady, who proceeded to lead the Patriots to a 11–3 finish and an improbable postseason run that resulted in the team’s first Super Bowl title. That championship marked the beginning of a New England dynasty, in which the Patriots compiled consecutive 14–2 records in the 2003 and 2004 regular seasons, each of which ended in a Super Bowl title.
Although he did not serve as the Patriots’ general manager, Belichick was one of the franchise’s main personnel decision makers. He established a pattern of making smart, unconventional football moves and fielding teams made up of overlooked and lightly regarded players that would thrive in his system, such as Brady, who had been a sixth-round draft pick. In 2007, behind the record-setting play of Brady and wide receiver Randy Moss (who was cannily acquired before the season in a trade for a fourth-round draft pick), the Patriots became the first team in NFL history to go undefeated during a 16-game regular season. However, the team’s unprecedented run ended in an upset loss to the Giants in the Super Bowl. The team’s accomplishments that year were also somewhat overshadowed by a scandal that came to be known as “Spygate.” During the season-opening win over the Jets, a member of the Patriots’ staff was caught with illegal videotapes that showed the Jets’ sideline signaling. That discovery resulted in an unprecedented $500,000 fine for Belichick, the forfeiture of New England’s 2008 first-round draft pick, and questioning in the media and around the league of Belichick’s coaching ethics.
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Belichick rebuilt most of the Patriots’ roster over the course of the following four years, and New England remained one of the premier teams in the NFL. Following the 2011 season, the team returned to the Super Bowl but again lost to the Giants. The Patriots advanced to the AFC championship game in each of the following three seasons, losing the first two contests before defeating the Indianapolis Colts following the 2014 season to advance to the sixth Super Bowl of the Belichick era.
However, that victory soon became another source of controversy for Belichick, as the Patriots were caught using deflated balls in the contest. The NFL found that 11 of the 12 balls that the Patriots had used in the game (opposing offenses use different sets of balls in NFL games) were significantly underinflated, which can make the balls easier to grip and travel farther when thrown. The NFL launched an investigation, but no action was taken before the Super Bowl, where the Patriots rallied from a 10-point fourth-quarter deficit to defeat the Seattle Seahawks 28–24 and win a fourth championship. The NFL finished its investigation into the deflation incident in May 2015, and Belichick was cleared of any explicit wrongdoing in what became known as “Deflategate.” However, Brady was suspended for four games of the 2015 season (which, after the appeals process ended, was served during the 2016 season), and the Patriots were fined and stripped of two upcoming draft picks for violating playing rules and not fully cooperating with the investigation.
- Adam Augustyn
After he was fired from the Browns, Belichick was hired by the New England Patriots in 1996 as the team’s assistant head coach and secondary coach under head coach Parcells. During his sole season as a Patriots assistant, the team went 11-5 and made an appearance in the Super Bowl, eventually losing to the Green Bay Packers 35-21.
- 2000. Record: 5–11, fifth in AFC East, no playoffs. After four years as coach of the Cleveland Browns (where he won a single playoff game), and a brief stint with the New York Jets, Belichick struggled in his first season with the Patriots.
- 2001. Record: 11–5, first in AFC East, won Super Bowl. The Patriots’ dynasty began here. New England started the season with low expectations, having gone without a playoff victory since 1997.
- 2002. Record: 9–7, second in AFC East, no playoffs. After the defense finished sixth defensively in 2001, the unit regressed to the mean in ’02, falling to 17th.
- 2003. Record: 14–2, first in AFC East, won Super Bowl. As it turns out, the Patriots simply had a Super Bowl hangover the year before. New England put together one of the most dominant years of the Belichick era, finishing 14–2 and earning the AFC’s top seed for the first time in Brady’s career.
Jan 11, 2024 · Belichick has been named Coach of the Year three times, in 2003, 2007, and 2010. In 2007 and 2011, he again steered the New England Patriots to the Super Bowl, where both times they lost to Eli ...
Aug 11, 2022 · After Parcells retired as Jets head coach after the 1999 season, Belichick succeeded him as head coach. Belichick shockingly resigned a day after he was officially hired. Belichick was hired as Patriots head coach just 23 days later on January 27, 2000. The rest is history. Meet Bill Belichick's family. Bill Belichick is the only child of ...
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Jan 11, 2024 · January 11, 2024. Bill Belichick’s time with the Patriots finally came to an end on Thursday, as the team and the coach plan to part ways. Belichick, who had led New England for 24 seasons ...
