Patriots coach Bill Belichick is one of the greatest of all time. But he's now shifting credit to the men who take the field.
“Players win games," Belichick said on the latest episode of the Let’s Go! podcast, per quotes distributed by SiriusXM. "You can't win games without good players. I don't care who the coach is, it's impossible. You can't win without good players. You know, I found that out when I had [Lawrence] Taylor and [Carl] Banks and Harry Carson, Pepper Johnson, Jim Burt, Everson Walls, all those guys at the Giants. And same thing when we got good at Cleveland and then at New England. I mean, it's [Tom] Brady, it's [Willie] McGinest, it's [Mike] Vrabel, it's [Tedy] Bruschi, it's Corey Dillon, it's Randy Moss, Troy Brown, Lawyer Malloy, Ty Law, Rodney Harrison.
"Those are guys that won the games, man. I didn't make any tackles. I didn't make any kicks. That was [Adam] Vinatieri that made that kick in four inches of snow. You gotta have good players and as a coach, you want to give your players a chance to win. You wanna put them in a position where if they go out there and play well, they'll have a chance to win. That's what Coach Parcells taught me, is there's always a way to win. You just gotta figure out what it is, and you have to give the players a chance.”
But that's where the coaching comes in. Finding out how to give the players the best chance to win, one game at a time.
Belichick wasn't finished. Here's the rest of the exchange.
“We idolize these great coaches," host Jim Gray said. "We say, ‘If we only had this great coach, we would be winning, we would be holding the trophy on the top step of the victory platform.’ Why would you say this [the sentiment that players win games] isn’t shared more often?”
“I don’t know but I’ve never said anything but that," Belichick said.
“No, I understand that," Gray responded. "I’m just saying they didn’t name it the Starr Trophy, it’s named the Lombardi Trophy.”
“Maybe they should name it the Brady Trophy," Belichick said. "He won seven of them."
While it's clickbaity to sell Belichick's words as made in any way other than jest, he's not seriously suggesting that Vince Lombardi's name should be stripped from the Super Bowl trophy and replaced with Brady's. Belichick was just making his point.
The real question is this: What's Belichick's angle in making the case publicly that it's about players not coaches?
Is he staking out an advance excuse in the event North Carolina stinks this year? After all, if the players can't play, it's hard to blame the coach.
Or is Belichick thinking ahead to a possible NFL return, assuming anyone will hire him. Good teams with good players rarely have vacancies. For most of the teams that will be hiring, they'll be hiring because the team wasn't and isn't good. In New England, Belichick had a 5-11 in 2000 before stumbling into Brady. Then, after Brady left (with Belichick incorrectly believing the tank was empty), things went sideways for Belichick.
Given that Belichick is always playing chess when everyone else is playing checkers, he's sending a message here. And the message might be this: "Lower your expectations for me this year at North Carolina, and next year if I'm back in the NFL."
