{"id":57346,"date":"2023-11-28T08:59:29","date_gmt":"2023-11-27T22:59:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/?p=57346"},"modified":"2023-11-30T10:44:03","modified_gmt":"2023-11-30T00:44:03","slug":"bill-belichick-was-the-trendsetter-now-hes-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/2023\/11\/bill-belichick-was-the-trendsetter-now-hes-not\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Belichick was the trendsetter. Now he&#8217;s not."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The New England Patriots are the worst team in the NFL in 2023.<\/p>\n<p>They will make their very high first-round pick with a new man in charge.<\/p>\n<p>The above passage is true.<\/p>\n<p>Bill Belichick was ahead of the NFL for 30 consecutive years and set innumerable trends that define the modern game.<\/p>\n<p>He is the greatest coach in the history of the NFL.<\/p>\n<p>The above passage is also true.<\/p>\n<p>The effort to discredit Belichick\u2019s past achievements as being down just to Tom Brady\u2019s specific greatness is absurd.<\/p>\n<p>What you see today is not what was always the case, history happened.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Final. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/BDpQDuL9tr\">pic.twitter.com\/BDpQDuL9tr<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; New England Patriots (@Patriots) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Patriots\/status\/1728880238162235838?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 26, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The present does not wash away the past.<\/p>\n<p>To make the point, let\u2019s do a potted history of Belichick\u2019s greatness.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m going to start in 1986, Belichick\u2019s first Super Bowl as a high-ranking assistant, and go through to the present day, including all eight of his Super Bowl victories as a head coach or coordinator as well as his other innovations.<\/p>\n<p>In 1986 Belichick was the defensive coordinator of the New York Giants.<\/p>\n<p>He held the John Elway-led Broncos, the best offence in the NFL that year, to only 20 points in the game, the Giants held the Broncos to two net yards in the third quarter.<\/p>\n<p>Giants win.<\/p>\n<p>In 1990, still with the Giants, Belichick played Jim Kelly and the K-Gun Buffalo Bills, the most explosive passing game in league history up until that point.<\/p>\n<p>What did Belichick do? He let them run the ball.<\/p>\n<p>He devised a plan that had very few down linemen and populated the field almost entirely with defensive backs and the Bills only scored 19 points.<\/p>\n<p>Giants win.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.giants.com\/news\/belichick-s-gameplan\">His game plan is in the Hall of Fame.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>In 2000, Belichick goes to New England to be their head coach.<\/p>\n<p>In 2001 they won their first Super Bowl, in 2003 they won their second and in 2004 they won their third.<\/p>\n<p>The most interesting game plan from Belichick was in his first Super Bowl.<\/p>\n<p>The Patriots played the St Louis Rams, nicknamed \u201cThe Greatest Show on Turf\u201d and had the best offence of all time at that point.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nfl\/news\/story?id=5546261\">That game plan was called the \u201cbullseye\u201d game plan.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Belichick\u2019s defence was a hybrid defence full of versatile, athletic role players.<\/p>\n<p>Virtually the entire second and third levels were smart and versatile, equally capable of covering and rushing.<\/p>\n<p>Why was it called \u201cbullseye\u201d? Because they hit. Hard.<\/p>\n<p>Belichick created pressure constantly, they mugged receivers at the line of scrimmage and hit them whether they caught the ball or not.<\/p>\n<p>Every time Marshall Faulk went out for a passing route, the Patriots decked him.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">I mean, really&#8211;Tebucky Jones would be relegated to the Estonian Football League for this hit in 2019. And the flag was for offensive pass interference! <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/rZYtwXo4JO\">pic.twitter.com\/rZYtwXo4JO<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Doug Farrar \u270d (@NFL_DougFarrar) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NFL_DougFarrar\/status\/1090995944991195136?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">January 31, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Belichick\u2019s philosophy was that they can\u2019t flag everything.<\/p>\n<p>The Rams were rattled.<\/p>\n<p>Patriots win.<\/p>\n<p>The Pats won their second and third Super Bowls differently, but what set the Patriots apart in the early years was their understanding of situations.<\/p>\n<p>Belichick was the first coach to perfect the art of \u201csituational football\u201d where a team plays differently depending on clock, down and distance.<\/p>\n<p>The Patriots won because they were better and smarter.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s fast forward to the 2007 offseason.<\/p>\n<p>The Patriots have just lost the AFC Championship game to the Colts with a receivers group led by Troy Brown and Reche Caldwell.<\/p>\n<p>Belichick knew he had to get more explosive in the passing game, so he looked at college for guidance.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/08\/13\/sports\/air-raid-kliff-kingsbury-kyler-murray.html\">He sent his offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels to learn the \u201cAir-Raid\u201d offence.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Knowing that he was about to spread the field out, Belichick traded for star receiver Randy Moss and future star Wes Welker.<\/p>\n<p>McDaniels brought his lessons with him and the Patriots proceeded to put up the greatest offensive season in league history.<\/p>\n<p>They burned the league down.<\/p>\n<p>After 2007, everyone copied the Patriots. The league got more spread out, faster. Offence became run and shoot.<\/p>\n<p>In 2010, Belichick zagged again, He traded Randy Moss and drafted Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez in the second and fourth round, respectively.<\/p>\n<p>While defences are defending the boundary, the Patriots got more condensed with Hernandez, Gronkowski and Welker dominating over the middle of the field.<\/p>\n<p>That offence was almost as dominant in 2011 out of the lockout and overcame the league&#8217;s worst defence to go to another Super Bowl.<\/p>\n<p>Even though they lost the Super Bowl in 2007 and 2011 but the imprint of those offences remains prominent in the NFL, even more than a decade later.<\/p>\n<p>Moving on to 2014, the Patriots came up against the Seattle Seahawks and their Legion of Boom defence.<\/p>\n<p>Seattle played only cover-1 and cover-3 with long cornerbacks and had a dominant pass rush, they played basically no-man coverage.<\/p>\n<p>They, like the 2001 Patriots, hit hard, mugged receivers, and dared officials to throw flags.<\/p>\n<p>Belichick was playing his own monster, 14 years later.<\/p>\n<p>The Patriots ran only moving and crossing routes, nothing vertical.<\/p>\n<p>They knew their receivers couldn\u2019t win in the air, so they attacked the space underneath.<\/p>\n<p>The one time the Patriots got man coverage, given away by KJ Wright following Gronkowski to the boundary, the Patriots understood the situation and capitalised with a touchdown on a go-ball.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Patriots?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Patriots<\/a>&#39; Tom Brady throws his 11th career Super Bowl touchdown pass to tie <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/49ers?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#49ers<\/a> legend Joe Montana&#39;s then-Super Bowl record.<\/p>\n<p>Rob Gronkowski hauls in Brady&#39;s 22-yard aerial \u2014 the first of his five career Super Bowl touchdown receptions.<\/p>\n<p>Super Bowl XLIX,<br \/>8 years ago today <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/C7ugC2dLZX\">pic.twitter.com\/C7ugC2dLZX<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Kevin Gallagher (@KevG163) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/KevG163\/status\/1620991295547383809?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 2, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>But his real genius came on the Malcolm Butler interception to win the Super Bowl, one of the greatest plays in NFL history.<\/p>\n<p>This clip speaks for itself.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Five years ago today, rookie Malcolm Butler sealed the Patriots&#39; fourth Super Bowl with this incredible goal-line interception \ud83e\udd2f<\/p>\n<p>(via @nflthrowback)<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/BNT0hoLyec\">pic.twitter.com\/BNT0hoLyec<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SportsCenter\/status\/1223616773829939200?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 1, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Patriots win.<\/p>\n<p>Atlanta was all Brady, especially in the second half.<\/p>\n<p>There was no genius innovation from Belichick there other than having Brady and a defence that made a few plays at the right time.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ll skip that one and get to Belichick\u2019s masterpiece.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"How Bill Belichick Destroyed Sean McVay&#039;s Offensive Scheme in Super Bowl 53\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Z0eqNPiXgmk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The 2019 Super Bowl against the LA Rams and their wunderkind head coach Sean McVay, the Rams in 2019 was both innovative and classic.<\/p>\n<p>Their offence was designed to get to the edges in the run the game with a wide zone and then set up play-action shots (usually in-breakers) out of condensed sets, always in 11 personnel (1 running back, 1 tight end).<\/p>\n<p>The idea was for everything to look the same, right up until it was different.<\/p>\n<p>They had barely been stopped the whole year.<\/p>\n<p>Belichick changed everything to stop them.<\/p>\n<p>The Patriots had played man for the whole year, Belichick played man for his whole career and the Rams expected man.<\/p>\n<p>They got quarters match zone, two corners and two safeties each responsible for a quarter of the field.<\/p>\n<p>This is an obvious passing-down defence for most teams, but the Patriots played it the whole game.<\/p>\n<p>They took away the inside throws (slants\/posts) that the Rams had gone to all season when they needed an easy button, this threw the Rams for a loop.<\/p>\n<p>What was happening up front was just as confounding, and just as against type.<\/p>\n<p>The Patriots lined up in 6-1 fronts. 6 down linemen, and one off-ball linebacker.<\/p>\n<p>New England&#8217;s outside linebackers always lined up on the line of scrimmage, taking the width from the Rams running game, and the passing game had no answers.<\/p>\n<p>It was like the scene at the end of Whiplash where Miles Teller had the wrong music.<\/p>\n<p>From 1986 to 2019, that\u2019s 33 years of Belichick being right.<\/p>\n<p>It ended when his hubris let Brady walk, he figured he was right for 33 years so he\u2019d be right once more after Brady.<\/p>\n<p>His ego led him to that decision, and it led him astray.<\/p>\n<p>Once he let Brady walk, the biggest advantage Belichick had, a computer at quarterback, was gone.<\/p>\n<p>It meant he was playing catch-up at the most important position in football and could not focus his attention on the details that made him so excellent at coming up with bespoke game plans.<\/p>\n<p>He tried to set more trends, like getting big on defence in the face of speed, but it didn\u2019t work like it used to.<\/p>\n<p>The Patriots were just too slow and got boat-raced by the Bills in the 2021 playoffs.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.clnsmedia.com\/lazar-breaking-down-key-differences-in-a-potential-shift-for-patriots-to-shanahan-style-offense\/\">Then the Patriots brought in Matt Patricia and Joe Judge to run a \u201cKyle Shanahan style scheme\u201d that elevates the quarterback by its very nature.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>That brought new meaning to the word disaster.<\/p>\n<p>Now here we are, the Patriots are bad and the man who sets trends can\u2019t follow them.<\/p>\n<p>It doesn\u2019t mean that Belichick was never a good coach.<\/p>\n<p>He was, and is, the greatest innovator in NFL history.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Like what you read from our hard-hitting columnist?<br \/>\nFollow\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/guywholikesspo1\">@Guywholikessport<\/a>\u00a0on Twitter or check out his\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/guywholikessport.wixsite.com\/guywholikessport\">FULL BLOG HERE\u00a0<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":57347,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8298,13,598,344],"tags":[2968,8260,274,47,3094,36,4249],"hub_post_cat":[],"class_list":["post-57346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guywholikessport","category-american-football","category-special-interest","category-sports","tag-bill-belichick","tag-guywholikessport","tag-new-england-patriots","tag-nfl","tag-opinion","tag-special-interest","tag-tom-brady"],"acf":{"md_tip_date":null,"md_tip_date_end":null,"md_market_url":"","tip_date":"28\/11\/2023","event_country":"Australia"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57346"},{"taxonomy":"hub_post_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hub_post_cat?post=57346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}