Why Bill Belichick was such a good fit in New England for so long
It’s hard to make an impression, and even harder to make history in a place as old and memorable as New England. The benchmark is so high.
But Bill Belichick, who left as head coach of the New England Patriots on Thursday after 24 years of unparalleled dominance in America’s most popular sport, will be remembered alongside New England legends like Ted Williams, Bill Russell and Paul Revere.
Okay, Paul Revere is a bit complicated. Only Tom Brady will forever exist alongside Paul Revere.
Still, Belichick, whose teams won an NFL-record six Super Bowls with Brady at quarterback, is big enough in the Boston area to qualify as an honorary Kennedy.
Belichick’s departure as Patriots coach, after back-to-back losing years, including this season’s 4-13 record, an era is coming to an end in a place where sports heroes can outshine almost any senator, civic leader or artist. Belichick, known for its rumpled appearance, without a smile and a monotone voice, was celebrated as a scholar, savior and sage. He also became an influential, popular role model in New England.
Even a move from New York to New England was not blamed for him.
Ben Ravelson, a lifelong Patriots fan living in Boston, believed Belichick’s effect on the region became almost mystical.
“Every step he made, even if we as fans initially had doubts, we were conditioned to just know that this man, Bill Belichick, was all-knowing and wise,” Ravelson, 34, said Thursday, referring to one of Belichick’s nicknames. that’s ‘Yoda’.
“We never really questioned him.”
This isn’t a success story that anyone saw coming. On January 27, 2000, nothing about Belichick’s arrival from the Jets as the Patriots’ new field general suggested that the region’s cultural identity was about to undergo a substantial makeover. The patriots were ignored and were often losers. Brady was still an obscure ex-college quarterback with no concrete job prospects.
And yet Belichick’s Patriots became a ubiquitous source of pride, a pride that was emblematic of how New Englanders like to see themselves: reserved but coolly efficient, innovative, prosperous, industrious and secretive about their methods.
(When it came to the Patriots, some would call the latter trait a smokescreen for deception, but more on that later.)
Under Belichick, whose Patriots regular-season coaching record was 266-121, the impact of a triumphant Boston sports team increased dramatically. For about a century, the importance or influence of New England teams was largely limited. But with Belichick at the helm, the Patriots became a recognized national phenomenon. Although some of that was due to the fact that fans in the 44 states outside of New England lived to hate them.
The nearly wordless Belichick was the perfect poker face of the nascent Patriots movement that would dominate the once staid NFL for nearly two decades. Belichick was not a son of New England, although he spent summers on Nantucket as a teenager and formative years at prep school in Andover, Massachusetts, and at Wesleyan University, but he of course exemplified personal characteristics that people in the area, especially the working class had. New Englanders, may seem familiar.
Born in Nashville and raised largely in Annapolis, Maryland, Belichick had no birthright to be made for New England, and yet he completely was.
He rewarded performance over potential and devalued pedigree. Belichick, who generally acted as his own boss when it came to roster building and college selections, had developed a knack and desire to find the versatile, undrafted player ignored by others.
No one fit the bill better than Brady (drafted with the 199th pick of 254), unless it was wide receiver Julian Edelman, who also selected Belichick late with the 232nd pick of the 2009 NFL draft. Like Edelman, who became a key part of three Patriots Super Bowl-winning teams, said of Belichick, whose 333 career NFL wins are 14 shy of Don Shula’s record for coaching wins: “Bill wants winners, he doesn’t care which winners look.”
If that were a grim team motto, tens of thousands of Patriots fans would have nodded their heads approvingly as they huddled against the wintry wind in the stands of creaking Foxboro Stadium, the dilapidated building where Belichick’s early New England teams had to play. but nevertheless built the foundation of a dynasty.
“Bill became an adopted New Englander pretty quickly, maybe because he embraced the challenge of coming here,” said Richard Johnson, the curator of the Sports Museum in Boston, who attended his first Patriots game in the 1960s. “This is a difficult area to work in sports because there are high expectations and people are quite critical. You sink or swim quite quickly, but he didn’t shy away from that and people appreciated that.”
Johnson, co-author of “The Pats: An Illustrated History of the New England Patriots,” added, “He is certainly one of us in many ways.”
The against-all-odds ethos of Belichick’s teams became a rallying cry in New England, as did his reputation as a taciturn, hardened leader, especially in team practices. For Patriots fans fed up with decades of losing, their coach had good reason to be grumpy.
The fans wanted someone who was grumpy, like an old man who “sends soup back” to a chowder house in Boston (to borrow a phrase from “Seinfeld”). The fans understood, they were grumpy too.
Over time, as the Patriots began hoarding Super Bowl trophies, Belichick, 71, became the avatar for a new kind of New England chic. Fans came to games dressed in the coach’s signature hoodie, with the sleeves cut off above the elbow. Novelty stores sold Belichick costumes for Halloween, complete with shapeless sweatpants and a drab ski hat. As always, the key to getting an impression of Belichick was to almost never smile.
The Patriots’ successes sparked what would become a golden age for professional sports organizations in New England. From their first NFL title in 2001 to their last in 2018, the Red Sox, Celtics and Boston Bruins combined to match the Patriots in six Super Bowl victories.
In the case of the Patriots, however, there was at times a fierce, nationwide reaction to the team’s continued success, which revolved around cheating scandals tied to the team and Brady. The cheating allegations, some of which played out in court, seemed legitimate to many, including NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who ordered the team to pay a hefty fine, forfeit draft picks and ultimately play four games of the 2016 season without Brady to play. In a separate incident of apparent cheating in 2007, Belichick was fined up to $500,000.
Outside the six New England states, the Patriots’ chicane will never be forgotten, but within the region it has only reinvigorated the already familiar us-versus-them mentality. The scandals, with trendy names like Deflategate and Spygate, caused the loyal Patriots to stand their ground and fight back. The response on social media was like a modern version of the Boston Tea Party.
In New England, Belichick and Brady had the last laugh and then some. After Brady returned from his four-game suspension in 2016, the Patriots advanced to the Super Bowl, and despite trailing by 25 points in the game, rallied to win. Two seasons later they won another Super Bowl.
That was Belichick’s final crowning achievement in New England. In his last five seasons he lost more games than he won.
But that’s not how Belichick will be remembered. He leaves behind a transformed New England landscape. At the dawn of a new century, Belichick’s unforeseen revival of a downtrodden sports franchise breathed new energy into an old domain.
Most fittingly, Belichick can take solace that his legacy in the region, like the man, will be understated.
It’s a legacy perhaps most evident on the streets of hundreds of towns across New England, on the afternoons and evenings when the Patriots play their games. They seem like ghost towns.