If you took a look at the internet over the last 24 hours, you’ve almost certainly seen the card-carrying members of Team Brady taking a victory lap as it relates to former Patriots head coach Bill Belichick being hired at the University of North Carolina as their next head football coach.
For those who are still fighting the Brady vs. Bill battle, they’re seeing this as the nail in the coffin for the debate.
Tom Brady went elsewhere, and immediately won a Super Bowl with a Tampa Bay Buccaneers team that was 7-9 the year before he arrived.
For Belichick, members of Team Brady are saying the six-time Super Bowl champion was so beyond his coaching prime, he wasn’t even able to secure a new NFL team to continue trying to compete for this imaginary crown.
Seven rings for Brady. Six rings for Belichick. Case closed.
But like any impossible sports debate, there’s always going to be another angle.
And on Thursday’s edition of The Greg Hill Show, WEEI’s Jermaine Wiggins found it.
“I think that if Bill’s able to win in college, it’s harder to do that than win when Brady won in Tampa,” said Wiggy. “Because remember, when Brady went to Tampa -”
“He went to a loaded team,” WEEI’s Greg Hill interjected.
“The 2020 Patriots and the 2020 Bucs had the same preseason over/under win-loss total,” added WEEI’s Chris Curtis.
“But Curtis, you already know, the Bucs finished the [2019 season] 7-9,” said Wiggy. “Their defense started to turn the corner. You had, arguably, one of - at that point in time - top five wide receivers in the game in Mike Evans. Chris Godwin was probably, in some people’s mind, a top 10, top 12 guy.
“If Bill wins the natty, that’s better. That’s harder to do. Because you go to the right team, if you’re a great player, like Brady is - we’re not taking nothing away from Brady. But you’re a great player like Brady - we think the Jets stink, right? If you drop Tom Brady on the Jets roster right now, they are a legitimate Super Bowl contender. But if you drop Tom Brady on the Carolina Panthers, he’s got no shot of winning the Super Bowl. He might not even sniff the playoffs.”
There’s obviously no right answer here, but Wiggy makes a compelling case for Belichick in this hypothetical scenario.
And for Wiggy, having been both a teammate of Brady’s and a player for Bill, the bias is somewhat equal on both sides.
But it’s important to make clear that this is about as hypothetical as hypothetical can get, as North Carolina’s football program has never come close to prominence at the collegiate level.
Playing football since 1888, UNC has a winning percentage of .566, with only 8 conference titles to its name.
Yes, you read that correctly - that’s 8 conference titles in 136 years.
And on top of that, they’ve only gone over 8 wins in a season 16 times in over a century as a program.
Make no mistake about it, UNC football is not UNC basketball.
If Belichick can somehow get that Tar Heel blue on a national championship hat, it would be an enormous accomplishment, right up there with anything he has done as a head coach at the professional level.
Key word - “if.”