Many years ago, in the early stages of the New England dynasty, a reporter began to ask then-Patriots defensive leader Mike Vrabel about his team’s “experienced” group of linebackers.
Long before his rise to NFL Coach of the Year status in Tennessee, Vrabel was a key member of a Super Bowl-winning defense and group of linebackers that included other veterans such as Tedy Bruschi, Ted Johnson and Roman Phifer.
The always witty and often sarcastic Vrabel interrupted the question and pounced on the reporter when he heard the word “experienced.”
“Oh, when we win we’re experienced,” Vrabel questioned with clear tone. “And when we lose we’re just old, right.”
His point was clear. And he wasn’t wrong.
In the NFL – and really in many ways all walks of life – the scoreboard determines perceptions.
Winners are lauded and applauded, losers are questioned and critiqued. And with enough losses, replaced.
That’s true for players and coaches alike.
The line is particularly fine for coaches, the worlds of sideline genius and bumbling buffoon often separated by merely a few points or a couple games in the standings.
For two decades in New England, Bill Belichick was firmly entrenched in genius territory. His teams not only won far more often than they lost, but they did so at the highest level to land six Lombardis for Robert Kraft’s often-updated trophy room inside Gillette Stadium.
Year after year, Belichick proved he was the most successfully experienced coach in the NFL.
But ever since Tom Brady departed New England and in the midst of a three-year drought in terms of playoff wins, suddenly as Vrabel may have predicted decades earlier, there are more frequent questions regarding Belichick’s age and capabilities.
Johnson, who grew old on Belichick’s watch as an old-school, run-stuffing linebacker in New England, recently voiced concern for his former coach’s performance in his role as an analyst for NBC Sports Boston.
“For so long, Bill Belichick got the unconditional benefit of the doubt because of the six rings, because of the success here,” Johnson said, pushing back on the In Bill We Trust mindset. “And now clearly, the way the seasons have been ending and how the team has looked, I think it's right for Patriots fans to kind of question, is Bill Belichick firing on all cylinders and as good as he was when he started here?"
But after a playoff-less 2020 season in which Cam Newton’s quarterbacking struggles were a key factor in New England’s failures and a relatively successful 2021 in which rookie QB Mac Jones led the Patriots back to the playoffs only to get blown out on Super Wild Card Weekend by the Bills, not everyone is ready to send Belichick off into the sunset.
A recent excerpt in Boston Globe from the forthcoming book “Playmakers” by Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio writes that Kraft “wants Belichick to work deep into his 80s, like Warren Buffet or Rupert Murdoch.”
With Belichick set to turn 70 next month that would mean a pretty unbelievable decade or more continuing to coach or at least run the Patriots.
Is Belichick old and losing his fastball as Johnson suggests? Or is he simply as experienced a boss as anyone who’s ever paced an NFL sideline?
Seattle’s Pete Carroll is the only current coach older than Belichick, the two joining Tampa Bay’s Bruce Arians and Kansas City’s Andy Reid as four Super Bowl-winning sexagenarians. In fact, the average age of an NFL coach right now is 48.9 years, basically Belichick’s age when he first took the Patriots job way back in the winter of 2000.
Heading into his 48th season overall in the NFL, and 23rd season as Patriots head coach, Belichick’s 22 years in New England put him well ahead of Pittsburgh’s Mike Tomlin (15 years) as the longest tenured coach the league.
With eight new coaches added to the mix just this offseason, five more with less than two years of tenure and 24 with fewer than five years on the job, the average NFL coach has been in his current spot for just 3.8 years.
So there is no doubt that Belichick is an outlier in the modern NFL, and not just because of his crazy success or age.
NFL coaching is now seemingly not only a young man’s game, but one swayed toward coaches with offensive backgrounds like 36-year-old Rams Super Bowl-winning wiz Sean McVay. Twenty current NFL coaches worked their way up through the offensive ranks, compared to 11 with defensive resumes like Belichick’s.
The facts are the facts. Belichick is about to turn 70. Belichick’s team hasn’t won a playoff game in the last three seasons. His teams have not played their best football late in those seasons. Last fall, while rebuilding and retooling to return to the postseason, New England had seemingly endless mistakes, penalties and failed adjustments in all three phases that were seen as uncharacteristic of a Belichick-coached team.
So, is Bill Belichick getting old right before our eyes or just really, really experienced at this point in his Hall of Fame NFL career?
The scoreboard will help us answer that question over the course of 17 weeks of action this coming fall.
