NFL: Coach Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots ‘break-up’ after 24 seasons and a dynasty of success

Endings are never easy, but this was an especially rough one, a desultory loss at home to the miserable Jets, in the snow, the 71-year-old head coach fighting a cold, a tight balaclava covering nearly all of his face. When it was done, he scooted off the field as always and mumbled through another press conference, a six-time Super Bowl winner bracing from another season gone wrong.

The break-up went live Thursday morning, word arriving that Belichick and the New England Patriots would mutually part ways, the empathetic modern choreography for a divorce. After 24 years, two decades of which were the most successful in NFL history, Belichick — a coach’s son and preppy turned football grunt who became the greatest to ever do it — is suddenly out the door, a legend without a logo.

For now, at least. Belichick’s name will reappear on the NFL coaching carousel, and it will look odd, and out of place, a Degas tucked inside a garage sale. He will be pronounced a lead candidate for some jobs or instantly out of the running for others. He will be linked to teams that are interested and uninterested. Even if he takes a year off, his name will loom, because that championship aura is hard to ignore.

Maybe he’ll do media. The press conference grouch turned merry television chatterbox is a great turn, and Belichick has been charismatic in limited appearances, like when he stuffed his head in an old Navy helmet during a recent episode of “College GameDay.” Wearing makeup on Sundays might be beneath him, but it’s easy money, and he’d be good.

Surely someone will have the idea to reunite Belichick with his old pal Nick Saban, maybe on a set or even a sideline. Who wouldn’t want to see that? Probably Belichick and Saban, but that won’t stop people from asking. If it’s TV, I’d watch. Belichick & Saban’s lone Sonny & Cher special— “The Art of Coaching,” released by HBO in 2019 — is a cranky football lover’s delight.

Whatever’s next won’t be the same. Belichick is too old to repeat the arc he delivered in New England — the taciturn Bill Parcells acolyte poached from the Jets, who’d learned from his failures in Cleveland and elevated one of the most misbegotten franchises in football into a staid dynasty. Players helped him do it — no more than his GOAT quarterback, Tom Brady — but the football team would embody Belichick more than anyone else. “The Patriot Way” is little more than the Belichick ethos, best distilled into three blunt words: Do your job.

Do your job. It’s not as easy as that, of course, you need much more, including a quarterback who defied the odds well into his 40s, but Belichick’s terse approach worked wonders motivationally and tactically. Perhaps his signature moment was his Jedi-like stare-down of the Seahawks in the waning moments of Super Bowl XLIX, Belichick on the sideline, refusing to stop the clock, silently willing Pete Carroll and Seattle to melt down at the goal line, which they infamously did.

Success gave Belichick a mystique, plus villainy, which he didn’t appear to mind. His Patriots will forever be seen sceptically by those who believe they pushed against the rules, and sometimes straight over, but they were happy to wear the black hat. They are a team with six rings and at least two gates — Spygate, Deflategate — and their recent misery has been pleasant schadenfreude for rival fans stung by all that Patriot dominance.

Like his NFL mentor, Parcells, Belichick had his sort of guys. He liked gritty veterans who played hurt; stars who had been humbled elsewhere; small school free agents who’d happily play anywhere. He liked tiny guys who played lacrosse and left-footed punters. He liked the Baltimore safety Ed Reed. I don’t think a coach admired an opposing player more than Belichick admired Ed Reed.

“Student of the game” is one of the most overused cliches in sports, and often incorrectly applied, but Belichick really was one. A man who would sooner cut off a hand than explain an in-game decision would happily expound on the inception of the single wing offence, how it led to the wishbone, wildcat and all the granular variations in between. When he participated in the selection of the NFL’s 100 Greatest Players — the sort of exercise that’s built for recency bias — he made an animated case for Bill Hewitt, a defensive end from the 1930s who played without a helmet.

This would mean little if Belichick didn’t win, of course, and he won all the time. His 333 victories (including the postseason) are second only to Don Shula’s 347, and he won his in a salary-cap era that limited a team’s ability to reward and retain talent. Belichick was ruthless: He had a knack for letting players go just as they entered their decline, and finding an inexpensive replacement. It wasn’t personal, because Belichick didn’t roll like that.

Which leads to Brady, and the decision, after the 2019 season, for the team and its Hall of Fame quarterback to part ways, another euphemistic split that’s never been adequately explained. Brady was driven to succeed elsewhere, in Tampa Bay, and he did so immediately, delivering a Super Bowl. It was awkward after that, and remains so, no matter how much the franchise has tried to make nice with its handsome ex.

It’s nibbled at Belichick’s legacy, too. I mostly find the Brady vs. Belichick debate to be inane — football teams are vast enterprises, with many dozens of contributors — but it’s hard to ignore Belichick’s middling record (47-57) without the sixth-round draft pick he sent in for an injured Drew Bledsoe in 2001. Theirs was the greatest partnership in football history — two single-minded competitive lunatics, conspiring to own an era — but Brady’s success in the friendlier, looser Tampa environment proved a point. The quarterback wasn’t the coach’s creation.

Like Saban, who retired from Alabama on Wednesday, Belichick cannot be replaced. The game has shifted beneath his feet, from something harder-edged to more humane, and his prickly act grew worn. There are plenty of coaches who would love to grunt through a weekly presser like Belichick did, but no one can get away with that sort of surliness anymore. Some successful coaches even try to be pleasers, like Sean McVay with the Rams and Mike McDaniel of the Dolphins.

I’ll miss it, though. I don’t really care to see Belichick trying to be sunny in Southern California with the Chargers, or taking the wheel of another forlorn franchise like the Falcons or Commanders. To me he will always be the Grumpy Lobster Boat Captain, grimacing on the New England sideline like he’s miles from shore in a storm.

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Today the lighthouse is lit, the harbour empty.

Bill Belichick is out to sea.

-The Wall Street Journal