Patriots coach Bill Belichick on cusp of being NFL’s biggest loser
Bill Belichick has won a record six Super Bowls as New England Patriots coach. He is closing in on a record of a very different kind.
When the New England Patriots routinely churned out double-digit win seasons, Bill Belichick’s march toward becoming the NFL’s winningest coach ever seemed like an inevitability. But the team’s recent nosedive has put him on the verge of a less desirable record: most all-time losses.
The Patriots’ loss to the Giants on Sunday marked a new low for the franchise under Belichick. Their offence remained helpless, even against one of the NFL’s worst teams, and it dropped them to 2-9 on the season. It also added the 161st regular-season loss to his ledger, putting him four shy of the historic mark.
If New England keeps losing at its current rate, Belichick will reach the record before the season is over. And with 300 wins, he’s still years away from potentially chasing down Don Shula’s 328 regular-season victories — if he’s actually afforded the opportunity to continue coaching.
The irony is that it usually takes a good coach to lose the most games ever because the bad ones get canned before they can pile up so many. Legendary Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry held the mark for years when he retired with 162 defeats across 29 seasons ending in 1988. Since then, that has been surpassed by two others: Dan Reeves and Jeff Fisher, both of whom were at the helm for 165 losses.
That Belichick is in the hunt to surpass them this year is a testament to his longevity — and how crummy the Pats are right now.
Fisher losses came while he won 51.2 per cent of his games over the course of 22 seasons coaching two franchises that moved during his tenure: the Houston Oilers who became the Tennessee Titans and the Rams, who left St. Louis for Los Angeles. It took Reeves, who won 53.5 per cent of his games while in charge of the Broncos, Giants and Falcons, into his 23rd season to reach that number.
Belichick, meanwhile, is in his 29th season as a head coach. His career winning clip of 65.1 per cent is far better than either Reeves or Fisher, which explains why it’s taken him so many more years to approach their marks. Belichick’s run includes an additional 31 playoff victories, which is nine more than any other coach. But these days, the Patriots are further from the playoffs than ever under Belichick, which has placed him on an accelerated path toward the more ignominious record.
At the time of Tom Brady’s departure in 2020, Belichick was 55 wins and 38 losses shy of the respective regular-season records, and if he had kept winning at the same rate he would’ve broken Shula’s tally before reaching the one belonging to Fisher and Reeves. And for a time, it looked like New England would transition seamlessly out of the Brady era. After the legendary quarterback, who was under centre for all six Super Bowls the Patriots have won under Belichick, left for Tampa Bay, the Pats were back in the postseason in 2021 led by a rookie quarterback in Mac Jones.
But they regressed back below .500 last season — before cratering this year.
The Patriots attempted to reverse 2022’s woes by bringing back the team’s former offensive co-ordinator Bill O’Brien. Instead, the team’s offensive problems have grown even more acute. Following Sunday’s 10-7 loss to the Giants, the Patriots have failed to score double-digit points in back-to-back games. For the second straight contest, Belichick benched Jones before the game was over.
This season represents by far the lowest winning percentage of Belichick’s career, including his five years in charge of the Cleveland Browns, and the poor performance has created speculation about the 71-year-old’s job security that would have once been unthinkable.
“I just do the best I can every day,” Belichick said earlier this month when asked about the subject.
What Belichick has also made clear is that, whether or not he’s on his way out, he’s not going to budge on his distinctly Belichickian style. Ahead of the Giants game, he declined to say whether Mac Jones or Bailey Zappe would start at quarterback, and instead responded to several questions about the subject with the same answer.
“I’ve told everybody to be ready to go,” he repeated.
The upside of the Patriots’ downturn is that they’re now in position for something they’ve never had during the Belichick era: one of the top picks in the draft. The highest the team has selected during his tenure is sixth overall, all the way back in 2001, when they selected a future Hall of Famer in defensive lineman Richard Seymour. They’re currently just one win behind the Carolina Panthers for the NFL’s worst record this year, which means they can contemplate taking a prized young quarterback to jump-start the offence.
Whether Belichick will be in position to use that pick, wherever it lands, is another matter. There are still six games left in the regular-season, and if the Pats lose four of them, he’ll tie the record. Five and he’ll break it.
Which gives Belichick an extra incentive to not spend the rest of the season tanking.
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