Bill Belichick Was Always Going to Be Nothing Without Tom Brady

On Thursday, Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots, his fiefdom for 24 years of terror, mutually parted ways after a 4-13 finish; the team’s third losing season in four years. Belichick’s teams post-Tom Brady, his longtime partner in crime, have been uninspired at best, dreadful at worst. Brady, on the other hand, won another Super Bowl after leaving the Pats, contended for an MVP, and then said goodbye to the NFL at something resembling the top of his game.

Every time one of Belichick’s ex-assistants gets canned by a team that just missed the playoffs, a crop of articles appears to ask the question: Why is this dude’s coaching tree so terrible? The answer usually comes back the same every time: because you cannot teach monomania, and that’s all there is with Belichick. Other great NFL coaches all bring something to the table you can name: some flair for offense, a defensive innovation you can point to, a way with people.

Belichick has none of those things. He just has an endless appetite for grinding, watching film and breaking it down, and a personality that shamelessly extracts, bleeding as much as he possibly can from people without giving warmth or wisdom in return. He reportedly underpaid video guys and lower-level assistants and supplemented their incomes by tossing cash at them whenever they did a good job, ostensibly because it was easier for him to give someone a mushed-up $20 bill than a compliment or a pat on the back. Everyone works as much as possible, Belichick especially: He routinely arrived at the practice facility at four in the morning, slept in his office, and demanded the same level of commitment from everyone else. His only real management innovation was a comical proclivity for trading back in the draft, a masterful tactic that also ensured he rarely had to work with a young person with too much self-esteem.

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