Bill Belichick, byname of William Stephen Belichick, (born April 16, 1952, Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.), American professional gridiron football coach who led the New England Patriots of the National Football League (NFL) to six Super Bowl titles (2002, 2004, 2005, 2015, 2017, and 2019), the most for an NFL head coach.
Belichick’s father was an assistant collegiate soccer coach, primarily on the United States Naval Academy, who taught his son the finer factors of the game from an early age. The younger Belichick attended crew conferences and movie classes and knew learn how to diagram advanced performs earlier than he turned a teen. Although possessed of a precocious soccer intelligence, he was a restricted soccer participant who acquired no curiosity from top-division schools and as an alternative performed centre and tight finish on the smaller Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut. Upon his commencement in 1975, Belichick was employed as a particular assistant for the Baltimore Colts.
He moved on to assistant-coaching positions with the Detroit Lions and the Denver Broncos earlier than becoming a member of the teaching employees of the New York Giants in 1979. He served as special-teams coach after which linebackers coach earlier than being promoted to defensive coordinator by head coach Bill Parcells in 1985. Capitalizing on the presence of future Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor, Belichick developed one of many NFL’s most dominant defenses of the Nineteen Eighties. In 4 of his six seasons as coordinator, his Giants defenses ranked within the prime 5 of the NFL in yards and factors allowed and had been integral to the crew’s two Super Bowl victories (1987, 1991) throughout that span. As a results of his success with the Giants, Belichick was named the top coach of the Cleveland Browns in 1991.
After main the Browns to only one profitable season in 5 years as head coach, Belichick was fired shortly earlier than the franchise relocated to Baltimore and have become the Ravens. He then served as a defensive assistant and assistant head coach for Parcells with the Patriots (1996) and the New York Jets (1997–99). Upon Parcells’s retirement from teaching on the finish of the 1999 season, Belichick was promoted to the Jets’ head coach, however he resigned after simply at some point on the job—slightly notoriously doing so by writing “I resign as HC of the NYJ” on a chunk of paper shortly earlier than taking the rostrum at a press convention and saying his departure—citing discomfort with teaching a crew that was up on the market. He as an alternative turned the Patriots’ head coach lower than a month later.
After posting a 5–11 document in his first season in New England, Belichick noticed his crew lose the primary two video games of the 2001 season in addition to beginning quarterback Drew Bledsoe to a season-ending harm. He then turned to little-used second-year quarterback Tom Brady, who proceeded to steer the Patriots to a 11–3 end and an unbelievable postseason run that resulted within the crew’s first Super Bowl title. That championship marked the start of a New England dynasty, by which the Patriots compiled consecutive 14–2 information within the 2003 and 2004 common seasons, every of which resulted in a Super Bowl title.
Although he didn't function the Patriots’ common supervisor, Belichick was one of many franchise’s essential personnel determination makers. He established a sample of creating sensible, unconventional soccer strikes and fielding groups made up of ignored and flippantly regarded gamers that might thrive in his system, akin to Brady, who had been a sixth-round draft decide. In 2007, behind the record-setting play of Brady and huge receiver Randy Moss (who was cannily acquired earlier than the season in a commerce for a fourth-round draft decide), the Patriots turned the primary crew in NFL historical past to go undefeated throughout a 16-game common season. However, the crew’s unprecedented run resulted in an upset loss to the Giants within the Super Bowl. The crew’s accomplishments that 12 months had been additionally considerably overshadowed by a scandal that got here to be generally known as “Spygate.” During the season-opening win over the Jets, a member of the Patriots’ employees was caught with unlawful videotapes that confirmed the Jets’ sideline signaling. That discovery resulted in an unprecedented $500,000 superb for Belichick, the forfeiture of New England’s 2008 first-round draft decide, and questioning within the media and across the league of Belichick’s teaching ethics.
Belichick rebuilt a lot of the Patriots’ roster over the course of the next 4 years, and New England remained one of many premier groups within the NFL. Following the 2011 season, the crew returned to the Super Bowl however once more misplaced to the Giants. The Patriots superior to the AFC championship sport in every of the next three seasons, shedding the primary two contests earlier than defeating the Indianapolis Colts following the 2014 season to advance to the sixth Super Bowl of the Belichick period.
However, that victory quickly turned one other supply of controversy for Belichick, because the Patriots had been caught utilizing deflated balls within the contest. The NFL discovered that 11 of the 12 balls that the Patriots had used within the sport (opposing offenses use completely different units of balls in NFL video games) had been considerably underinflated, which may make the balls simpler to grip and journey farther when thrown. The NFL launched an investigation, however no motion was taken earlier than the Super Bowl, the place the Patriots rallied from a 10-point fourth-quarter deficit to defeat the Seattle Seahawks 28–24 and win a fourth championship. The NFL completed its investigation into the deflation incident in May 2015, and Belichick was cleared of any express wrongdoing. However, Brady was suspended for 4 video games of the 2015 season (which, after the appeals course of ended, was served throughout the 2016 season), and the Patriots had been fined and stripped of two upcoming draft picks for violating taking part in guidelines and never absolutely cooperating with the investigation.
On the sector, the Patriots continued their dominant play underneath Belichick. New England once more superior to the AFC championship after the 2015 season (the place they misplaced to the Denver Broncos), and in 2016 the crew went an NFL-best 14–2 and cruised by means of the AFC playoffs en route to a different Super Bowl berth. There the Patriots engineered the most important comeback in Super Bowl historical past, overcoming a 25-point third-quarter deficit to the Atlanta Falcons in time beyond regulation to win a fifth title, giving Belichick probably the most Super Bowl championships for an NFL head coach. The Patriots gained one other division title in 2017 after which superior to the eighth Super Bowl of the Belichick regime. There the Patriots misplaced a back-and-forth contest to the Philadelphia Eagles to provide Belichick his third Super Bowl defeat. Belichick led New England to a tenth straight division title in 2018, and the Patriots gained each of their AFC playoff video games to achieve a 3rd consecutive Super Bowl. In what was the lowest-scoring sport in Super Bowl historical past, the Patriots defeated the Los Angeles Rams, 13–3, and Belichick claimed his sixth title. Led by the top-ranked protection within the league, the Patriots gained an eleventh straight division title in 2019, however New England misplaced its first postseason contest.