Was just coming here to post it.
Seriously... amazing stuff.
"And so an undrafted rookie made the biggest defensive play in Super Bowl history. But how much credit does Belichick get? People bring up his savvy game plans against the 1990 Bills and 2001 Rams, or the ballsy Brady-over-Bledsoe decision, or 11 wins without Brady in 2008, or a Super Bowl win with Troy Brown playing nickelback, or even the controversial fourth-down call against Indy that didn’t work and became The Call That Built The Sloan Conference. They bring up Spygate, his disheveled outfits, his salty press conferences, even his bad cop/good cop relationship with the Krafts. They bring up how he mastered the art of trading down in drafts and coldly dumping key players one year too soon instead of one year too late. They bring up his Rain Man–like ability to relentlessly look forward without ever dwelling on the past.
On to Baltimore. On to Indianapolis. On to Seattle.
He’s a coaching machine. There’s a human being lurking under there, someone whom his friends swear by, but Belichick never allows the public to see it. He uses Patriots fans the same way we use him and the Krafts use him. We just want to win. We don’t care that America doesn’t like him. We stay out of his way. Just don’t quit on us. Don’t retire. Don’t announce out of the blue, “I’m good, I’m done, see you later.” You can’t even compare him to other football coaches. Who was Belichick’s competition these last 15 years? Andy Reid? Tony Dungy? Bill Cowher? Tom Coughlin? Please.
And yet, Belichick never had that one signature moment. We never caught it when it happened in this Seahawks game — that’s how good this one was. We thought he fell asleep. We thought he froze. Repeat: We thought Bill Belichick froze.
You know what really happened? Belichick trusted seven months of practice and two weeks of scouting, and he trusted the fact that he’d already prepared a 24-year-old undrafted rookie to react perfectly, historically and remarkably if that slant was coming. He’ll never get credit because nobody will ever totally believe it. After all, how could a coach behave THAT differently from every other coach in that exact same spot?
The answer: He’s not like any other coach. Of anyone — seriously, of anyone — he’s the one guy who would stand there and say, “You know what? I think Pete Carroll might screw this up. I’m not doing anything even if I don’t have the best hand. I’m gonna let him raise the pot. CHECK.” The rest was history. Whenever you’re arguing about the greatest NFL coaches of all time, just remember the final minute of Super Bowl XLIX. The man finally gave us his version of Jordan’s game winner in the ’98 Finals. And like everything else that happened with the great Bill Belichick over the years, nobody totally believed him."
