Again, what did he do in Cleveland pre Brady, and New England pre and post Brady? He is great. But i counter all his game plans were complimented by having Brady, who could outscore teams, or dink and dunk teams and play ball control. Then Brady leaves and wins another one while the Pats rebuild has been as you said a dud, because Tom Brady isn't easily replaced.
Cleveland was trending up, made the playoffs, even beat Parcells in New England. The whole team disintegrated after Modell announced he was moving them to Baltimore in the middle of the night.
The Patriots were 6-10 in 1995, then Belichick arrives and takes over the defense, and they go to the Super Bowl the very next year.
He moves on to take over the Jets' defense, they were just abysmal, and by the second year, they are in the AFCCG.
In that first year, Brady was not the guy he became later on. Look at the postseason. A lot of the Patriot points came off turnovers and special teams, the defense shut down the Greatest Show on turf. Heck, even in the championship game, the defense was largely credited with the win, and Brady wasn't even the QB for that game. It was Bledsoe.
I give Brady all the credit for the following years, even though the 2003 and 2004 defense was lights out.
He was key in the Seattle Super Bowl.
In the last one against the Rams, they gave up 3 points. I just checked to see where those Rams were. They scored the 11th most points in NFL history at the time. The Patriots D gave up 3 points.
This doesn't really matter a great deal to me since I'm a huge Brady fan, but IF I had to split the Super Bowl credit between them, I'd say Brady is responsible for 4 wins, Belichick for 2 wins.
People also need to realize what happened to the Patriots in 2020. They unwound the team, they took huge deadcap hits from the previous seasons, and 13 key starters left the team, mostly because they were old and at the end of their careers. Look at all the players who are gone: Edelman, Gronk, Hightower, McCourty, Chung, Gilmore, James White, Van Noy, Collins, Flowers, Thuney, Mason, Cannon, Harmon, the good JC Jackson, Gostkowski, Elandon Roberts. You can't lose this many veterans, many of them Pro Bowlers, and continue winning.
They did a total reset, a total rebuild. The only player who was mistakenly let go out of all of these is Thuney. The rest are out of football.
It's a brand new team, and it's mostly been rebuilt the proper way. They need a decent QB, not an all-time great HOFer or even an All-Pro.
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