HOUSTON — You’d like to think that somewhere deep in the part of his soul that so clearly reveres the history of coaching — and the men involved in creating that history — that it makes Bill Belichick smile when he thinks about the moment when two vast coaching goliaths passed each other on the epic timeline, one saying goodbye while the other was still saying hello.
It was clear enough on Belichick’s mind that he referenced it Sunday night, after his Patriots had won him a record fifth Super Bowl with a 34-28 overtime comeback thriller over Atlanta, thereby breaking the tie he’d held for two years with Chuck Noll, who won four with the Steelers from 1974-1979.
“Chuck Noll was a tremendous coach who left a tremendous legacy,” Belichick said. “I coached against Chuck in his final game.”
It’s true. You could look it up. It was Dec. 22, 1991, a frosty day at Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium and both Noll’s Steelers and Belichick’s Cleveland Browns were playing out the strings of forgettable seasons, both at 6-9 for the year. It was Belichick’s first year, Noll’s last of 23. The Steelers won that day behind Bubby Brister, 17-10 despite Bernie Kosar throwing for 335 yards against them. It was the last of Noll’s 193 victories in the NFL.
It was the 10th of Belichick’s 115 losses — though right now, it’s hard to believe he’s ever lost near that many.
Now, a quarter century later, someone asked Belichick how it felt to have the Super Bowl record alone. Terry Bradshaw, who won all four of Noll’s Super Bowls with him, had already declared Belichick the best ever during the on-field celebration, and Pats fans had roared their approval.
“I always admired the way he coached and the way his teams played,” Belichick said. “It’s an honor to be mentioned in the same sentence as Chuck Noll. But tonight’s about what our team accomplished, not about some record.”
He’s right and he’s wrong, of course, because everything the Pats do — the good and the bad, and every nook and cranny in between — is a reflection of Belichick because that’s the culture Belichick wanted, the one he’s created, and one that has now yielded five Super Bowl championships to Foxborough, Mass., which for decades was perhaps the single unlikeliest dateline in the NFL to expect a dynasty to happen.
But for him there is always a common mantra:
“It’s all about the players,” he said.
And on this night, when the outlook was so grim, when the odds were stacked so severely against them, those players delivered themselves a championship. And delivered their coach to an unprecedented plateau in the history of his sports in the post-merger NFL.
“It was just an unbelievable game,” Belichick said. “These guys competed so hard, down 21-0, 21-3, 28-3, missed an extra point, 28-9, couple of two-point conversions. But they just kept fighting … it was a total team win.”
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