Bill Belichick and Tom Brady became the first head coach/quarterback duo in NFL history to win five Super Bowl championships together.
The New England Patriots took a beating against the Atlanta Falcons, coming from behind to win 34-28 their fifth Super Bowl of the last 16 years.
“It’s hard to imagine us winning,” the 39-year-old Brady said. “It took a lot of great plays and that’s why you play to the end.”
Brady finished 43 for 62, the most attempts in Super Bowl history, for 466 yards, also a record, and two touchdowns.
“There were a lot of plays that coach talks about, you never know which one is going to be the Super Bowl winner,” Brady said. “There were probably 30 of those plays tonight and any one of those were different, the outcome could have been different.”
Only three other coach/quarterback duos have qualified for four Super Bowls: Dallas’ Tom Landry and Roger Staubach, Buffalo’s Marv Levy and Jim Kelly and Pittsburgh’s Chuck Noll and Terry Bradshaw.
The Noll-Bradshaw combination won four Super Bowl championships.
In his seventh Super Bowl start, Brady entered Sunday night as the all-time Super Bowl leader in passing yards (1,605) and touchdowns (13). He also entered the game with 24 career playoff wins, the most of any quarterback in the history of the NFL. The game marked his 34th career playoff start, which is also a league record for a player at any position. Brady’s boyhood idol, Joe Montana, won four Super Bowls, so now Brady stands alone as the only quarterback in NFL history to win five.
Meanwhile, Belichick breaks a tie with Noll for most Super Bowl titles by a head coach. Noll’s titles came in the 1974, 1975, 1978 and 1979 seasons. Belichick is the first to do so in the salary cap era, with championships in the 2001, 2003, 2004, 2014 and 2016 seasons.
Belichick now has 26 career playoff wins, increasing his own record, as Tom Landry (20) is in the No. 2 spot. Including his time as an assistant coach, this marked Belichick’s 10th Super Bowl appearance, the most of any coach in NFL history.
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