Ron Borges aka classless scumbag (ep)

Belichick lost his players, not his brilliance
Patriots' struggles show there's no such thing as genius in NFL

COMMENTARY

By Ron Borges

NBCSports.com contributor

Updated: 1:52 a.m. ET Nov. 24, 2005

The late Steve Belichick, an assistant football coach and legendary advance scout at the Naval Academy for 33 years, always used to bristle at the notion that his son was a genius,' a title that often comes to successful coaches.

"Genius!'' the senior Belichick would snort when the suggestion was made. "You're talking about someone who walks up and down a football field for three hours.''

This in no way meant he did not respect the job his son, Bill, had been doing with the New England Patriots, winners of three of the last four Super Bowls. It was just that after having spent a lifetime as a coach himself, he understood that in many ways a coach's genius is directly proportional to the talent of his "students.'' In otherwords, a coach is only as good as the players he's coaching.

An extremely gifted and talented coach, like Belichick, could indeed maximize his players' talents. He could even concoct from time to time schemes to hide a particular weakness here and there, a skill not the sole provence of any one coach but a trait of all of the best ones.

But genius implies another thing. Genius implies a level of intellect and understanding vastly superior to his peers. Genius, by definition, means "exceptional or transcendent intellectual and creative power,'' according to the American Heritage Dictionary. A brilliant football coach may be many things, but the possessor of "transcendent intellecutal and creative power'' would seem not to be one of them, as Steve Belichick's disgust with the notion implied.

Once a coach Bill Belichick greatly admires, Denver's Mike Shanahan, was considered a genius. Although his passion and obsession was on the opposite side of the ball as Belichick's, Shanahan was touted in the late 1990s much the same way Belichick has been the past few years.

Just as media members now imply that Belichick re-invented defense, Shanahan was seen as his offensive equivalent. This all came to a head when Shanahan's Broncos won Super Bowls in 1998 and '99. Who could match wits with such a coach? Clearly no one.

Then John Elway retired and Terrell Davis' knee fell apart, and Mike Shanahan is no longer talked about as a genius. Why? Because his teams haven't won a playoff game since Elway left the game. So who was the genius in Denver really? The coach or the quarterback?

These days it is Belichick whose resume as the game's latest genius is coming up a bit short. With a team devastated by injury, his Patriots are 6-4 and have been crushed by the likes of the Indianapolis Colts and San Diego Chargers, and trampled by Shanahan's Broncos. Where once they believed in New England that no matter what happened Belichick had the answer, now they are beginning to finally understand that you need the players.

Does anyone really believe that suddenly Belichick forgot how to run a defense?

If it was simply genius that was necessary, wouldn't he have come up with adjustments and changes to shore up these problems?

Or was it simply a case of Steve Belichick understanding all along that you can have all the books written about you that you want (the younger Belichick has had two in the last two years) but that doesn't change the fundamental fact of coaching life — nobody's a genius if he doesn't have great players.

Take safety Rodney Harrisonn out of the secondary and suddenly not only is there a hole at his position but there's a far less productive player at the other safety position too.

Take Tom Brady out of the Patriots offense and suddenly ... Oh, Lord don't even think about that.

Bill Walsh is considered by many to be one of the greatest offensive coaches ever to lead an NFL team. What he did with the 49ers is the measuring stick of his era. Yet when he had Steve DeBerg running his West Coast offense instead of Joe Montana, no one thought of him as a genius. So what was he doing then? Calling different plays?

This is not meant to disparage Bill Belichick. He is one of the finest coaches of his time and the most successful coach of the New Millenium, having won three Super Bowls in the salary cap era. He is a brilliant tactician both during the week and on game day.

But the fact is he is not a genius' any more than Tony Dungy is now, or Walsh and Shanahan once were. They are all good coaches. So is Andy Reid and Bill Parcells and Joe Gibbs and a number of other coaches.

The coaching job Belichick did to win his first Super Bowl over the high-flying St. Louis Rams was a remarkable plan, a tour de force in which he used the Rams' reliance on throwing the ball against them. His counterpart on the other sideline, Mike Martz, has never been accused of being a genius and he proved why in that game, stubbornly refusing to abandon the pass despite the inability of New England to stop Marshall Faulk.

The plan was genius. So was the execution. But if asked to run the same plan with the team he has this year, one doubts Bill Belichick would have much success against that Rams team.

Such is the fragile nature of genius among coaches. Bill Belichick is among the finest coaches in professional football. He is brilliant. But, as his father well knew, he's no genius except when there's enough talent on the field to make him one.