Patriots coach Bill Belichick has stressed the importance of team accomplishments over individual ones throughout his time in New England and it was no different after the team won their fifth Super Bowl under his tutelage.
Belichick is the first head coach to win five Super Bowl rings, moving ahead of the late Chuck Noll with Sunday night’s comeback victory. After the game, Belichick gave the credit to the larger group for being in position to set a new record.
“The most important thing tonight is the team win,” Belichick said. “I am happy for our team, our players and our organization. Everybody worked so hard for this. The only reason I am here is because of what our players did, what our assistant coaches and coordinators did, but Chuck Noll is a tremendous coach. A tremendous legacy. I coached against Chuck in his final game. I always admired Chuck and his style. The way his teams played. It is an honor to even be mentioned in the same sentence with Chuck Noll. Tonight is really about our team. It is not about some record or something like that. It is about what our team accomplished. They deserve to be champions. They earned it tonight.”
Belichick may not be interested in discussing his own legacy, but anyone who is will probably have a hard time coming up with a better one in the Super Bowl era. Five titles and seven trips to the Super Bowl in 17 years of the salary cap era with Patriots rosters that, outside of the quarterback position, have changed over multiple times has built the kind of record that stands alone in NFL coaching history.