Patriots coach Bill Belichick rolled up his sleeves at the start of today’s end-of-season press conference, perhaps a sign that he knows he needs to get down to work after his team missed the playoffs.
Belichick confirmed that he will be back for a 24th season as the Patriots’ head coach and vowed that he will undertake a thorough process of making the team better.
“The process will start today,” Belichick said.
Belichick said missing the playoffs is not where the standard is in New England.
“Nobody’s satisfied with that. That’s not our goal,” he said. “There’s accountability everywhere, that starts with me.”
Belichick declined to say whether Matt Patricia and Joe Judge, the much-maligned assistant coaches who oversaw the offense this season, would be back in the same roles, or whether he might hire an offensive coordinator from the outside.
“We’ll look at everything,” Belichick said.
The reality is that Belichick has already accomplished everything he needs to accomplish to be recognized as one of the all-time great coaches in the history of football. But it’s noteworthy that all of those accomplishments came with Tom Brady as his quarterback: Belichick went 219-64 in the regular season with Brady and made the playoffs in 17 of 18 seasons. But Belichick has now coached 10 seasons without Brady (five in Cleveland, one with Drew Bledsoe, one with Matt Cassel and three since Brady went to Tampa Bay), and Belichick has only made the playoffs in two of those 10 years. Overall Belichick is below .500 without Brady at 79-87.
Belichick acknowledged today that he has to get better results. Without Brady, the results have not been good.
