Bill Belichick As Coach Of The Year Favorite Makes A Whole Lot Of Sense
By Michael Hurley, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- Bill Belichick is the greatest coach of his generation. He may be the greatest coach of all time. At the very least, he possesses one of the most impressive football minds the game has ever seen. Nobody disputes this.
He's won six Super Bowls as a head coach (plus two more as a coordinator) and his 31 playoff wins are 11 more than anybody else. Nobody will ever catch him.
And yet ... the man has only won the AP NFL Coach of the Year Award three times. He has not won it in a decade.
That very well could change in 2020. At least, that's what the sportsbooks believe.
At Bet MGM, Belichick is listed with +1000 odds to win the Coach of the Year Award, making him the favorite over Mike Vrabel (+1400), Mike McCarthy (+1400), Kyle Shanahan (+1600), Frank Reich (+1600), Kliff Kingsbury (+1600), and Sean McDermott (+1800).
Sports Betting Dime tracks multiple sportsbooks, noting that Belichick sits at +825, with the next-closest coach being Arians at +1400, followed by Shanahan at +1600.
SportsLine has Belichick at +850, with Arians at +1200 and Shanahan, McCarthy Klingsbury and Reich all at +1400.
Draftkings has Belichick at +1000, followed by McCarthy at +1400, and Arians and Shanahan at +1600.
Clearly, the books like Belichick's chances.
Coincidentally, they also like Arians' chances of winning the award for the third time, largely because of the addition of one Tom Brady to the mix. But it's that departure of Brady that boosts Belichick's chances of getting the recognition in New England.
While the "BELICHICK OR BRADY" debate often veers into the absurd, the reality is that Brady's presence and greatness certainly hurt Belichick in the Coach of the Year Award department. Instead of voting for the best coach every year, voters tended to pick coaches who led teams that exceeded expectations. Even if Belichick steered the Patriots to a 14-2 record, that was more or less expected. (When you go 16-0 in a season, you do set your own bar pretty high.) Meanwhile the coach who took a 5-11 team to the playoffs a year later became a lock to win the award.
In terms of egregious misfires on the award with regard to Belichick, the 2001, 2004, 2008, and 2016 seasons stand out as particularly notable.
It's obviously a regular-season award, so the improbable run to a Super Bowl title could not have been considered, but in 2001, the Patriots were that team that went from 5-11 to first-round playoff bye in just a year's time. Add in the bold decision to stick with the young nobody named Brady over the established Pro Bowler in Drew Bledsoe, and you've got a Coach of the Year layup. Instead, the award went to Dick Jauron in Chicago.
Belichick deserved it in 2004, when the Patriots went 14-2 en route to a second-straight Super Bowl. Instead it went to Marty Schottenheimer, who led the Chargers to a 12-4 record ... tied for being the third-best record ... in the AFC.
In 2008, the Patriots did lose just about every important game of the year. But going 11-5 with a quarterback who hadn't played since high school was nevertheless an admirable feat. But that year, the award went to ... Mike Smith.
Mike Smith was the Coach of the Year.
Mike Smith. Of the Falcons. Who didn't even win their division.
Not a great choice.
In 2016, the Patriots checked in at a very casual 14-2 by year's end. They had the third-highest scoring offense and the No. 1 scoring defense. They were a wagon. (They also didn't have their starting quarterback for the first four weeks of the season, during which they won a nationally televised game on a short week with a rookie quarterback.)
But the voters determined that Jason Garrett was a better coach than Bill Belichick that year. Wonder if they'd like to have that one back.
With the exception of 2008, the presence of Brady managed to overshadow some of the coaching brilliance that had been on display year in and year out. As a result, Belichick's been out of the Coach of the Year conversation for a decade.
It's right, then, that he's now considered a favorite for the award. Even though logic makes clear that Belichick and Brady both benefited from each other, the voting tendencies shows that the media members tasked with making their selections have discounted much of Belichick's work over the past 20 years. While Belichick probably preferred winning Super Bowls to awards, now there is an opportunity for him to show those voters that he's not a bad coach. He might even be better than Mike Smith.
Of course, the season could go sideways on Belichick. After engineering the league's best defense last year, the coach had to watch as starters Jamie Collins, Kyle Van Noy and Danny Shelton departed via free agency. Duron Harmon and Elandon Roberts left as well. Over on offense, a unit that was mediocre even with the greatest quarterback of all time didn't make any upgrades with veterans, limited by an uncharacteristically tight salary cap situation.
Add the extremely challenging schedule the Patriots are facing, and it's certainly not an ideal situation. But Belichick tends to do his best work in the middle of a storm. If he can ride Jarrett Stidham and get some meaningful contributions from rookies and second-year players to 10 or 11 wins (after drafting a Division II safety with his top pick), it would count as a "down" year in New England. But the voters sure do love themselves a story of a team outperforming expectations, so it likely would be enough for some shiny new hardware to make its way to Belichick's tastefully decorated seaside escape.
You can email Michael Hurley or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.
