Bill Belichick Wages War On Meteorologists
BOSTON (CBS) -- Bill Belichick is one of the greatest coaches in football history. Among those who have coached at least 200 NFL games, Belichick has the fifth-highest winning percentage. He's one of just four men to win three Super Bowls. His playoff win percentage of .679 ranks second all time among coaches with at least 20 playoff games of experience, and he's guaranteed a place in Canton at the Pro Football Hall of Fame when he wraps up his career.
So, long story short, the man is pretty excellent at his job. And though he always expresses a tremendous amount of respect for his opponent every week, even if that opponent is obviously a lousy team, he apparently does not extend the same courtesy to the brave men and women who try their best to predict the unpredictable New England weather every single day.
This development came along on Friday morning, after Belichick was asked about the expected weather conditions for Sunday afternoon's game against the Broncos.
"I'm just telling you -- if I did my job the way they do theirs, I'd be here about a week," the coach said, indicating he'd quickly be fired for being so wrong.
Ouch.
That was hardly the only thing that Belichick had to say about the weather forecasters.
"Based on the forecasts we've gotten so far this year, none of them have been close to what game conditions were. There was 100 percent chance of rain last week, and the only water I saw was on the Gatorade table. It is what it is," he said. "My experience going with the forecast in this area, two days before the game, I'd bet a lot that they're wrong -- just based on history, because they're almost always wrong. An hour before the game? Maybe. You might have something to work with there. But if you start game-planning for what the weather is going to be, and you game-plan wrong, you've wasted a lot of time.
"When you walk out on the field, that's really when you know what it is," he added. "The rest of it really is just a lot of hot air."
Belichick's comments were in part just him taking the chance to relate to us commoners with a little joke, as the coach's legendary preparation work has often taken weather forecasts into account. In fact, it was just two weeks ago when Belichick had his team practice with wet footballs to prepare for the rain that was in the forecast for the Thursday night game against the Jets. It was not the first time the coach has employed such tactics, though on this particular occasion, as Belichick mentioned, the heavy rainfall never came. So perhaps Belichick still feels like he got burned by that forecast, and the meteorologists are going to have to earn back his trust.
Though bashing the hard-working weathermen and women is not new to Belichick, either.
"I don't know how it's going to be. You listen to four forecasts, you get four different versions of it," he said of the weather back in December 2007.
Well, forecasts call for cold and windy conditions on Sunday afternoon into the evening at Gillette Stadium.
Perhaps if the forecast holds true, Bill won't be so harsh the next time he's asked about the weather. Plus, he admits that if predicting the weather were his job, he certainly wouldn't be in the Meteorologist Hall of Fame.
"We played down in Miami two years ago and there was a zero percent chance of rain. Zero. And it rained," he said. "Look, I'm not saying I could do it better than them. I'm just saying they're wrong a lot. That's a fact, they're wrong a lot. We all make mistakes. I'm not being critical of them. I don't think you can [prepare] based on that [Friday forecast]."
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