Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio Writes Scalding Opinion On Bill Belichick's Head Coaching Credentials
By Michael Hurley, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- With football camps actually taking place across the country, you'd think there would be little to no need for sports media types to make preposterously inflammatory comments in order to artificially create debate, controversy and attention.
Yet for the second straight day, we've all been handed a whopper. A doozy, if you will.
A real humdinger.
Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio managed to get around to Bill Belichick's "Jesus Christ" press conference comment shortly before noon on Friday, a couple of hours after a frustrated Belichick muttered it into a microphone at Gillette Stadium in response to an objectively silly line of questioning by a reporter.
But that wasn't Florio's lede. Nope, this was Florio's lede. As a warning, you ought to buckle your seat belt and put on your protective glasses. This one's hot.
If Patriots coach Bill Belichick didn't have four pelts on the wall, he probably wouldn't still be an NFL head coach.
He'd be a defensive coordinator, most likely. But not a head coach. He simply doesn't have the temperament to survive as a head coach if he were anything another than one of the best head coaches in NFL history.
Whoa, mama!
Hachi machi!
That computer used to write that blog is now a flaming puddle of scorching-hot magma. The keyboard has disintegrated. The fingertips are burnt.
Yowzer.
Just when you thought "Tom Brady is going to be 39 years old and will get bad at sports at some point in the next few years so let me declare right now that he's going to be a bum" was as needlessly foolish a take as was humanly possible to construct, you've now got this one.
If Bill Belichick wasn't a historically great coach, if he weren't tied for having the most Super Bowl wins of any head coach in football history, if he didn't consistently lead his team to division titles and double-digit win totals, if he weren't exceptionally intelligent in all aspects of of the game ... then there's just no way he'd be a head coach.
If he weren't able to survive as a head coach in the NFL for 21 years, then there's no way he'd be able to survive as a head coach in the NFL.
That's awesome.
Florio's intended point was that Belichick is gruff, a bit unfriendly and discourteous, when he doesn't particularly care to answer a reporter's question. This behavior is nothing new; it's kind of his MO. Some people love it, other people hate it, but it's been well-established for a long time that if you ask a question which Bill Belichick believes to be foolish, then he is going to treat you like a fool.
And certainly, in his 16 years as head coach of the Patriots, Belichick has shown that he's absolutely unwilling to really explore any hypothetical situations. So in this instance, when a reporter asked, "What happens if Jimmy [Garoppolo] plays better [than Tom Brady]?" the reporter was asking Bill to not only forecast how Garoppolo will do in Weeks 1-4 but how Brady would have done in those same games.
Bill, flustered, replied, "Jesus Christ."
Was it the best response in the world? Certainly not. Bill may have taken it to the limit.
And if any folks wants to rip him because they feel he was being disrespectful, well, this is America. So that's fine. Rip away.
But saying "If he weren't a Hall of Fame coach, he wouldn't have a job as a head coach" is a most peculiar way of navigating these crazy seas that we like to call the internet.
One thing, however is for sure. Trent Dilfer is no doubt reading Florio's blog in a film room down in Bristol, slowly nodding his head in agreement before rising out of his seat and starting a slow clap.
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You can email Michael Hurley or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.
