We Should Have Listened to Bill Belichick
The Patriots coach left the Jets behind 23 years ago. Why are the rest of us still here?
In a few weeks, the New York Jets will finish another miserable NFL season with a visit to Foxboro to play the New England Patriots. Over the last 30 years, it’s safe to say that the Patriots have become the team’s most hated foe. The embodiment of that hatred, now that quarterback Tom Brady has departed New England and retired from professional football, is invested in their head coach, Bill Belichick.
The reasons are quite simple. After the end of the 1999 NFL season, one that had started with high hopes but ended with the Jets finishing with an 8-8 record and out of the playoffs (same old Jets), Head Coach Bill Parcells surprised the team by announcing his retirement from coaching after three seasons with the team. As per prior agreement with the Jets, Parcells would remain with the organization as General Manager, and his top assistant, Belichick, would be elevated to head coach.
Belichick, who had worked under Parcells with the New York Giants and the Patriots before joining him with the Jets, and had already served as head coach with the Cleveland Browns, had other ideas. After three stints as second banana under Parcells, Belichick was keen to shop for the groceries and cook the dinner himself, so to speak.
On January 4, 2000, just one day after Parcells had made his announcement, Belichick stepped to a podium at the Jets training facility at Hofstra University on Long Island. Originally, the press conference was intended to announce his elevation to the top job. Instead, after scrawling that he was resigning as “HC of the NYJ” on a scrap of paper, he stepped to the microphone to announce that he was done with the Jets.
Here’s what Belichick told ESPN’s Rich Cimini on the 20th anniversary of the event:
"Essentially, the problem I had with the whole arrangement eventually was, when all this transpired, there was no owner. Mr. [Leon] Hess passed away before the '99 season. There were two potential owners, and that was [Woody] Johnson and [Charles] Dolan. I hadn't spoken with either one, but I had issues with both. It wasn't Mr. Hess anymore, which was the original agreement. ... That whole ownership configuration at that time was a major factor in my decision."
Belichick has called it “one of the great moments” of his career, and it’s hard to argue with him. And while there’s no obvious evidence there was collusion behind the scenes, Patriots owner Bob Kraft and Parcells soon got busy on a deal that let Belichick head to Foxboro in exchange for some draft picks.
It was the best trade that the Patriots ever made.
He left for New England and won six Super Bowls in nine appearances, cementing his reputation as the most successful NFL head coach of all time, and the Patriots as the league’s premier franchise. He’s won more than 300 regular season NFL games, trailing only legends like George Halas and Don Shula. And ever since arriving in New England, he’s taken the Jets to the woodshed on the field, compiling a 39-12 record against them, winning the last 15 games in a row, including an ugly 15-10 win in Week 3 this year at Met Life Stadium.
But the rest of this season has been less than stellar for Belichick, as the vaunted “Patriot Way” has yielded to the ancient Roman axiom, “Sic transit gloria mundi.” Following Brady’s departure from New England after the 2019 NFL season, the Patriots have only made the playoffs once, and have a record well under .500, the worst stretch in Belichick’s head coaching career since his time in Cleveland. And while Kraft has been supportive, he’s also made noises that somebody has to be held accountable for performance on the field. One of Kraft’s sons is an old friend of Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris, and there’s talk that the Patriots would be willing to package Belichick off to the nation’s capital to re-invigorate that franchise, much as Vince Lombardi did when he left Green Bay for Washington.1
So if Belichick’s stretch in New England ends with January 7th’s game, there’s a familiar symmetry to it: the road that began with the Jets will end with the Jets, a franchise that Belichick despises.23 Safe to say, for most Jets fans, the feeling is mutual, but I am not one of them. While I haven’t been happy seeing Belichick and the Patriots pile up the championships, curb stomping the Jets repeatedly over the years, it’s impossible to deny that he made the right decision.
Take yourself back to January 2000. Belichick could have made the safe move — he was under contract and would be paid in any event — and stayed in a situation he knew would not give him the control he needed to assemble and coach a winning football team. Instead, he quit, bet on himself, and won. If you’ve ever left a job for a better opportunity, it’s impossible to find fault with that decision. In fact, you’d hope that if you were faced with a similar situation, you’d make the same call.
And it wasn’t just Belichick’s evaluation of his own worth that was on the money, it was his evaluation of the Jets as a franchise. Does anyone believe that an unhappy Belichick working under Parcells would have won even a single Super Bowl, never mind six in nine tries? While Jets fans might not want to admit it out loud, there’s been something deeply dysfunctional about the team for more than 50 years, an evaluation that’s been borne out by sustained failure on the field. Belichick saw what was coming under new owner Woody Johnson, and knew exactly when to get out.
Which begs a question: after all of this misery, why is there anyone left rooting for this franchise, never mind paying for tickets and team-branded merchandise? After all, we’re not just fans, we’re customers. And for as long as I can remember, the product the Jets put on the field has been fatally flawed in one way or another. The latest embarrassment, a 34-13 home loss to the Miami Dolphins, is just another object lesson. I fired up Amazon Prime Video about 90 minutes before kickoff, only to see a distinct tint of aqua blue of the Miami Dolphins in MetLife Stadium’s lower bowl.4
At least the paying fans had the good sense to skip the game in favor of fighting for their lives amidst Black Friday crowds at Roosevelt Field and Paramus Mall. And having some work to do of my own, I opted to skip the “Black Friday” game too.
What did we miss? Only another colossal disaster that’s already earned a place in Jets history beside Mark Sanchez’s “Butt Fumble” and Dan Marino’s “Fake Spike.”
Now that the Jets have lost four straight games, and the season is effectively over, the only game I’m even mildly interested in is the season finale against New England. If it happens to be Belichick’s last game with the Patriots, I’m sure some Jets fans would enjoy seeing “Gang Green” send him off the field and into retirement with a loss at home. Then again, after watching more than 50 years of pyrrhic victories, I fear that defeating Belichick on this given Sunday could very well catapult New England into into possession of the top pick in next year’s NFL Draft. And given how Belichick and Kraft have always seemed to be several moves ahead of the Jets for more two decades, I can’t discount that outcome hasn’t been the plan all along.
My wife believes that a return to New York with the Giants would be a more appropriate coda for Belichick. I think she’s right. As for the Los Angeles Chargers, meh.
Eric Mangini, who was an assistant under Belichick in New England, blew the whistle on the Patriots when he was Jets head coach in the “Spygate” scandal in 2007.
During an ESPN documentary that detailed the relationship between Parcells and Belichick, the duo declined to be filmed inside the Jets locker room, or even talk much about their three seasons together on the sideline with the team.
The show was hosted by Charissa Thompson, George Orwell’s favorite sideline reporter.