John Riordan: 'What Bill has accomplished will never be replicated'

COACHING DEPARTURES: New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick twirls his whistle during an NFL football practice. Pic: AP Photo/Steven Senne, File

One by one, in the space of less than 24 hours, three coaching departures ruptured American Football, each tremor more dramatic than the last.

How did the US respond to Bill Belichick, Nick Saban and Pete Carroll moving on from the New England Patriots, the University of Alabama and the Seattle Seahawks on Thursday morning and Wednesday afternoon?

The best analogy available is the same way the Premier League would have reacted had two Alex Fergusons ended their tenures within hours of each other, just after Arsène Wenger announced his own retirement.

These are three doyens of the gridiron, their destinies interwoven since the 1990s, who had achieved everything available and who, particularly in the case of Belichick and Saban, will never be surpassed. And make no mistake about it, these were inevitable decisions at the end of unforgettable journeys.

Six Super Bowls for Belichick and seven National Championships for Saban whose big coaching break arrived under Belichick at the Cleveland Browns at the start of the 90s.

Carroll, who was replaced as Patriots coach by Belichick in 2000, was no slouch, winning a National Championship at the University of Southern California in 2005 and a Super Bowl for the Seahawks 10 years later. His college achievement was negated by a player payment scandal that is no longer relevant and which sent him back to the pro game where he locked in his greatness.

The Belichick news blew everything else away. Such was the whiplash of the ESPN scoop just after 7am Boston time Thursday that Saban’s and Carroll's final goodbyes were relegated to yesterday’s news in a cloud of Patriots upheaval.

After weeks of speculation, the mutually agreed parting of the ways hung comfortably from Patriots owner Robert Kraft’s willingness to allow Belichick seek out pastures new without the expectation of compensation. It was a truly dignified end to a relationship which had lifted a city and a region bereft of sporting success since the end of the Larry Bird era at the Celtics.

A Super Bowl was a remote possibility when Kraft controversially lured Belichick away from the New York Jets almost a quarter century ago.

The new boss found himself almost immediately mired in a dilemma which raised the ire of one of the most laser-focused media markets in the nation when he decided to bench quarterback Drew Bledsoe in favour of the relatively unknown Tom Brady.

That tough decision was classic Belichickian in the cold way he was able to remove emotion and self-doubt.

The half dozen championships Belichick and Brady lifted together between 2002 and 2019 changed the sport forever. It might not be a Fergie sort of number but it is unimaginably difficult in the NFL where winning a Super Bowl is akin to a supernova, bright and brilliant and often unrepeatable.

Four years ago, when Tom Brady threw a game-ending interception which handed a playoff clash to the Tennessee Titans, it began a decline which was steady before it was sharp.

Brady moved onto Tampa Bay and won his seventh Super Bowl there, proving he was at the very least a more than equal contributor to the Belichick-Brady partnership.

Meanwhile, back in Boston, Belichick clung desperately to the outsized control he held over coaching and team building as a General Manager, a role unmatched anywhere else in the sport.

It became unworkable but none of it negated the achievement of the other two decades.

"What Bill has accomplished will never be replicated," Kraft told a huge press gathering at the Patriots facility south of Boston lunchtime Thursday Of course six could well have been nine and it's the nature of the man that the Super Bowl losses to Eli Manning's New York Giants twice (twice!) and to the Philadelphia Eagles will sting for the rest of his days, in spite of the glories firmly outweighing anything else.

That first Giants victory destroyed what would have been an undefeated season and it fell awkwardly between two scandals (SpyGate and DeflateGate) that didn’t rise to the level of career and legacy threatening.

“We had a vision of building a one- or two- championship football team here,” Belichick told the assembled media with whom he jousted so often and so intensely. “And (it has) exceeded my wildest, wildest dreams.” 

“Players win games in the NFL and I've been very, very fortunate to coach some of the greatest players that have ever played... some of them already in the Hall of Fame, many more going.

“The fans here are amazing, so many memories... the send offs, the parades, the Sundays... I'll always be a Patriot. I look forward to coming back here. But at this time, we're going to move on, and I'm excited for the future. "