Brilliant Belichick could be the best ever

Jan 28, 2015 - 3:57 PM (SportsNetwork.com) - Planning to discuss this weekend's Super Bowl with a die-hard New York Jets fan?

Be prepared to duck.

While Sunday's game will certainly match two of the most successful men to have ever held the title - albeit briefly - of "HC of the NYJ," it's probably little solace to those still waiting for Gang Green to return to the season's biggest game for the first time since the end of the Johnson administration.

Of course, Pete Carroll's rise from one-year flop in New Jersey to repeat title contender in Seattle is a bit easier for the East Rutherford brethren to take, considering he was 6-10 in the 1994 season with the Jets and also flamed out after three years in Foxborough before finally hitting his pro sideline stride.

"I knew Pete was a good coach," former center Jim Sweeney said. "It just took him 20 years to prove it. He was ahead of his time."

It'd be no different than if Mark Sanchez went on to become an MVP somewhere else.

He had his chance in New York. And if he channels Joe Montana in another city, bully for him.

When it comes to the guy coaching the other team at University of Phoenix Stadium, though, don't expect the conversation to have quite the same level of empathy. Because while Bill Belichick is hardly a heartthrob to any fan base west of the Massachusetts state line, there's still a unique enmity for him among loyalists to the franchise from which his abrupt, hand-scribbled exit 15 years ago remains a scar.

The players, front office and stadium have all changed since Belichick addressed a stunned media horde in January 2000, claiming he was uneasy about an imminent transition following the death of owner Leon Hess - the man who'd reserved the head coaching spot for him upon Bill Parcells' retirement.

But to Jets fans then and now, it wasn't just that he left, it was how he did it.

And it's no longer just hard feelings; it's envy over all the #$#%@$@ success he's had since.

"I knew we were losing something pretty special," said Victor Green, who played three years under Belichick as an assistant in New York and one under him as head man in New England. "I always tell people, Belichick is the best coach at every position in the NFL. That's how highly I think of him."

And lest anyone outside of New York forget, this year's recovery from pedestrian 2-2 to dominant 14-4 (including playoffs) isn't exactly the first time Belichick's shown he can make something out of nothing in New England. He was 5-11 in his first year with the Patriots after succeeding Carroll there, then recovered from a 0-2 start the next while riding an unheralded sixth- round QB to a championship.

An unheralded sixth-round QB, by the way, that the New York Daily News claimed in October would have been a Jet on draft day had Parcells not overruled veteran scout Jesse Kaye to select cornerback Tony Scott, who ultimately played in all of 23 NFL games before fading to anonymity.

Anyway, that unheralded QB - a kid named Tom Brady - got his first extended field time the day New York linebacker Mo Lewis put Drew Bledsoe out with a sideline hit in Week 2, and, though the Jets went on to take the game behind Vinny Testaverde, it's pretty safe to say the other guys have won the war.

Belichick is 21-10 against New York since taking the New England job - including 21-8 with Brady - and the coach/QB duo has won the AFC East in all but two of the 14 years since Brady's ascension to full-time starter, including each and every season since 2003 in which the signal-caller has gone injury-free.

Still, it's not as if all of Belichick's Patriot achievements have come at the Jets' expense.

He's a full 99 games over .500 - 155-56, to be exact - against the rest of the league in 15 regular seasons, has won at least 11 games no fewer than 11 times and has advanced for at least one playoff victory on 10 occasions. The first three of those 10 occasions yielded wins in Super Bowls XXXVI, XXXVIII and XXXIX, before his 16-0 and 13-3 teams were beaten by the New York Giants in XLII and XLVI.

He remains the only coach to win three championships in four seasons.

Not bad for a guy who, like Carroll, many dismissed as a failure after a five- year run in Cleveland during which he managed just one winning season and ended the stint with a 5-11 record in a 1995 debacle remembered mainly for owner Art Modell's decision to move the franchise to Baltimore.

Modell had declared two days after the midseason announcement that "Bill Belichick will be my head coach in 1996," but he recanted after the team lost six of its final seven games and removed Belichick to clear space for Ted Marchibroda, who lasted three seasons and went 16-31-1.

"The Browns were his training camp, his boot camp for success," said Mary Kay Cabot, who covered the team for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. "There were mistakes he made here on players, personnel, staff (and) public relations. But he's the master of adjustments. He learned how to do it right by everything he did wrong here. He really is brilliant."

Belichick spent the next season under Parcells at New England, then followed him for three more years in New York before firing the front-office shot that permanently altered two franchises. And come Sunday, if he manages to succeed Carroll's hold on the Lombardi Trophy the way he succeeded him as coach of the Patriots, it'll leave a new mark that Jets fans might feel for another 15 years.

"What the evidence does show, quite clearly, is that Belichick is not just a good coach but a great coach," NBCSports.com columnist Michael David Smith said.

"If his team wins (against Seattle), it may be time to proclaim Belichick the best coach ever."