The history lesson New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick never learned was a very costly omission that may have precluded him from even greater achievement in NFL history.
One might ask what sports lesson might Belichick not have been aware of since he is a student and a respected teacher of NFL history?
The answer may be interesting and for Boston sports fans may hopefully be both informative and of some historical significance.
It’s about how Belichick could have avoided the split with Tom Brady if he were so inclined by using a historical precedent in the situation with his best player.
How New England Patriots Bill Belichick may have cost himself additional Lombardi trophies
Belichick is a student of NFL history and has lived for about 40 years actually participating in that storied history. He’s an encyclopedia of knowledge of the sport.
He’s a lock first-ballot Hall-of-Famer when he hangs up his clipboard. Ain’t that a nice feeling that whatever he does from now won’t impact that reality.
But there is one coaching method that the senior coach seemed to neglect to implement in his long tenure working with the best ever in the NFL, Tom Brady.
So how did master historian Belichick miss this important tactic employed by the best ever coach in another sport with another best-ever player in his career?
It’s a coaching lesson that obviously Belichick did not either know about or else he just didn’t care to implement it.
New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick failed to learn the lessons of history
The lesson to be learned was from another all-world coach who also happened to be another Boston coach. He was a basketball coach.
His name was (especially for our younger readers) Arnold “Red” Auerbach. Red was the coach and then the General Manager plus for the Boston Celtics for decades.
The Celtics practice facility you can see on the Mass Pike is named after this coaching legend. What Belichick could have learned (again if he were interested) emanated from Auerbach.
How good was Russell? Well, he was inducted into the basketball Hall-of-Fame both as a player and as a coach good. He dominated the early NBA. He won 11 championships as a player.
Auerbach was a brilliant coach and talent evaluator. He was also a player acquisition talent almost without peers. The story of how he landed Bill Russell is a fascinating one.
He was also a great people person. Auerbach reportedly reached an interesting accommodation with his best player, Bill Russell.
Russell was the greatest winner in the history of major American team sports. And Red Auerbach knew it.
The lesson Auerbach teaches was this. He seemed he treated his best player, the best player in the league no differently than any other player.
In other words, ostensibly, everyone was treated the same. But, in reality, it was a mirage. His best player was treated, well, as his best player.
The coach wanted Russell to know that he appreciated him as his best player but didn’t want the other players thinking he got special treatment.
Here’s what one source notes,
"During the Celtics run, Bill Russell saw first hand how everyone was handled differently. Auerbach would yell at Tom Sanders and Don Nelson with incredible frequency. Meanwhile, as the best player on the team, Auerbach would often ask for permission to yell at Russell in future practices when he felt the team needed it. Russell would usually comply, but not always."
So, if this is accurate, Auerbach reportedly asked for Russell’s permission to yell at him in practice at times as he would any other player, but it was a sham. He knew it. And Russell knew it.
And that was all that counted. Everyone else must have thought, “If he can yell at Russell, he can certainly yell at me”. Brilliant in its simplicity.
But it was all just an arrangement. And even better put, it was an accommodation for the singular greatness of this once-in-a-lifetime player.
Auerbach’s lesson and the New England Patriots
So how does this intertwine with the New England Patriots? Well, it seems, that Belichick never learned this lesson of sports history.
The lesson is, if you have the best player, the greatest winner in the history of the league with you, you treat him differently. And you make accommodations for him and with him.
Ostensibly, Belichick didn’t implement this lesson in the case of Tom Brady. As a result, he was wrong both historically and specifically in his treatment of Tom Brady.
The reasons for his failure to handle the franchise’s most valuable and valued asset ever are unknown. Maybe it was ego.
Maybe it was a sense that his word was law and no player was above the law. He was the sheriff and there’d be no outlaws in his town. Who knows. It’s irrelevant.
Yet it was the owner, Robert Kraft who made the ultimate mistake in the treatment of his star, Tom Brady.
It was his team, after all, and simply put, Kraft should have made the situation work for Brady for as long as the legend wanted to play. He didn’t and the rest is history.
Yet, it was Belichick, the coach who should have known better and acted differently, as well. He clearly seemed to have failed to learn Auerbach’s lesson.
Maybe he just didn’t care to treat his best player and the best ever in the sport any differently than anyone else. Whatever.
Belichick was mistaken and is now paying the price for the error. Post Tom Brady, his record is eight wins and 12 losses.
He either didn’t know about or failed to learn the lessons of the Red Auerbach/Bill Russell history and it has cost him dearly.
If he had, maybe his greatest player, Tom Brady, would still be winning games and Super Bowls for his team, the New England Patriots.
This singular talent, this relentless pursuer of victories certainly deserved to play out his entire career in Foxborough. It’s a shame that he didn’t.
We’ll probably never know the whole story unless a definitive book is written by one of the two principals. Yet, as they say, it is what it is. We move on.
Fortunately for Patriots fans, we may very well have the next generational great talent on hand right now in Mac Jones. Lucky fans. And, lucky man, Bill Belichick. Very lucky, indeed.