Bill Belichick Named Coach-of-the-Year
January 4, 2008 by David Kindervater
Filed under New England Patriots
Blogging the National Football League, Blogging the NFL
New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick was named the National Football League’s 2007 Coach-of-the-Year yesterday. It made sense. His team was the first-ever to finish an NFL regular season at 16-0. But I think the award should have gone to someone else for one simple reason. Coach Belichick was caught cheating. It’s really as simple as that. He broke the rules of the NFL. He was fined and his team was punished. Then he’s rewarded with the Coach-of-the-Year honor? It doesn’t make any sense.
In the strategic sense, Coach Belichick is the best coach in the NFL. I admire his week-by-week approach and one-game-at-a-time philosophy. He’s a football genius. You won’t find a more prepared, more brilliant, more devoted coach in the NFL. What he did this season in leading the Pats to a 16-0 record is remarkable and may not ever be matched again. But he broke the rules in that first game of the 2007 season (aka Spygate), so I don’t think he should win this award. Did his cheat factor into the outcome of that game against the Jets? No. Be serious. But that doesn’t matter. He still cheated. It’s not a matter of opinion. It’s an admitted fact. He was fined $500,000. His team was fined an additional $250,000. A first-round Draft pick was taken away. He apologized. Case closed and let’s move on, but I wouldn’t reward the guy with this honor based on that fact.
There are plenty of other coaches who played within the rules (as far as we know). The award should belong to someone else.
I completely agree! For all those young football fans out there, one of the most widely covered news organizations tells them it’s ok to cheat, in fact we applaud it.
I disagree. Why? Because of the “as far as we know” part in your closing paragraph. I think Roger Goodell got more than an eyeful when he “investigated” New England in response to the so-called Spygate and that he had two choices: either assess NE fines and draft pick penalties and sweep the rest under the rug OR blow open the whole NFL with Mitchell Report-style findings. Something tells me The Commish and other NFL insiders know a lot more than we the people do . . . in other words, Belichick got caught, but he isn’t the only one.