Is it possible to teach someone to be a successful HC? I don't think it is, I don't believe there is a secret sauce. I mean obviously you can learn a lot but there's no way to know what would Bill do in a particular situation because every football game is going to present it's own unique challenges.
If being a successful coach could be taught I gotta assume Don Shula woulda told his son Mike Shula his secret sauce. Mike Shula should right now be a successful NFL head coach since he had/has unlimited access to a top 3 coach of all time. But that's just not how it works all you can do is take what you learned and incorporate it into your own philosophies.
I'm not sure there is a conclusive answer to that one. But it is definitely possible to share information, and that's got to be the first step. It doesn't seem like Belichick shares the information upon which he is making decisions, so his coaches observe the decision but not necessarily understand the full dynamics being considered.
Most coaches share that entire process, and it's easier to put the observations into context with that information. That certainly facilitates the learning because the young coach can then assess those valuable bits of information and make informed decisions based upon the correct criteria. But if they are never told, it's more extrapolation, where they guess what they think are the important variables, and they may miss some of the important ones and not consider their impact. These muscles get flexed and now there is a muscle memory of making incomplete analyses. IMHO, that's why Belichick's coaches have been unimpressive. They make the usual amount of inaccuracies and the other coaches are so compartmentalized that the teaching isn't happening. When the older coach says it is these 5 factors you need to balance, the younger coach probably recognized 4 of them, but learning there is a 5th factor he didn't consider helps him correctly assess that situation in the future and helps him learn how to make fully informed decisions.
With Belichick's coaching tree record, it puts enormous pressure on the young coaches to know everything independently … and no one can do that. This is my fear, that Belichick has so fiercely protected his method that it stunts the learning process, which is my theory on why his coaching tree has been so unimpressive … the Belichick compartmentalization system limits and discourages teaching. He doesn't share the secret sauce. But who knows, that's my $0.02, and I could easily be wrong.
I'm not going to argue that Belichick is not a good coach. However, without Brady at QB, Belichick has been a below average HC. Bill Parcells, Pete Carroll, Marty Schotenheimer along with others have fared better with QBs other than Brady that Belichick has coached. And of course Brady has not played under any other HC other than Belichick.
The 2008 season had mostly to do with the AFC East getting to play a cupcake schedule being matched up against the AFC West and NFC West.
Out of those two divisions only the Cardinals had a winning record at 9-7 and that is because they went 6-0 within their division which was horrible. Those two divisions were so bad the NFC West went 13-33 in games outside of their division and the AFC West went 14-32; combined those two divisions went 27-65 outside of their division.
The soft schedule is how Miami went from 1-15 the year before to 11-5 that year. Miami went 7-1 against those two conferences 4-4 against everyone else. The Bills went 6-2 against those two conferences and 1-7 against everyone else.
New England went 7-1 against those two divisions, swept the Bills and split with the Dolphins and Jets to get to 11 wins. Two years later in KC, Matt Cassel put up the same starting record (10-5), made the playoffs and had a much better year passing than under Belichick.
Drew Bledsoe was 5-13 under Belichick at NE and was in his prime. Bledsoe was 32-27 under Parcells and and 26-20 under Pete Carroll in NE previous to Belichick. Bledsoe went to Buffalo and was 23-25 (14-18 under Gregg Williams; 9-7 under Mike Mularkey) as a starter and 12-10 in Dallas (under Parcells) after leaving NE.
Bernie Kosar was 30-17 under Marty Schottenheimer in Cleveland, 12-16-1 under Bud Carson and Shofner, and 11-18 under Belichick.
Vinnie Testaverde went 16-15 over while in Cleveland. Testaverde tenure with Jets that began 3 years after leaving Cleveland was 25-16 (12-2 under Parcells).
As for overall record with and without Brady...
Belichick with Brady at QB
207-60 (18 winning seasons; 0 losing seasons)
30-10 in playoffs (6-3 in Super Bowls)
Belichick without Brady at QB
54-63 (2 winning seasons; 5 losing seasons)
1-1 in playoffs (Wild Card win)
The problem may not be other coaches in Belichick's tree can't duplicate his system. The problem is they can't duplicate his QB, Tom Brady, that has brought him most of his success.
You will get no disagreement from me that Tom Brady is an elite QB and has been an invaluable part of the Patriots success. But, IMHO, those stats could be parsed out a bit to get even better information. For instance, pulling out the Cleveland stats together show a strong team building and ascent, and IMHO, that clearly supports one of our areas of agreement, that Bill Belichick is an extremely effective coach. But, that was when Belichick was a young coach starting out, and he was a better coach by the time Tom Brady came around, so I would put those years off to the side. Those Cleveland years he won this many games each season: 6, 7, 7, 11, 5. With the exception of the last year (1995) when everything fell apart, he was showing a pretty normal and average coaching ascent the first three years and a real breakthrough in year four … not too dissimilar to many coaches. But, part of that was getting the Browns to a different place roster-wise and mind-set-wise. Moving to Baltimore in the middle of the night was why he lost his job. But he learned.
Fast forward to when he became coach of the Patriots, and with the exception of his very first season of 5 wins, and his third season of 9 wins, he has had double digit wins every season from 2001 through 2018. So Tom Brady's first season was Belichick's second season, but that season started with Drew Bledsoe as QB for the first part of the year. It was the breakthrough 11 win season and glory ensued for both of them. So sure, there's a correlation with Brady, and I'm not denying that. But in 2008, the lone year of Dolphins glory, when QB Chad Pennington and HC Tony Sparano inexplicably led us to win the AFC East with an 11-5 record, the Patriots--without Brady all year from injury--also went 11-5. Using career backup Tom Cassel at QB Belichick managed to make the guy look great and keep the machine rolling. We may have won the AFC East on tiebreakers, but essentially we tied for the division crown with a Patriots team that suffered only a small dropoff in production without Tom Brady. To me, that's the only year we have to really compare Belichick and Brady, because we have data on both sides of it with similar talent.
That year, 2008, is a baseball statisticians dream because it's a great Wins Against Replacements (WAR) statistic. The year before (2007) they won 16 games, so a 5 game dropoff, and in the year after (2009) they won only 10 games, so another 1 game dropoff. This suggests the talent was declining. With a starting point of 16 wins (regular season perfection and the high mark ever for both Belichick and Brady) and an ending point of 10 wins (low water mark for Brady), the middle of that decline should have been 13 wins. It obviously doesn't work like that, because rosters and training rooms instantly change rather than steadily decline, but our expectation would have been somewhere in the neighborhood of those 13 wins expected. It looks like Tom Brady is worth at least 2 wins (possibly more). To have the team that Belichick built be operating at 11 wins with a backup QB who has been a backup QB his whole career even in college, seems like a tremendous feat.
Don't get me wrong, I'll be very happy when Tom Brady retires. But, I'll be even happier when Bill Belichick retires, and if one happens first, I'm hoping it's Belichick. There's no denying that they're both truly exceptional and together they're at a level we have been unable to reach.
