Belichick v. Coughlin: Behind the Numbers

Today I found myself in a healthy debate with a fellow NFL fan about whether Bill Belichick or Tom Coughlin is the superior coach. He pointed to each coach's career regular season and playoff records, and rested on the understandable idea that the numbers do not lie. But...

Stats can only paint half the picture. Without context, they can be quite misleading, especially when comparing human beings.

The only professional boxer to hold the heavyweight title and go undefeated and untied throughout his career was Rocky Marciano (he went 49-0). Would most boxing experts, including those who were around in the 50's, call him the greatest to ever live? Probably not. But he still has the best record ever, by a mile.

Jake Peavy has a better career ERA than Orel Hershiser. Who is the better pitcher? Obviously, no one would ever argue this point.

Kurt Warner is 1-2 in Super Bowls and Ben Roethlisberger is 2-1, but if you surveyed 10 NFL experts from the past 15 years, I can guarantee the majority would call Warner "better."

The St. Louis Rams have one more sack this year than do the Chicago Bears, but which defense is more feared? Would any quarterback in the NFL elect to face the Bears instead of the Rams, down, say 10 points in the 4th quarter?

My point is that context is essential to analyzing any stat, whether it's a record, an average, or a mere count. Just because one coach has more wins or championships or a better winning percentage does not guarantee his superiority. All of the material contributing factors should be considered.

In this case, Bill Belichick has had the benefit of the best owner and organization in the NFL. Bob Kraft, with his willingness to spend and his ambition to embrace his fans and ultimately to win, has put the pieces in place to provide Belichick the greatest opportunity for success. Coughlin, simply put, has not had such luck.

Also, Belichick has faced a notoriously easier division throughout his entire career as the Patriots head coach. He had the benefit of facing the Indianapolis Colts twice a year from 1996 until the divisional realignment in 2002. Just when Peyton Manning became a threat, he no longer had to face him twice. He also found himself looking across the field at the the hapless Buffalo Bills twice a year the past decade and a half. Literally Belichick stepped in just when Marv Levy stepped out. Imagine having to outcoach Wade Phillips, then Gregg Williams, then Mike Mularkey, then Dick Jauron, then Perry Fewell, then Chan Gailey. I mean, seriously, that is a list of some of the least awe-inspiring head coaches to grace the modern-day NFL. Belichick also enjoyed opposing the Miami Dolphins twice a year for his entire Patriots career. And you know who QB'd Miami those 15+ years? First, Belichick got the ugly end of Dan Marino's career. Then, he trotted Brady out there against Jay Fiedler, A.J. Feeley, Gus Frerotte, Sage Rosenfels, Daunte Culpepper, Cleo Lemon, Trent Green, John Beck, Chad Pennington, Chad Henne, Tyler Thigpen, Matt Moore and now Ryan Tannenhill. Seriously?! Outside of Pennington, not one of these guys has ever been mentioned in the same sentence as "playoffs." The only remotely decent team Belichick has faced in the division in 16 years is the New York Jets, and that's not saying a whole lot.

Meanwhile, Coughlin has had to face the most consistently good division in all of football. Dallas and Philly (and even occasionally Washington) are perennial playoff contenders. Those teams are generally very solid on both sides of the ball, with marquee QBs and fairly decent coaches.

I could go on with even more examples of context, but I will conclude with probably the most compelling one of all: the playoff runs of Coughlin are far more impressive than any playoff run of Belichick, even the shocking run in the 2001 miracle season. In the 2007-08 playoffs, Coughlin knocked off the high-powered Cowboys in Dallas, and then somehow managed to beat the Packers in Lambeau in OT. Finally, he had to face Goliath in the greatest game ever played. And he handed them one Giant loss. In all 3 games, Coughlin's squad was a significant underdog. He did something almost as impressive at the end of the 2011 season. He repeated his result against the Packers in Lambeau, but this time in a blowout, and then, with a little luck, he squeaked by the very strong Niners in an amazing OT thriller. Finally, he toppled the Patriots again, and again as a dog. Coughlin has consistently beaten the NFL's best teams (not just of the current season, but spanning decades) in lose-or-go-home close games, usually with superior preparation and perfect game-planning.

Belichick's 2001 playoff run was benefited by a snow storm for the ages, and then Kordell Stewart, and then Mike Martz. Take away any of those, and no doubt his three offensive touchdowns in the 2001 playoffs would not have earned him a Super Bowl ring (yes, the Patriots only scored 3 offensive touchdowns the entire 2001-02 playoffs!). In 2003, his Pats knocked off the Titans and then the Colts to get to the Super Bowl. It's not his fault that he wasn't even close to being the underdog in either of those games, but even as a huge favorite in the Super Bowl that year, his team almost lost to the Jake Delhomme-led Carolina Panthers. This title run is nice, but unimpressive next to either of Coughlin's. His 2004 playoff run was eerily similar, and he eventually beat Donovan McNabb. Not Coughlin-esque. One year later, he lost in the playoffs to the Colts after having a 21-3 lead. In 2007, you know what happened-- Belichick failed to complete the perfect season. And then in 2011, Belichick was handed a gift trip to the Super Bowl by the Ravens' Lee Evans, but again underwhelmed the would-be believers.

My point? Belichick has more rings and a better record than Tom Coughlin, but who has done more with less? Who has scaled more unbelievable coaching mountains? Who has done the impossible? Who has let fewer people down? Who has exceeded all expectations? It's obviously debatable, but there's a very strong case out there for Tom Coughlin. If you're still on the Belichick bandwagon, try considering Coughlin's Boston College and Jacksonville Jaguar careers as well...

CNL = Can Not Lose

The Patriots can lose this game, obviously, but consider what happens if they do. First, I doubt anyone who even remotely associates themselves with New England-- the coaches, the players, the fans, even Gisele Bundchen, for that matter-- basically anyone who up to this day roots for the Patriots will be able to overcome the devastation of a loss. Ever. While you wouldn't necessarily equate Bill Belichick to Marv Levy or Tom Brady to Jim Kelly, you would probably say to yourself as if preparing for the analogies section of a standardized test, "The New England Patriots are to the New York Giants as the Buffalo Bills are to the Dallas Cowboys." Excuse the crassness, but they would become their eternal bitch. And that stigma, admittedly a stigma not quite as bad as Buffalo's, would sit above Boston for decades.

Second, the New England Patriots and Tom Brady would become the dreaded inverse of the Denver Broncos and John Elway. Early on in his career Elway went to three Super Bowls and lost them all. In what appeared to be the last chapter of a tragic career riddled with 2nd places, he surprisingly knocked off a giant in Brett Favre's Packers and then proceeded to crush the Atlanta Falcons in his epilogue, ultimately retiring a champion. Losing today would basically stamp Brady as the exact opposite. He wins three Super Bowls early on, and then, after winning all 18 games in 2007, suffers one Giant loss, only to be shown up again by the same simple quarterback and the same red-faced coach in the encore? I just can't see this happening. I love underdogs, but somehow in the grand scheme of this universe, Tom Brady is supposed to be a career champion, not a big game loser. The odd thing about the NFL is that it is always worse to finish in 2nd place than it is to finish 2nd from the bottom. In other words, there is no greater chasm between 1st and 2nd place than in the NFL. Sadly, everyone remembers Jim Kelly as the greatest quarterback to come close to getting it done without getting it done-- not the greatest on-field engineer to call his own plays in the no-huddle, which he really was. Losing today, Brady would become the most tragic 3-time Super Bowl champion you could possibly imagine.

Finally, there's Belichick. The smartest, best decision-making, most feared coach you could ever face across a gridiron. Marv Levy was great, but Bill Belichick is greater. Should he lose today though, his successes would be clouded with an unprecedented taint of a fallen empire. Like a once world leader whose peoples have become discontented or whose economies have turned or whose renaissance is centuries past, he would tread on alone through deep, quiet puddles of frustrated bewilderment, of painful questioning of what could have been. The onlookers will ponder his retirement for him, wondering if there's any more left.

This game is cruel, but it can be no crueler than to the guys who are supposed to have it all. Failure to complete this fateful rematch, failure to re-emerge as champions, failure to satisfy the insatiable Boston sports world-- can only mean epic failure to be remembered for generations. Never before in American sport will one game have such a resounding impact on the careers and images and legacies of two very successful, yet fallible men.

Given that Belichick and Brady were the cause of a similar downfall to a personal sports hero of mine in Kurt Warner (see Wikipedia: Super Bowl XXXVI), it is odd for me to show any sympathy here. But Belichick and Brady have suffered far greater (see Wikipedia: Super Bowl XLII). They have an opportunity today not at true redemption (because nothing will ever redeem falling short of the truly perfect season), but an opportunity to preserve and expand an otherwise great legacy. Falling short though is beyond tragic.

The Gambler's Epilogue

Ultimately, my heart is with the underdog, and I love Tom Coughlin for his unbelievable run of killing, ironically, giants. Starting with his first legendary victory over #1 Notre Dame as BC's head coach in 1993 that kept the Irish out of the national championship (see Wikipedia: Holy War - BC v ND), and then his unbelievable toppling of Elway's Broncos in the '96 playoffs (see Wikipedia: Jaguars Miracle 1996 Season), and finally the aforementioned shocking of the world after the 2007 season, Tom Coughlin's accomplishments are undeniably real-life Cinderella stories, each more impressive than the previous. So speaks my heart.

My mind and my wallet though is on the Patriots. There are several compelling facts: Belichick is nearly impossible to beat twice in the same season; the Giants secondary will flail if Brady doesn't get hit early and often; the Patriots' offensive line is playing the best football yet and will only be helped by the artificial surface. These are all interesting, but the intangibles are what has led me to wager on these easily-hatable New England Patriots. Their locker room, specifically the offense, appears to be the most cohesive unit to ever take a football field. By any semblance of justice, they should have lost to the Ravens, but by some miracle, their porous defense dodged the largest Lee Evans bullet imaginable, and now their entire team has an undeserved second chance. Given what's at stake, given this second chance, we all know what Brady and Belichick, with their world-class preparation, can and will do. Both offenses will move up and down the field today scoring wildly. The Giants will make a mistake or two; the Patriots will make none. Pats -3, Over 54.

Steeler Stubbornness Staying the Course

It's hard to argue that the Denver Broncos don't deserve their trip to Foxboro, but Sunday evening's game shed much more light on its coaches than it did on Tim Tebow's will to win. While the Broncos adjusted and fought and adjusted again, the Steelers remained ignorantly steadfast on their ill-conceived defensive game plan. Just three weeks earlier, the Patriots made it very clear that if you don't give up the big play to the Broncos, you don't give up the victory. And they did it by adjusting to Denver's first two drives. The Steelers, on the other hand, ignored precedent, remained stubborn, dared the deep ball, and never learned their lesson. The final play of the game was the epitome of John Fox's superior understanding of the strategies of reacting to the game when compared to that of Mike Tomlin and his staff.

This refusal to adjust is likely now a common topic of discussion, but, given the well-known condition of Ben Roethlisberger's ankle on Sunday, it brings up something that surprisingly no one talks about. Back on Thursday, December 8, 2011, the Cleveland Browns came into Pittsburgh, ultimately to get beaten, but they essentially ended the Steelers' hopes of a Super Bowl run-- not because of their fierce pass rush, but because of Pittsburgh's stubborn, almost silly offensive play-calling.

Prior to that Thursday night game, only 4 days earlier, the Cleveland Browns had given up 204 yards rushing to Ray Rice, and 290 total yards rushing to the Baltimore Ravens. (Not enough time to study the tape, Tomlin?) A week before that, the Browns had given up 106 yards to Cedric Benson! (I just said Cedric Benson.) Two weeks before that, they gave up 128 yards at home to Steven Jackson, his third biggest rushing game of the season. And the week before that, they gave up 124 yards to Arian Foster and another 115 yards to Ben Tate! All of those games resulted in losses for the Browns. In fact, the Browns finished the season with the 3rd worst rushing defense in the league (behind the Rams and Bucs). The equation is not that difficult. When you face the Cleveland Browns in 2011, you run the ball down their throats-- especially when you have a QB that likes to take hits.

So it puzzles me why, at the 6:08 mark of the 2nd quarter against Cleveland on that fateful Thursday night-- why in the hell Rashard Mendenhall had but 4 carries. Seriously, that is plain dumb. If you are playing the Cleveland Browns in 2011, and your starting back only has 4 carries after 24 minutes of play, you should be taken out back, with Norv Turner and a handful of other unnamed simpletons, and fired on the spot. There is no excuse. The Steelers were winning 7-3, Mendenhall had just ripped off 14 yards on his last 2 carries, and instead of doing the right thing, Tomlin's people did the Mike Martz thing. They insisted on sticking with their ill-fated, inane game plan. But instead of Warner getting hit by Vrabel and consequently throwing the ball to Ty Law who took it the other way to the house, Big Ben took the unnecessary hit, practically broke his ankle, and never recovered. In both cases, the Super Bowl ring was lost.

Most of the Steelers' recent successes have genuinely been earned by their coaches-- superior preparation and an eye for talent. However, in the biggest games on the biggest stages, their ultimate success can arguably be attributed to great luck. But for a mythical offensive pass interference call, a mythical holding call, and a mythical unsportsmanlike conduct call on Hasselbeck, all in Super Bowl XL, Cowher could easily still be ringless (Wikipedia: Super Bowl XL Reaction to officiating). And but for the Arizona Cardinals' safety Aaron Francisco falling down, Santonio Holmes would not have made that critical 40-yard catch-and-run in the waning moments of Super Bowl XLIII, and Tomlin could very likely still be searching...

There's no doubt this game involves a significant amount of luck. But to fail to adjust to the Denver Broncos' scheme, to fail to recognize that the only way Tebow was going to continue to burn you was with the deep ball to Demaryius Thomas, to fail to make any such adjustments down the stretch, especially on the first play of overtime, is beyond perplexing. But this stubbornness shouldn't necessarily surprise us, especially after seeing what led to Big Ben's ankle problems but one month earlier.