Bill Belichick finally succumbed to the NFL's mean — and defying it so long is what made him a legend

In 2015, when Bill Belichick was at the height of his powers and New England’s season seemingly began in the AFC championship game, the Patriots went on a coin-flip hot streak.

They won 19 out of 25 times.

The odds of such a thing, the Boston Globe computed, was 0.0073, or less than three quarters of 1%. It appeared to defy probability. National Public Radio even did a segment on it.

There was no secret, of course. It was luck and, to briefly get into the mathematical weeds, actually not that improbable (more like a 20% possibility).

It just seemed that Belichick had figured something out that no one else had.

That was Belichick, though, both so successful and so secretive that nothing felt left to chance. As such, coaching staffs around the NFL tried to figure out how he turned a 50/50 proposition into another Patriots advantage. At least one NFL team sought the advice of a mathematician.

And then, too, the odds came back to him. On coin flips and everything else.

Bill Belichick will reportedly not return as head coach of the Patriots after a disastrous 4-13 season. It ends an epic 24-season run in Foxborough that might never be duplicated — 17 consecutive double-digit victory seasons, 17 division titles in 19 years, eight consecutive conference championship games, nine trips to the Super Bowl and six titles.

Eventually, reality came for even the best of all time — in this case, life without a viable quarterback, let alone an all-time great such as Tom Brady.

The departure was seasons in the making, a result of bad draft classes and stubborn staffing. From 2020 to 2022, Belichick was 25-25 without Brady — and then, suddenly, awful.

After all, there are two steps to going bankrupt, as Ernest Hemingway wrote: gradually, then suddenly. Consider the Patriots broke. Someone else will be charged with the rebuild.

The ending shouldn’t define the journey. All good things come to an end, and there have been few things in football as good, as grand, as grandiose — let alone as lasting — as Belichick’s Patriots.

It’s not just that they won but also how they won.

A retread hire from Cleveland known for his defensive mastery, Belichick became an expert on all things football. He won with Brady the game manager and Brady the record-setting touchdown passer. He won with a run-first offense and a two-tight-end offense. He won with a slew of undersized slot receivers and with Randy Moss.

At his best, Belichick pushed boundaries and cut edges. He didn’t just win those coin flips; he deferred receiving the ball until the second half so Brady could score twice in a row in the middle of the game.

He went for it on fourth down in ways that sent talk shows into a frenzy but are now common. He was impossibly old-school, a gruff disciplinarian, yet he had a way of taking other teams' headaches and turning them into All-Pros.

His teams often had the fewest penalties called on them and featured the most college graduates. He rarely participated in free-agent spending. He was famed for development and situational savvy — undrafted Malcolm Butler cutting the route in a Super Bowl victory, for example. He had a way of neutralizing an opponent’s best player. He was so skilled a teacher of fundamentals, it was said he could be a position coach for any position on the field.

His career was about zigging when others zagged. When spending big on offensive linemen became a thing, the Patriots won the 2018 season’s Super Bowl with a starting five that ranked 26th in salary, a total ($17.3 million) that was less than Dallas was paying one guy (Tyron Smith, $17.6 million).

He did it all with counterculture swag. He was gruff with the media, unless he wanted to be expansive and charismatic. He seemed to revel in being a villain, at least to a point. Opposing teams so distrusted him, they routinely swept the visiting locker room at Gillette Stadium for recording devices (none was ever found, but he was clearly in their head).

He feuded with the league office, most notably after 2007’s Spygate scandal that he always contended was overblown. A few years later, when the NFL claimed Brady’s greatness came from deflating the football, Belichick held a news conference quoting “My Cousin Vinny.”

Then there was the time the league required a camera be placed in his home for the virtual 2020 NFL Draft. He pointed it at his dog, who was seated in front of a laptop.

He was contrarian in all ways; annually, for example, turning down easy money by refusing to have his name appear in the EA Sports "Madden" series. He prided himself on being the one thing that was, indeed, not “in the game.” To this day, he's one of only two people to ever turn down the Presidential Medal of Freedom (the other being Dolly Parton).

He did it all while wearing a raggedy hooded sweatshirt, with the sleeves cut off, as a passive-aggressive response to the NFL's cutting a coaches' clothing deal with Reebok. His goal was to look as unfashionable as possible, friends said. Instead, the “BB Hoodie” became an iconic top seller.

Winning can do that.

For nearly a quarter of a century, Belichick was a constant force, an NFL calling card, a sideline gangster. Like him. Loathe him. Cheer him. Fear him. It was all the same. He just kept sputtering out catch phrases with each 13-win season — “The Patriot Way,” “Do Your Job,” “We’re on to Cincinnati.”

He’s 71 years old but still capable of coaching, so Foxborough likely isn’t his last stop. With 302 career victories, the chase for Don Shula’s all-time mark of 328 should continue.

Wherever he goes and whatever he does, though, there will never be anything quite like the run in New England, with Brady as the glowing star and Belichick the brooding, mysterious genius, barreling together to the Super Bowl.

Like coin flips, the NFL will always return to the mean, always find its level. That Belichick defied that for so long, though, is how legends are made and probabilities doubted.