Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Super stakes
Dave Hyde: Today, Patriots’ Belichick may topple Shula as NFL’s greatest coach.
Out on the horizon, the landscape is shifting. You may not feel it underfoot just yet. But it’s a question of time before the debate over the greatest football coach pits Don Shula against Bill Belichick.
Maybe it arrives today if Belichick wins an unprecedented fifth Super Bowl in his unprecedented seventh appearance. Maybe it takes longer as Belichick creeps up on Shula’s shrine of 347 career wins, including playoffs.
But it’s coming, as sure as sunrise, by the same reasoning Shula gave whenever dragged into the debate.
“How do they decide winners in sports?” he’d say. “The scoreboard,” you’d answer. He’d say nothing back. He’d let that answer settle. Nobody won more scoreboards than Shula. That’s what sets him atop the coaching pyramid. Others are discussed. But Vince Lombardi and Bill Walsh only coached 10 years. Chuck Noll had a distant 209 career wins.
The debate with Belichick is a shifting paradigm as he wins and involves which scoreboards matter most. All of them? Shula, again, is the all-time winningest coach. Belichick is at 262 wins (and counting).
Do Super Bowl scoreboards matter most? Shula was in six and won two. Belichick breaks a tie with Shula by coaching his seventh today. He’d break a tie with Noll by winning a fifth title.
So this Super Sunday underlines the real issue here. It’s not a static debate. Belichick keeps coming. He’s averaged 13.3 wins a year in his 17 New England seasons. At this rate, he would match Shula’s wins total in 2024. That’s not so far away.
At 65 in April, Belichick looks like he could coach seven more years. Will he? He once said he didn’t want to coach into his 70s. But, like Shula, Belichick has a stable temperament in a business known to wear down most.
Shula was once famously asked about Dick Vermeil’s faltering to “burnout.” “What’s that?” he said. “I don’t really see it as work,” Belichick said at a news conference this week when asked how long he wants to coach. “It actually beats working. You get to do what you love to do dealing with a lot of great people.”
For now, Shula has a trump card over Belichick beyond the wins. It’s a significant one in this greatest-ever debate. Shula went to Super Bowls with four different quarterbacks (Earl Morrall, Bob Griese, David Woodley and Dan Marino).
Belichick has been blessed by having Tom Brady throughout this run. Let’s not overlook Belichick’s discovery of Brady. He saw something in a sixth-round pick to keep the rookie Brady as a rare fourth quarterback and played him over veteran Drew Bledsoe when Bledsoe returned from his injury.
But Belichick never assembled a two-headed concoction of Woodley and Don Strock. He didn’t win with a record running offense under Griese and a record passing one lead by Marino.
Some say Belichick was bolstered by Brady’s suspension, when the Patriots went 3-1 this year. Maybe so. But the adjoining argument is that Belichick missed the playoffs in 2008 when Brady was lost in the opening game.
Shula? He lost Griese for most of the 1972 season. Morrall, who quarterbacked Shula’s Baltimore team to a Super Bowl, stepped in for Griese. The Perfect Season remained perfect.
The case for Belichick is simple and growing: He’s not done. Five Super Bowl rings would separate him from everyone. And if he keeps going to challenge Shula’s all-times wins mark?
There’s another matter in the debate that’s not as tangible as numbers. It’s one Shula himself has referred to now that the filter is off.
“Beli-cheat,” he once said to me.
Spygate. Deflategate. This is the ethically flawed part of Belichick’s portfolio. It’s hard to see it overburdening his legacy in a culture where winning trumps all. But as a tiebreaker?
Shula once was given an Oakland Raiders playbook in a locker room. He threw it in the trash.
“We don’t do that,” he said.
Shula attended the Super Bowl in Arizona when Belichick’s Patriots came within an improbable reception by the Giants’ David Tyree of matching the Dolphins’ perfect season.
“He jumped this high off floor at the end,” said his wife, Mary Anne, holding her hands a foot apart.
The coach, you see, is still competing. It’s just an odd venue now. Shula vs. Belichick? The debate is coming, if it’s not here by the end of today.