When the fall of 2023 approaches, the drumbeat will begin. Around the midpoint of the season, perhaps sooner, it will be pounding. It’s the hype of an NFL record about to be broken, a lifetime-achievement-type record, not one manufactured by cherry-picking statistics to suit one’s needs.
Yes. Four seasons from now, the Dolphins’ Don Shula no longer will be the NFL’s all-time winningest coach. His 347 victories, a beacon for all in the profession to aspire to, will be nudged aside by New England’s Bill Belichick.
This scenario comes with two assumptions: First, that Belichick continues winning at or about the same breakneck pace he always has (which seems fathomable), and, second, that Belichick chooses to remain in his role when he’s 71 years old (clearly more tenuous).
Winning is the only thing, we’ve been conditioned to believe, which would mean that to couple 348 wins by Belichick with his six Super Bowl rings is to squelch any argument in favor of Shula being the best ever.
But argue, I must. Argue, I will.
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Argue, I do, in the name of integrity. Honesty. Valor. Class.
Let’s be honest. Bill Belichick is a coaching genius. A disciplinarian whose teams are never unprepared. A man who gets the most out of what he has. Cold, crusty and crabby.
Don Shula, in his prime, was all that.
Know what Shula wasn’t? A rule-breaker. Shula was, in fact, a rule-maker, sitting for years on the NFL’s Competition Committee with an eye toward making the game he loved better. When you think of him, you think 17-0. You think drill sergeant. You think of that stern jaw.
But you also think of doing it the right way.
When you think of Belichick? Maybe you think of the greatest dynasty the NFL has ever seen. Certainly if you’re among the entitled, thin-skinned and persecuted fan base in New England, that’s your point of reference.
But there’s a reason that what could have been a stupid mistake by a Patriots film crew this season has turned into Spygate 2.0. It’s that the Patriots have done nothing to deserve any benefit of doubt thanks to years of malfeasance and chicanery under Belichick’s watch. That’s why, when presented with the possibility that his old coach may be knocked from the No. 1 perch, defensive tackle Manny Fernandez of the championship Dolphins did not bite his tongue.
“You can’t stop it,” Fernandez said. “I just think it’s a shame that a guy who constantly gets caught cheating is even there because — I don’t know — his moral character leaves me kind of questioning.”
Contrast that reputation with what Larry Little, a Hall of Fame guard on Shula’s Super Bowl teams, said when asked if the same was ever suggested about Shula.
“Never,” Little said. “One time, I think we were playing the Raiders, we practiced at their facility. Someone (on the Raiders) left their game plan in the locker room and somebody gave it to Coach. (Shula’s response was), ‘No. We don’t do it that way.’
“He wouldn’t look at it. It would happen out there, on the field. That’s how Don was. Integrity. Yes, integrity.”
Upon Shula’s retirement in January 1996, Edwin Pope, legendary columnist for The Miami Herald, wrote a lengthy tribute under the headline “TESTAMENT TO HONOR.”
Describing the immense respect Shula commanded in South Florida, Pope wrote, “Shula earned that homage by pushing and holding pro football’s standards higher than anyone had. By never lying, never seeking unfair advantage. And, most remarkably, seeing nothing remarkable in all that.”
No point in going into exhaustive detail on all the times Belichick’s Patriots have been nabbed in the act. They’re all so famous, a mere mention is all that’s required to jog the memory. Might as well start, though, with Spygate 1.0, a 2007 incident in which the Patriots were illegally videotaping the Jets’ coaches’ defensive signals. Belichick admitted in a televised interview he was wrong. It cost his team a first-round draft pick.
Last week came a story that sounded familiar. The NFL is investigating why a Patriots film crew spent eight minutes filming the field area from the press box during a Bengals-Browns game. Just a coincidence, you understand, that the Patriots were about to play the Bengals. Maybe it was a simple mistake. One school of thought, though, is that the Bengals are so awful no one would believe the Patriots sought an unfair edge. The other school of thought: That’s why they thought they could get away with it.
Belichick’s greatness makes this so perplexing. He has an incredible ability to make the whole far greater than the sum of its parts. He has an uncanny eye for talent. The Dolphins know. In 2007, when Belichick pried receiver Wes Welker from Miami, it was easy to wonder why he was giving up a second-round draft pick for a complementary guy. Turned out that even way up in New England, Belichick had a better grasp of how terrific Welker could be than the very guys coaching him every day here.
Spy on the Bengals? Belichick could have played his second team, maybe his third team, and still flicked aside Cincy like a flea on a dog’s back.
“There’s some things that come out — how can I put this? — possibly about Bill, some things that happened over the years,” Little said. “But I still don’t think that takes away from him being a great coach, because he’s overcome those things and still won. So what can you say?”
You can say you acknowledge his accomplishments. You appreciate his accomplishments. But granting him more respect than Shula? Not gonna happen, no matter what the numbers say.
Belichick is 67, meaning he already has gone longer than Shula, who retired from the Dolphins at 65. Shula, who turns 90 on Jan. 4, coached 490 regular-season games, going 328-156-6, a .677 percentage. He also was 19-17 in the postseason (.528).
In 399 regular-season games entering Sunday’s meeting with the Dolphins, Belichick is 273-126 (.684), and far distances himself from Shula with a 31-11, .738 percentage in postseason.
As for how much credit each man deserves for building dynasties, both did it so rapidly, it’s a draw. Shula arrived in 1970, taking over a team that went 3-10-1 the season before. The Dolphins were 10-4 the next season, lost the Super Bowl the year after that, then went 17-0 amid back-to-back Super Bowl victories.
“It started from nothing and it ended up being everything,” said Mercury Morris, a running back on Shula’s title teams.
Belichick had more of a base with which to start. When he arrived in 2000, he took over a Patriots team coming off an 8-8 season. The Patriots hadn’t endured a losing season since 1995. In his second year, Belichick won the Super Bowl, the first of three such wins in four years.
Overall, Belichick’s 304 total wins mean he needs 43 to tie Shula. Estimating how quickly he pulls even depends on perspective. Using his average of 12.1 wins (including playoffs) over the course of his career, it would happen midway through the 2023 season.
Since that includes Belichick’s ill-fated time as Cleveland’s coach, a better indicator might be his average of 12.5 wins since 2010, moving up the target date to very early in the 2023 season. The wild card, of course, is the impact if/when Tom Brady ever retires, plus the possibility that at least one team in the AFC East, the Buffalo Bills, might be finally closing the gap.
One thing that will never change is Shula’s legacy. That’s as hardened and set in stone as the expressway in Miami-Dade County bearing his name.
One irony comes to mind. Although it doesn’t involve Belichick, it does involve Shula and the Patriots. It’s the infamous snowplow game of 1982, when the Pats called upon a prisoner out on work-release to clear a path on the snow-covered field for a late field goal in a 3-0 snookering of the Dolphins.
After the fact, people wondered why Shula didn’t dash out there and physically put a stop to such deviousness. The answer is blatantly obvious: It never occurred to Shula that anybody would stoop so low to win a sporting event.
In a 2002 interview with The Post, after having been named Sportsman of the Year by Sports Illustrated, Shula offered his definition of sportsmanship:
“I define it as respect,” he said. “That’s the key, is having respect for the people you’re competing against, the individual you’re competing against, and the team you’re competing against. If you’ve got that respect, you do things the way they should be done. And that’s sportsmanship.”
How important is that?
“As the head coach, I always tried to convey to the people I was responsible for that winning certainly was the ultimate goal but we always wanted to be a team that was known as being good sportsmen and winning within the rules and doing things the right way,” Shula said.
Just as this alone puts Shula above Belichick now and forevermore, I will step aside for another football mind for whom I have the greatest respect — the late Edwin Pope, a former mentor.
“Others won more Super Bowls,” Pope wrote in his tribute. “Others coached longer. Others were more inventive. No one — no one — came close to Shula in integrity of approach.”
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Opinion: Bill Belichick will never be in the same class as Don Shula no matter how many games he wins - USA TODAY
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