Does This Look Like the Face of the Landslide Winner of the NFL's "Best Coach" Poll?

SI – Since Bill Belichick became head coach in 2000, the Patriots have won 10 divisional titles, gone to the playoffs 10 times and advanced to five Super Bowls—winning three within a four-year span. With a 205-109 career record (including the postseason), Belichick ranks first among active coaches and sixth on the all-time list… Belichick [is] the best head coach in the NFL, according to an SI.com canvassing of league general managers. A dozen GMs participated in the poll, in which they were promised anonymity and could not vote for anyone on their own teams. Belichick received nine of the 12 votes cast for best coach… “He can coach the offense, he can coach the defense, he can coach his own coaches,” one GM said of Belichick. “He’s the outstanding coach of his time.” “Is there any debate about it?” asked another GM “Always prepared. Has reinvented that team several times and competed for a championship after every reinvention. There is nobody better.” “We all have our trials and tribulations, but I don’t think there’s anyone who matches him in terms of matching personnel and scheme,” added a third GM “His ability to stay calm in the heat of fire is impressive in this league.”

Well, well, well.  Now the truth comes out. They hate him.  The criticize him.  They harp on him.  It’s a national scandal if he grabs a phony replacement refauxree to get his attention after a blown call.  The whole world obsesses over it every time he doesn’t run across the field and jam his tongue down an opposing coach’s throat.  He’s been called Cheater from sea to shining sea. Been the topic of discussion at press conferences by demagoguing Senators who are rotting in Hell right now. They said he basically enabled a murderer.  And believe me, if he still had Tom Brady on the field throwing touchdown passes up 42-27 with 2:30 to play the way John Fox did with Peyton Manning*, there’d be Boston media storming the Pats hotel in Buffalo like Iranians at the embassy in “Argo,” demanding his head.  But get the powers that be in the NFL alone, on the condition of anonymity and ask them honestly who’s the best in the business, and they’ll say it’s the man they claim to revile so much.

Now granted, I could pick nits here.  And say what I honestly believe, that him getting only 75% of the vote is the worst miscarriage of justice in human history, but now is not the time for that.  Now is just the time to celebrate this landslide victory and acknowledge what we all know to be true: They hate him because they want to be him.  @JerryThornton1

*(I have zero problem with what the Broncos did.  I’m just saying if Brady was still in the game at that point, it would be out of “arrogance” and that only the Pats and Belichick get held to that standard.) [Photo courtesy of @michaelFhurley]