By winning his fourth Super Bowl, Bill Belichick cemented his legacy as the greatest football coach of all-time. Among Boston coaches in all sports, he's second only to Red Auerbach. NFL coaches can only dream of achieving half of what Belichick has achieved.
Four Super Bowl wins as a head coach, 2 more as an assistant. He's been part of 8 Super Bowls spanning 4 decades. Named Coach of the Year 3 times by the AP. His defensive gameplan from Super Bowl 25 is in the Hall of Fame.
He's won 232 games including 22 playoff wins. His 211 regular season wins is 6th all-time, and with 12 more wins he'll pass Paul Brown for 5th.
One of Belichick's biggest strengths is his ability to move on from adversity. "We're on to Cincinnati" became a theme of the 2014 season, but moving on has been a key part of Belichick's career. He was a failure in Cleveland, but was able to learn from the experience and move on. When the Patriots lost Bledsoe in 2001, he and the team moved on. When they lost 31-0 to the Bills in 2003, they moved on. When the SpyGate story erupted, when Brady got hurt in 2008, when Aaron Hernandez murdered people, when the team was 2-2 last year and people were questioning if Tom Brady should be the quarterback, when DeflateGate broke. Belichick moves on.
No team excels in the face of adversity like Belichick's Patriots.
Few coaches have lost Super Bowls as heartbreaking as the two that Belichick lost against the Giants. And yet he still isn't afraid of risking defeat. He still has massive balls. He had the balls to reject the Jets and work for the Patriots (having learned from his Cleveland experience how important it was to work for owners who let you do your job). He had the balls to keep 4 quarterbacks on his roster, one of them was Tom Brady. He had the balls to let Brady try to win Super Bowl 36. He had the balls to let Lawyer Milloy go, to sign Corey Dillon, to bring in Randy Moss, to drop Randy Moss, to trade Logan Mankins, et cetera.
His aggression has sometimes been questioned, and it hasn't always worked out, but that aggression is why he and the Patriots are 4 time champions.
You could write a 200-page thesis paper on leadership by talking about Bill Belichick. So I'll stop myself here.
But Belichick has yet to stop. He's still doing his job.
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