Wizblog

Quandary For Browns Fans

Watching the Patriots-Steelers game tonight, I'm sure many Browns fans had to emotionally weigh their Steeler-hatred against their Belichick-hatred in deciding which team to root for. For me it never came close to a coin-flip. I hate the Steelers.

I never did muster much hate for Belichick when he was here, unlike so many of my fellow Browns fans. His utter lack of skills in dealing with media and fans was irritating, but right from the start you could tell that players loved playing for the guy. He inherited a truly horrible team from Bud Carson that had gone 3-13 the year before, but wasn't really that good.

He had the team competitive in every game, almost from the very start, and after two rebuilding years, had the Browns in the playoffs. He always had solid defense and excellent special teams, with trick plays that almost always worked because they were obviously so well-drilled and well-timed. Nothing has changed there.

And of course he will never be forgiven for being the bearer of the unfortunate news that Bernie Kosar had "diminishing skills", and that he was going to go another direction. He was right of course, and Kosar never had another productive starting gig in the NFL after that. Even after being fired by Modell when he moved the team to Baltimore, Belichick garnered no sympathy from Browns fans, because he had never bothered to try connecting with them in any way while he was here.

Any rational football fan has to admit not only that he is an excellent football coach (and that he didn't become one all of a sudden when he went to New England), but that he has built something admirable in terms of the conduct and attitude of his team. No stars, no egos, very little self-aggrandizement by players on the field. They're nice to opposing players while they're kicking their butts. I love that.

Now that they've disposed of the arch-enemy however, they sit as the prohibitive favorite in the Super Bowl. In two weeks, I'm rooting for the Eagles. Not because of Belichick, and not just because the Eagles are the underdogs. There's a lot to like about the Eagles. I've been saying all year long that they're the best team I've seen. So it's partly about wanting to be right.

UPDATE 1/24: The New York Times has a feature on Belichick today that tells how he changed his ways after Cleveland:

Only a decade ago, Belichick was among the inflexible and the arrogant as the curmudgeon of Cleveland, where he ran off the beloved Bernie Kosar, where he trusted too many Andre Rison attitudes. He alienated the public with his grouchy disposition and imposed his authority on his assistants. Soon, he was out of a job.

He stepped back and changed. After jilting the Jets, Belichick started over in New England by consulting P.R. specialists about his personality flaws, selecting players with a love of the game and surrendering his many hats to his savvy assistants.

So somewhere inside this socially arrested soul, there is apparently a people person. True, he is still grumpy, but he is no longer insulting. True, he is a slouch in an oversized sweatshirt, but it has become endearing.

His hoodie is like the housecoat of a cybernerd waking up with a Big Gulp for breakfast. He is all geek, but Belichick is Bill Gates cool - a brainiac capable of outfoxing the powers of Steelers passion.
(full text of Times article at "Continue reading" link below)

January 24, 2005

SPORTS OF THE TIMES

A Beautiful Mind Trumps a Steel Chin Every Time

By SELENA ROBERTS

BEAUTIFUL mind or cruel mind? Here in the hometown of Fred Rogers and Bill Cowher, where a retro-franchise values its own, where a community has survived Big Steel abandonment, Bill Belichick outsmarted the city's throwback heart and outwitted its quaint romance last night.

Such is the harsh power of Belichick's methodical detachment. If Belichick were not able to separate himself from emotion, if he could not inspect his flaws with the clinical eye of a forensics expert, he would not be able to correct his faults.

He admits mistakes when his peers make excuses. And this is his greatest strength: self-evaluation. Bill Parcells can recite the "Man in the Mirror," but Belichick lives by the importance of self-reflection.

Once again, he slipped on his decoder ring last night to make sure that, in his second lap with the Steelers this season, he would not end up twice fooled.

Where did the Patriots go wrong on Halloween? What did Pittsburgh do so right in that game? By simply dissecting that question, the brainiac applied a chaos theory that put the Patriots in the Super Bowl after a 41-27 victory in the American Football Conference championship game.

It may sound contradictory, but this genius redux happens all the time. He is 14-0 as Patriots coach when facing a quarterback for the second time in a season, a sign that he is able to confound and confuse the senses of an opposing team, its star and its coach.

The pressure of matching Belichick's intellect drove Cowher into a panic - and it was only eight minutes into the game, only a 3-0 deficit. Acting with awkward desperation, Cowher chose to go for it on fourth-and-1 at the New England 39.

Jerome Bettis played the bully who was supposed to kick sand on the Patriots' pencil necks. Instead, he was stopped behind the line of scrimmage and fumbled, the Steelers' second turnover of the game.

"That was huge," Patriots linebacker Ted Johnson said. "It was huge for our psyche and state of mind."

Suddenly, the Terrible Towels were turned into lap blankets as the Steelers played into Belichick's strategy of insecurity. The Steelers were so demoralized, they were caught with their self-esteem down on the Patriots' next play, when Tom Brady threw a 60-yard spiral that hit receiver Deion Branch in stride just before he crossed into the end zone.

"The key to that play was David Givens," Belichick said. "He ran an over route that ate up the corner and safety."

Givens was the receiver the Steelers knew, the one who had 101 yards receiving against them on Oct. 31. Branch, injured and inactive in that game, hadn't entered the Steelers' thoughts. By the end of the game, Branch had become the object of Brady's affection with 116 yards receiving, 37 yards rushing and 2 touchdowns.

This is what Belichick does to opponents. He jukes them with his moves of the mind, going with one player when they expect another, an implementer of decoys and deceptions. "I've been a believer in Bill Belichick for a long time," the Patriots' owner, Robert K. Kraft, said. "He is a very special coach."

He makes other coaches look pedestrian. All week, Cowher went with the stale philosophy mouthed by many coaches: We're sticking with what we do best.

Great, if Ben Roethlisberger was the same rookie sensation he had been in October. Great, if the Steelers hadn't fallen behind so soon, so fast.

The Steelers made themselves predictable. How easy for Belichick.

Unlike other coaches, Belichick believes in evolution, in the opportunity to change with second chances, in lessons learned from mistakes. Other coaches point at players for losses - as in Herman Edwards's rant against Doug Brien. Other coaches apply the same conservative game plans in times of crisis - see Schottenheimer, Marty. Others are stubbornly one-dimensional - as in Mike Martz in Rams Land.

Only a decade ago, Belichick was among the inflexible and the arrogant as the curmudgeon of Cleveland, where he ran off the beloved Bernie Kosar, where he trusted too many Andre Rison attitudes. He alienated the public with his grouchy disposition and imposed his authority on his assistants. Soon, he was out of a job.

He stepped back and changed. After jilting the Jets, Belichick started over in New England by consulting P.R. specialists about his personality flaws, selecting players with a love of the game and surrendering his many hats to his savvy assistants.

So somewhere inside this socially arrested soul, there is apparently a people person. True, he is still grumpy, but he is no longer insulting. True, he is a slouch in an oversized sweatshirt, but it has become endearing.

His hoodie is like the housecoat of a cybernerd waking up with a Big Gulp for breakfast. He is all geek, but Belichick is Bill Gates cool - a brainiac capable of outfoxing the powers of Steelers passion.

There was Cowher, standing to disprove the attention-deficit gang of N.F.L. owners - as in Dan Snyder in Washington - by showing his staying power in Pittsburgh. There was Cowher, a product of Dan Rooney's patience and Pittsburgh genetics in a land where smokestacks once popped up like cake candles on the cityscape.

Cowher had a chance to prove a franchise with an old soul still had a Super Bowl in it. Hard math is cruel, though. There is little room for sentiment in Belichick's beautiful mind.

Posted by dan at January 23, 2005 11:34 PM